Program Information

It is not surprising that 18th century English writer and critic Samuel Johnson should have an opinion about libraries. He said, “The greatest part of a writers time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over a half a library to make one book.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: It is not surprising that 18th century English writer and critic Samuel Johnson should have an opinion about libraries. He said, “The greatest part of a writers time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over a half a library to make one book.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: By 1800 London was the largest city in Europe. With a population of over one million over the previous century it had become the cultural, economic and educational center of an Empire. The explosive growth of manufacturing, trade, and finance had a transformed the English middle class. Increasing leisure time meant that the middling sort could enjoy the theater, frequent the City’s hundreds of coffee houses and devote their time to clubs and societies.

Not surprisingly, as the century matured, and as Britain became the intellectual fountainhead of Europe, bookstores multiplied and demand began to grow for circulating libraries. For the most part libraries were private institutions which grew from private collections. In 1729, however, a bequest from the will of Dr. Daniel Williams, a dissenting Protestant minister, made possible the opening of the Red Cross Street Library. For a fee patrons could use the books. By the mid-1760s, in the theater district hard by Covent Garden, publisher Francis Noble maintained a large and commercially successful circulating library. Customers could subscribe for just over 10 shillings per year and hold two books out for six days at a time.

England’s largest public library in the 18th and most of the 19th, at the British Museum, was established by Parliament in 1753 and opened its doors in 1759. It was the happy confluence of three major collections of books, artifacts, antiquities, drawings, paintings, and natural phenomena. One can imagine Johnson holding forth at the Museum (previously Montagu House) in Bloomsbury, “No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.”

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Virginia Standards