Two Public Libraries in Victorian Liverpool

Abstract

The following papers examine two different libraries in nineteenth-century Liverpool: the Athenaeum, which, though a private subscription library, provided the closest alternative to a ‘public’ library service in Liverpool in the first half of the century; and the public library, opened in I852, which owed a great debt to a number of wealthy benefactors and supporters, notably Sir William Brown, Joseph Mayer, and Sir James Picton.