‘All Are Instructive If Read in a Right Spirit’: Reading, Religion, and Instruction in a Victorian Reading Diary

ABSTRACT

This paper conducts a study of reading choices and practices through the reading diary of a middle-class reader in mid–nineteenth-century Glasgow within the context of her sociocultural, intellectual, and religious milieu. Anne Galloway (1802–1889) wrote her reading diary between 1850 and 1856, wherein she recorded one hundred eighty-four books and three periodicals. This study combines an investigation in the availability of books and their circulation with a focus on Stirling's Library, a subscription library founded by Walter Stirling in 1791, from which Anne obtained her books. Anne's borrowing record is reconstructed using the library catalogues. These are used to assess the different classifications of the books she read and their respective numbers to determine the pattern of Anne's borrowing and reading practices. This investigation offers new insights into Glasgow's book culture through the reconstructed history of a ‘lesser-known’ Evangelical, nonprofessional, married woman reader in the mid-nineteenth century, demographics of which are currently all underrepresented in individual case studies in the history of reading.

KEYWORDS:

• Glasgow
• Victorian
• the woman reader
• subscription libraries
• Stirling's Library
• Evangelicalism
• history of reading
• individual case study
• commonplacing
• conduct literature

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Katie Halsey and Prof. Kirstie Blair, along with the two anonymous reviewers, for reading this manuscript and offering invaluable advice and suggestions. Also, I wish to thank Dr. Justin Livingston for his advice and support in the supervision of the research for this paper, which developed out of my master's degree work at the University of Glasgow. Finally, I wish to thank the staff in the Special Collections and the Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library; Laura Neil, assistant to the information librarian and archivist at Clackmannanshire Library HQ; and Richard Bapty, principal assistant librarian at the University of Glasgow Library for all their assistance.

Notes

1. R. K. Marshall, Virgins and Viragos (London: Collins, 1983), 11–12.

2. ‘The woman reader’ is the subject of work by Jacqueline Pearson and by Kate Flint. See J. Pearson, Women's Reading in Britain, 1750–1835 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), and K. Flint, The Woman Reader, 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). See also E. Gordon and G. Nair, Public Lives: Women, Family, and Society in Victorian Britain (New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 2003), and E. Breitenbach et al., Scottish Women: A Documentary History, 1780–1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

3. C. G. Brown, in Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707, states that ‘Victorian social policy rested heavily on evangelical foundations […] Though not united on such “political” matters, evangelical ministers and leading laity were frequently influential in promoting social reform and civic improvement’ (C. G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 98.

4. Ibid., 102, and the term is quoted in this source. Brown discusses the sweeping changes that occurred in cities across Scotland including Glasgow in Chapter 5, ‘The Challenge of the Cities 1780–1890’, 95–123.

5. Patricia Meldrum discusses the difficulty of identifying Evangelicals who were not famous, the majority of whom where ‘lesser-known people’. I return to this point later (P. Meldrum, Conscience and Compromise: Forgotten Evangelicals of Nineteenth-Century Scotland [Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006], 6).

6. Janet Anne Galloway was heavily involved in the formation and running of the Glasgow Association for the Higher Education of Women, later Queen Margaret College, then the University of Glasgow (Women's Department). After Janet's death, her mother's reading diary passed to Marion Gilchrist—the first woman graduate of the University of Glasgow as well as the first woman across Scotland to earn a medical degree—and then to David Alec Wilson, being finally donated to the University of Glasgow. Biographical details of Janet's life are included in the following: Janet A. Galloway, LL.D.: Some Memories & Appreciations, ed. by Mrs. R. Jardine (Glasgow: Robert MacLehose and Co., Ltd., 1914); and D. Murray, Miss Janet Ann [sic] Galloway and the Higher Education of Women in Glasgow (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1914). For a brief history of the life of Marion Gilchrist, see ‘Marion Gilchrist’, The University of Glasgow Story, http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/biography/?id=WH0226&type=P, [accessed 06/06/16]). Details of how the reading diary was bequeathed is found in the front of Anne Galloway's reading diary (Glasgow, University of Glasgow Archive Services, Notebook of Anne Galloway, Mother of Janet Galloway, Records of Queen Margaret College, Glasgow, 1883–1935, GB 0248 GB 0248 DC 233/2/23/11).

7. S. Towheed, R. Crone, and K. Halsey, ‘Individual Readers: Introduction’, in The History of Reading: A Reader, ed. by S. Towheed, R. Crone, and K. Halsey (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 323–325, 323.

