The Operatives' Libraries of Nottingham: A Radical Community's Own Initiative

Abstract

Nottingham's operatives' libraries may not have been unique, but they were certainly remarkable. These libraries served the lowest class of manual worker. Significantly they were started and run by the members themselves; they were not imposed on the workers by a higher class. Beginning in the I830s, Nottingham was the home of at least a dozen similar libraries, based in public houses. The city was a centre of Chartism — it even had a Chartist Member of Parliament — which helps to explain why this phenomenon became so popular. Some of these libraries existed for fifty years and collected many thousands of volumes.