8. J. Brewer, ‘Reconstructing the Reader: Prescriptions, Texts and Strategies in Anna Larpent's Reading’ in The Practice and Representation of Reading in England, ed. by James Raven, Helen Small, and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 226–245; A. Baggerman, ‘The Cultural Universe of a Dutch Child: Otto van Eck and His Literature’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31 (1997), 129–134; R. DeMaria, Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading (Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); J. A. Secord, ‘Self-Development’, in Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000); S. Colclough, ‘Procuring Books and Consuming Texts: The Reading Experience of a Sheffield Apprentice, 1798’, Book History, 3 (2000), 21–44.

9. I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting this source. A. F. Westphall, Books and Religious Devotion: The Redemptive Reading of an Irishman in Nineteenth-Century New England (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014).

10. Brewer, 245.

11. ‘Interleaving’ is defined as ‘clusters of densely written notebook pages inserted between the pages of print’ (Westphall, 11); 8, 13.

12. Ibid., 8.

13. Entries in Anne Galloway's reading diary where she mentions Stirling's Library are on [no date] March 1851, and 31 May 1851 (Anne Galloway, ?/03/1851, 21; 31/05/1851, 28).

14. O. P. R. Births, 08/10/1802, Ann Bald [Alloa, 465/00 00600]. Anne's name appears variously in the records as either Ann or Anne.

15. J. Frame and J. F. Erskine, ‘Parish of Alloa (County of Clackmannan–Presbytery of Stirling–Synod of Perth and Stirling),’ in The Statistical Account of Scotland. Drawn up From the Communications of the Ministers of the Different Parishes, ed. by John Sinclair, 21 vols (Edinburgh: William Creech, 1793), VIII, 635–637.

16. Ibid., 596–624.

17. O. P. R. Births, 22/09/1802, Ann Bald [Alloa, 465/00 00600].

18. ‘Carsebridge Grain Distillery’, The Scotch Malt Whisky Society http://www.smws.co.uk/our-unique-whisky/distillery-profile/Rest_of_the_World/Carsebridge_Grain_Distillery.html [accessed 11 July 2014].

19. ‘The Late Mr John Bald’, Alloa Advertiser, 20 June 1883, 2.

20. O. P. R. Marriages, 20/03/1839, Alexander Galloway and Ann Bald [Alloa, 465/00 0070].

21. O. P. R. Births, 11/07/1840, William Galloway [Campsie, 475/00 0040 0297].

22. O. P. R. Births, 28/10/1841, Janet Anne Galloway [Campsie, 475/00 0040 0311].

23. Census 1881, Alexander Galloway [Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/07 046]. Statutory Deaths, 1883, Alexander Galloway [Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/07 0472]. The Post Office Glasgow Directory for 1883–1884 continues to list Alexander Galloway as a land agent until the year of his death (Post Office Glasgow Directory for 1883–1884 [Glasgow: William Mackenzie, 1883], 843).

24. The first listing for Alexander Galloway as a ‘land agent, valuator[,] and accountant’ appears in The Post Office Annual Glasgow Directory for 1846–47 and continues to be listed as such yearly thereafter until the 1883–1884 directory. The directory also shows the family's changes of address over the years. The census data state that Alexander and Anne Galloway had one servant when they lived in Birdston and two ‘domestic’ or ‘house’ servants until (at least) 1871 (Census 1841, Alexander Galloway [Campsie, 475/00 003]); Census 1851 (Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/01 0006); Census 1861, Alexander Galloway (Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/06 029); Census 1871, Alexander Galloway (Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/06 025).

25. The Valuation Rolls list Alexander Galloway as proprietor as well as a tenant and occupier for 59 Bath Street until his death (Valuation Rolls, 1865–1866, 59 Bath Street, Barony, Glasgow Burgh [VR102/137/110]; Valuation Rolls, 1875–1876, 59 Bath Street, Barony, Glasgow Burgh [VR102/229/56]).

26. No birth or death records appear in the Old Parish Records for Alexander William Galloway, but the date of his death is recorded on his headstone in Greenside Cemetery, Alloa. His date of death is inscribed ‘18th March 1845, 19 days’. O. P. R. Births, 10/10/1846, Eliza Margaret Galloway [Glasgow, Blythswood, 644/01 0380 0006].

27. From Census of Scotland, 1801–1951 as given in Table 10 in The Third Statistical Account of Scotland. Glasgow, ed. by J. Cunnison and J. B. S. Gilfillan (Glasgow: Collins, 1958), 799.

28. See John Butt, ‘The Industries of Glasgow’ in Glasgow, ed. by W. Hamish Frasier and Irene Maver, 2 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), II, 96–140.

29. This quote comes from a newspaper clipping taken from The Glasgow Constitutional, dated August 1850, in John Strang, The Progress of Glasgow, in Population, Wealth, Manufactures, &c … (Glasgow: James Hedderwick & Son, 1850). Glasgow-born John Strang, who was a statistician, author, and later City Chamberlain, echoes this sentiment in a report he gave to the Statistical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (see J. Strang, Economic and Social Statistics of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, for Various Years From 1851 to 1861 (Glasgow: James MacNab, 1862).

30. Ibid., 96. From Table 4.6, The Birthplace of Migrants to Glasgow 1851–1911 in C. Withers, ‘The Demographic History of the City, 1831–1911’, in Glasgow, ed. by W. Hamish Frasier and Irene Maver, 2 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), II, 149.

31. Newspapers were available from coffee houses (or coffee rooms) in Glasgow like the one associated with the Tontine Hotel since the end of the seventeenth century. The Tontine Coffee-House opened in May 1784, and one of its main attractions was the provision of newspapers. This establishment was extant until it was added to a local shop in 1868 (J. Fisher, ‘Tontine’, in The Glasgow Encyclopedia [Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1994], 379). For a history of the early period of coffee houses in Glasgow, see W. J. Couper, ‘Old Glasgow Coffee-Houses’, in Old Glasgow Club. Transactions, Vol. II, Sessions 1908–12 (Glasgow: Aird & Coghill, Ltd., 1913), 187–200.

32. The heading ‘librarians’ is used in the Post Office Directory to list the institutions as well as (some of) the people working as such in them. This list is compiled only of the institutions run as various types of libraries in the city. The list in the directory also includes William W. Niven, who was employed at the Glasgow [Public] Library, and is not counted in this list of libraries.

33. Circulating libraries listed include Duncan Campbell; George M'Leod; Charles Rattay, and John Wark. Businesses that sold as well as hired out books were listed as both ‘librarians’ and ‘booksellers & stationers’ and include William Campbell, William Hamilton, Robert Laurie, Robert Miller, John Morrison, John Murchie, Charles Rattay (Rattay has two listings under ‘librarians’ for the two different branches of his library, only one of which also sold books), James Rattay, Jr., William Sime, William Strachan, John Urie, Francis W. Watson, and George Watson. See M. R. M. Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–1820 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 93. Subscription libraries include Bridgeton Public Library, Glasgow Public Library, North Quarter Library, Royal Exchange Public Library, and Stirling's Library.

34. The only parochial library listed is Gorbals Church and Parish Library. This, however, was not the only religious library in existence in Glasgow at this time, merely the only one listed in the Post Office Directory. John C. Crawford, citing the New Statistical Account of Scotland, determined there were three religious libraries in Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, one of the Established Church and two dissenting (J. C. Crawford, ‘Denominational Libraries in 19th-Century Scotland’, Library History, 7 [1985], 33–44 [Table III, 38]). This disproportion was typical for the rest of the country. Religious libraries were predominantly located in rural areas; however, the vast majority of these libraries across the country were run by the Established Church (Ibid., 39–40). Whether or not the Gorbals Church and Parish Library was run on a commercial basis is currently unknown, but evidence from other libraries in Scotland suggests that it might not have been. There were other religious lending libraries that did charge fees, for example, in Aberdeen and Kippen, but these were in existence in the first part of the century, and, in general, their numbers appear to have diminished toward midcentury as the price of printed materials dropped (P. Ray Murray, ‘Religion’, in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, ed. by Bill Bell [Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007], III, Ambition and Industry, 1800–80, 295). Mechanics' libraries include Calton Public Mechanics’ Hall and Mechanics' Library. The Procurators' Library was a specialist law library.

35. The Post-Office Annual Glasgow Directory For 1849–1850, 433–435, 487, 517.

36. Anne Galloway only records buying two books in the six years she kept her diary. These included The Officer's Daughter: A Memoir of Miss Elizabeth Tatton (1848), by Octavius Winslow, and The Flower Faded; a Short Memoir of Clementine Cuvier, Daughter of Baron Cuvier; With Reflections (1836), by John Angell James.

37. Stirling's Library later became part of Glasgow Corporation in 1912. Today, the library is located in the Royal Exchange building and is now known as The Library at GOMA (Gallery of Modern Art), being one of the thirty-two branches of the city's libraries. For a more detailed history the library, see also T. Mason, Public and Private Libraries of Glasgow (Glasgow: Thomas D. Morison, 1885), W. J. S. Paterson, Stirling's and Glasgow Public Library, 1791–1907 (Glasgow: Aird & Coghill, Ltd., 1907), and D. Lesec McCallum, A History of Stirling's Library, 1791–1974 (Glasgow, 1974), along with an overview of the history of the library on the The Glasgow Story website, http://www.theglasgowstory.com/image.php?inum=TGSA00860, (accessed 13 July 2014).

38. Instead of a loans register, the amendments to the rules and regulations of Stirling's will state that ‘the librarian shall take a Receipt for all Books lent to a Subscriber’ (Glasgow City Archives, Committee Minute Book of Stirling's Public Library, 1849, S.R. 237, 274630, D-LB Uncat; entry for 31 October 1791).

39. Walter Stirling, Deed of Mortification by Walter Stirling of a Fund for Establishing a Public Library in Glasgow (Glasgow: A. Duncan & R. Chapman, 1791), 10.

40. Ibid., 4–5.

41. Glasgow, Mitchell Library, Committee Minute Book, entries for 10 May 1791 and 5 July 1791, SR 237, 274629. The number of books in Stirling's possession when he died was ‘about 760 volumes’, which were valued at ‘about £160’ (Committee Minute Book, entry for 10 May 1791, SR 237, 274629). Mason reprints the first catalogue that was made up from these books (1885, 46–61); Mason, 1885, 61.

42. Committee Minute Books, entry for 31 October 1791, SR 237, 274629.

43. ‘To the Honourable The Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, inn Parliament Assembled, the Petition of the Directors of Stirling's Public Library in Glasgow (Glasgow: Hedderwick & Son, 1849), 1.

44. Mason, 70.

45. Report to the Directors of Stirling's Library on the Measures That Should Be Adopted to Render It More Useful (Glasgow: James Hedderwick & Son, 1848).

46. Ibid, 13–15.

47. Ibid, 15.

48. ‘Bye-Laws’ in Report to the Directors of Stirling's Library, on the Measures That Should Be Adopted to Render It More Useful to the Citizens of Glasgow (Glasgow: James Hedderwick & Son, 1848), 18.

49. Committee Minutes for the meeting held 11 December 1848 (SR 237, 274629).

50. ‘To the Honourable The Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament Assembled, the Petition of the Directors of Stirling's Public Library in Glasgow’, [1849], 2.

51. Committee Minute Books, entry for 15 April 1852 (SR 237, 274629); McCallum, 16–19.

52. Galloway was not the only one who was slow on the uptake. Notwithstanding the boards' published optimism and reporting of figures, it appears that new subscribers to Stirling's Library after its revamp was less than they had hoped for: at the first meeting of the board of subscribers, the treasurer reports that the response to the circulars sent out to ‘1200 Citizens calling their attention to the advantages of the [crossed out] Library and requesting them to become Subscribers' met only a low response, with only ‘a small portion’ responding (Glasgow, Mitchell Library, Committee Minute Book. Stirling's Public Library, 1849–1882, entry for 9 December 1850, S.R. 237, 274630, 3).

53. The first entry for Alexander Galloway appears on this date. The entry lists his payment as £5.15s.9d. The membership was £5.5s, and the cat. 3s., and the supplement 6d; thus, he purchased a subscription and possibly a couple of catalogues and supplements (Glasgow, Mitchell Library, Librarians Cash Book, 1848–1860, SR237, 702653). Prior to Stirling's Library, Alexander Galloway was a subscriber to the Royal Exchange Reading Room, where the first entry of his name as a subscriber is for the year 1847 and is listed continually until 1857 (Glasgow, Mitchell Library, List of Subscribers 1832–1932, RBC1657, 643791).

54. R. Wodrow, Analecta or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences (Edinburgh, 1842); quoted by Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment (2010), 98. Towsey discusses this, along with the history of circulating libraries in Scotland, in more detail in ‘Chapter Three: “Vice and Obscenity Dreadfully Propagated”: Circulating Libraries’, in Reading the Scottish Enlightenment (2010), 92–120.

55. The first entry for Alexander Galloway appears on this date (Glasgow City Archives, Librarians Cash Book, 1848–1860, SR237, 702653, D-LB Uncat).

56. J. Rose, ‘Arriving at a History of Reading’, Historically Speaking, 5 (2004), 36.

57. Glasgow City Archives, Monthly Abstract and Classification of Books Consulted by Visitors, 1858–69, SR237, 702656, D-LB Uncat.

58. There are three known errors in the recording of the dates in the journal wherein the order of the dates Anne records do not follow the sequence of the preceding and subsequent dates. The first of these occurs where the entry for 21 September 1852 directly follow the entry for [?] November 1852. There is evidence that Anne recorded her thoughts on her reading elsewhere before writing them into her reading diary and this error might be seen as one example. The second error is the entry for 19 January 1854, which is listed after the entry for [?] January 1853. This appears to be a simple error in her recording after the start of the new year. A similar type of error seems to have occurred when Anne recorded the entry for 1 December 1854, which follows all her entries made in 1853.

59. The four quotes are from J. C. Ryle, Philip Melancthon, ‘Dale’, and ‘Brightwell’ respectively, while the unclassifiable book is entitled Gleams of Sunshine in a Cottage or What a Woman May Do by Mary Margaret Brewster. Anne made duplicate entries for the same book by Brewster.

60. Glasgow City Archives, Monthly Abstract and Classification of Books Consulted by Visitors, 1858–69, SR237, 702656, D-LB Uncat.

61. R. Altick, ‘The Sociology of Authorship: The Social Origins, Education, and Occupations of 1,100 British Writers, 1800–1935’, in Writers, Readers, and Occasions: Selected Essays on Victorian Literature and Life (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1989), 97.

62. These figures are roughly equivalent to those given by Peter Garside for the authors of new novels between 1830 and 1836 (see Figure 1.2, ‘Authorship of new novels, 1820–1836: Gender breakdown’), (P. Garside, ‘The Early 19th-century English Novel, 1820–1836’, in The Oxford Handbook of The Victorian Novel, ed. by L. Rodensky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 21–40, 33.

63. Ibid., 106.

64. These books include the following: The Flower Faded; a Short Memoir of Clementine Cuvier (1836); Letters and Papers by the Late Theodosia A., Viscountess Powerscourt (1838); Personal Recollections (Charlotte Elizabeth [Tonna] (1841); Letters Selected From the Correspondence of Helen Plumptre (1845); Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry (1847); The Pastor's Wife (1848); The Ladies of the Covenant (1850); Memoirs of Mrs. Caroline Chisholm (1852); and Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Coutts (1854).

65. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1852], 44.

66. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1853], 105.

67. Anne Galloway, November 1852, 53.

68. Anne Galloway, November 1852, 55–57.

69. Ray Murray, 287–288.

70. Ibid., 287.

71. I use the term ‘Evangelical’ here as it is defined by D. W. Bebbington in his influential study: ‘the term ‘Evangelical’, with a capital letter, is applied to any aspect of the movement beginning in the 1730s' (D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s [London: Unwin Hyman, 1898], 1).

72. Anne Galloway, 25/02/1850, 1–2.

73. Anne Galloway, December 1854, 174.

74. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1853/4?], 115.

75. Anne Galloway, November 1854, 174.

76. Editions for all the books that Anne Galloway recorded in her reading diary were verified using Copac (http://copac.ac.uk/) in the first instance, and WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/) in the second as well as to cross-check and verify.

77. B. Bell, ‘Introduction’ in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, 4 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), III, 1–14, 6–7. Bell discusses some of the recent challenges to ‘the myth of Scottish literacy’, the crux of which is that literacy was by no means universal throughout Scotland and depended very much upon who you were and where you lived at the time over the course of the century.

78. Ibid., 1–14. The rest of this volume in the series offers a more in-depth discussion of these developments.

79. Ibid., 1.

80. Although no longer extant, Robert Reid (‘Senex’) mentions in a letter to Andrew Liddell (Treasurer of the Board of Subscribers, Stirling's Library) the existence of a manuscript book that contained a list of books newly acquired by Stirling's Library (Glasgow City Archives, Committee Minute Book of Stirling's [and Glasgow Public] Library, 1791–1915, SR 237, 274629, D-LB Uncat, Letter from Robert Reid to Andrew Liddell, Esqr., 24 July 1848).

81. Here I am indebted to Kirstie Blair for pointing out that both characters in Manning's novels were ‘notoriously unpleasant to their wives’.

82. Anne Galloway, 22/12/1854, 177.

83. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1852], 47.

84. According to the death certificate, Anne's daughter Eliza Margaret died from ‘severe burns’ (SDR, 18/02/1855, Eliza Margaret Galloway [Milton, 644/07/146]); Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1850], 1; 9 May 1855, 184.

85. While there is the possibility that Anne chose to omit titles from her diary as she intended the diary to be read by her children, works that were omitted could also have been due to neglect. For example, the entry for 26 February 1852 begins ‘I have for months past neglected to note down the books I have been reading’, and similarly in 1854 she writes: ‘While looking over some papers I found the following list of books lately read. I have recorded my opinion of very few of them, & have taken extracts of none, which I now regret’ (Anne Galloway, 26 February 1852, 24; [n.d., 1854], 137).

86. See Pearson (1999), particularly pp. 42–86 and Flint (1993), passim.

87. This quote comes from Anne's diary and refers to the biography of Edward Stanley entitled Addresses and Charges of Edward Stanley, D.D. (late Bishop of Norwich): With a Memoir (1851). She wrote: ‘This Memoir is modestly & judiciously written, & depicts the walk & conversation of a truly active & devoted servant of God’ (Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1853], 74).

88. Hans Robert Jauss argued that readers have a ‘horizon of expectations’ which establishes rules and/or limitations to the literary conventions that are ‘acceptable’ for different genres and that these are historically contingent (H. R. Jauss, ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’, trans. by E. Benzinger, New Literary History, 2 [1970], 7–37).

89. M. Knight and E. Mason, Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 122–123. Knight and Mason give a good overview of the history particularly in relation to the literature of the mid-nineteenth century. For a more complete history of the movement and its changes over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Bebbington (op. cit.).

90. Bebbington, 2–3.

91. Knight and Mason, 123.

92. Meldrum, 6.

93. The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, ed. by D. M. Lewis, 2 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 1995).

94. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1853/4?], 120.

95. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1856], 219.

96. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1853/4?], 107–108.

97. Bebbington, 118–129.

98. Anne Galloway, October 1852, 36.

99. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1851], 19.

100. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1850], 8–9.

101. D. M. Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (London & Canberra: 1984), 103.

102. Anne Galloway, [n.d., 1850], 10.

103. Fisher, 226; C. MacLeod, Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity, 1750–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 122.

104. See Rosman, Chapter 8: ‘Faith and Fancy’, 166–202. Rosman uses ‘evangelical’ in the same manner in which ‘Evangelical’ is defined here.

105. Ibid., 167.

106. Ibid., 168.

107. Here I follow Stephen Colclough's use of ‘reading community’ which ‘describe[s] the activities of a small group of readers who might be conceived of as constituting part of a much larger ‘interpretive community’ (S. Colclough, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 14.

108. In his case study of Joseph Hunter, Stephan Colclough explains that by taking part in the discussions of the democratic meetings at the Surrey Street Library regarding the nomination and selection of books to be added to the library's collection, the library members had agency in the social and cultural community which effectively also made up a reading community. This community shared similar sociocultural tastes that were reflected in their agreed selection/prohibition of books, which did not prevent readers from challenging these views by reading against the grain of the ‘approved’ books in the library's collection (Ibid., 33). Although Anne Galloway did not take part in the meetings at Stirling's Library as she was not an elected member from among the subscribers (which was presumably, but not specifically restricted to men), she could nonetheless make suggestions for the library stock by writing them down in the book provided for the purpose (see above). Whether or not she did this is unknown.

109. D. Allan, Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 256; W. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225–229. For a more comprehensive history of commonplacing, see D. Allan, Making British Culture: English Readers and the Scottish Enlightenment, 1740–1830 (New York, London: Routledge, 2008), Ch.7, 134–153. See also M. Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment (2010), especially 182–196; S. Colclough, Consuming Texts (2007), 31–35. For a history of early commonplace practices until the seventeenth century, see A. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Colclough uses the term ‘manuscript book’ as a kind of catchall for: ‘various forms of the non-commercial replication of texts in manuscript that existed in the early nineteenth century […] [which included] a variety of different sorts of manuscript book, from commonplace books that followed (or ignored) Locke's instructions on organisation, through to albums complied by groups of friends as part of a sociable reading process' (Colclough, 122).

110. R. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900, 2nd ed. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1957 [1998]), 263.