"Circulating library" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has placed in charge of the state library, to select the reading for our schools, C. E. Strangeland. He is telling our school children what to read. I found in our state library, the other day, a bundle of books, all ready to be sent to one of our country schools—a circulating library. If the farmers of North Dakota could have seen what I saw, they would have come to Bismarck and cleaned out the whole Socialist gang. Here are the titles of some of those ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Diogenes. "What you don't know would fill a circulating library. Well—I lived in a tub. Now, if I believed in envy, I suppose you think I'd be envious of people who live in brownstone fronts with ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... can read straight through what he has already bought—is a supposition alike preposterous and unreasonable. "Surely you have far more books than you can read," is sometimes the inane remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume by volume, from some circulating library or reading club, and reads them all through, one after the other, with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that he has got the value of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... "People called and stayed to lunch in a friendly way." "One was sure of some one at afternoon tea." "What with croquet and archery in the Gardens, meeting friends on the Esplanade, concerts at the Rooms, shopping, and changing one's novels at the circulating library, one really never had a dull hour." So said "everybody;" and one or two people, including Major Buller, added that "One never had an ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that keeps girls in the schoolroom reading simple stories, without reading Scott and Shakespeare and Spenser, and then hands them over to the unexplored recesses of the Circulating Library, has been shown to be the most frivolizing that can be devised." She sets forth as the result of her experience that a good novel, especially a romantic one, read at twelve or fourteen, is really a ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... value to me; 500 copies of a three-volume novel exhausted the likely demand. I got 12 copies to give to friends, and one copy I gave to Mr. Hare. His daughters were a little amused to see their father in a novel, and as the book was in the circulating library their friends and acquaintances used to ask, "Is that really your papa that it is intended for?" I did not at the time think of facing anybody in England, but I had been both amused and annoyed with the portraits I was supposed to have drawn from ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... that for the present season he had rented a corner of the wagon as a bookstore, which, as he wittily observed, was a true Circulating Library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of a book-peddler, especially ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Catholic. The scene changed. On one unhappy Sunday afternoon "Monte Cristo" was rudely snatched from my entranced hands. Dumas was on the list of the "improper," and to this day I have never finished the episodes in which I was so deeply interested. Now the wagon of the circulating library ceased to come as in the old days. The children of the neighbours offered me Sunday-school books, taken from the precious store of the Methodist Sunday School opposite our house. They seemed to me to be stupid beyond all words. There was not ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... in all eyes but those of his parents. To them he was a miracle of precocity and beauty. His mother took in fine ironing to pay for his private tuition from a public school-teacher who lived in the neighborhood. He learned fast and eagerly. His father, at the teacher's suggestion, subscribed to a circulating library and the same kind friend selected books for the cripple's reading. There was a hundred dollars in the savings bank, against the name of "Topliffe Briggs, Junior," deposited, dollar by dollar, and representing countless acts of self-denial ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... There was a circulating library that Warren patronized occasionally. There was also the nucleus of a free library, but so far people had been too busy to think much about reading, except the scholarly minds. Books were expensive, too, and very few persons accumulated any stock of them. Of Mr. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... superior women. They subscribe to the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet from the curate's wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets' wives. They ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... telling against individuals, has no justice as against the public. For—and this is generally lost sight of—the public is composed of the class or classes directly addressed by any work, and not of the heterogeneous mass of readers. Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library. Science is not addressed to poets. Philosophy is meant for students, not for idle readers. If the members of a class do not understand—if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognise a power in the voice—surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... yearly sum of ten-and-six (it was all he could rise to) Ransome had become a member of the Poly. Ten-and-six threw open to him every year the Poly. Gym., the Poly. Swimming Bath, and the Poly. Circulating Library. For ten-and-six he could further command the services (once a week) of the doctor attached to the Poly. and of its ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... modern life, too, at St. Sennans—institutions that keep abreast of the century. Half the previous century ago, when we went there first, the Circulating Library consisted, so far as we can recollect it, of a net containing bright leather balls, a collection of wooden spades and wheelbarrows, a glass jar with powder-puffs, another with tooth-brushes, a rocking-horse—rashly stocked in the first heated impulse of an over-confident ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:—Henry Masterton, three volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it in, next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed in drab; and read it ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... classes in the Faculty of Arts in Edinburgh University; and in 1785 was articled to his father and entered upon the wilderness of law. Though he disliked the drudgery of the office, he loved his father and was ambitious, and the allowance which he received afforded the pleasures of the circulating library and the theatre. His reading had now extended to the great writers in French, Spanish and Italian literature. Distant excursions on foot or on horseback formed his favorite amusement, undertaken for the pleasure of seeing romantic scenery and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of head piano teacher at the Conservatory in the neighbouring town of Darmstadt, and was engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post. He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery, consumed forty hours a week. For a time he took up his quarters in Darmstadt; but he missed the attractions of Frankfort; ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... popular novel of the London season of 1894 was "The Manxman," by Mr. Hall Caine. Its sale is said to have reached a fabulous number of thousands of copies, and the testimony of the public press and the circulating library is unanimous as to the supremacy of its vogue. In the United States the favourite book of the year was Mr. George Du Maurier's "Trilby." To the practical and prosaic evidence of the eager purchase of half a million copies we have to add the more romantic homage of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... cigar, I proceeded to that room in the Club which is specially dedicated to literature and silence. What a feast of multitudinous periodicals is there spread out, how brightly the variegated array of books from the circulating library attracts the leisurely, how dignified and awe-inspiring are the far-stretching ranks of accumulated volumes upon the shelves. And the carpet, how soft, and the chairs how comfortably easy. Into one of these chairs I sank with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... have failed to do, has been accomplished by Mr. Jesse Boot, incidentally benefactor of the British provinces and the brain of a large firm of chemists and druggists with branches in scores, hundreds, of towns. He has several branches in my group. Each branch has a circulating library, patronized by the class which has only heard of Mudie, and has not heard of the Grosvenor. Mr. Jesse Boot has had the singular and beautiful idea of advertising his wares by lending books to customers and non-customers ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... choose, instead, that the youthful Elia were busy so early with one of his favorite Elizabethans. He has himself hinted that he read "The Vicar of Wakefield" in later days out of a tattered copy from a circulating library, yet I would willingly move the occasion forward, coincident to this. And I suspect that the artist Brock is also indifferent to Cowley: for has he not laid two other volumes handy on the shelf for the sure time when Cowley shall grow dull? ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... little work-table stood beside the low settle in the corner by the fireplace. Gay, shining chintz covered the ugly chairs. There were cushions here and there where a woman's back most needed them. Books, too, classics in slender duo-decimo, bought for their cheapness, novels (from the circulating library), of the kind that Brodrick never read. On the top of a writing-table, flagrantly feminine in its appointments, there stood, well in sight of the low chair, a photograph of Brodrick which Brodrick could not possibly have framed ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... centuries, were farmers in the vicinity of Gleniffer Braes. Having been only one year at school, he was, at the age of eight, required to assist his father in his trade of muslin-weaving. Joining a circulating library, he soon acquired an acquaintance with books; he early wrote verses, and became the intimate associate of Tannahill, who has honourably mentioned him in one of his poetical epistles. In his fifteenth year he enlisted in a fencible regiment, which was afterwards stationed at ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sleep with La Dame de Monsoreau, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr—(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the godfather of my landlady)—and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... To anyone whose literature has consisted for years of nothing but novels of the circulating library type, a sudden application to the great writers would indeed be depressing. Is it necessary, however, or indeed wise, that any man's mental pabulum should consist entirely of novels? Nothing is further from my mind than to decry the taste for novel-reading; for, wisely employed, novels can become ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Brewer. He had accumulated a modest competence sufficient for his simple needs as bachelor. He was either the promoter or among the leaders of all the movements for betterment of the town. He established a circulating library upon most liberal terms, and it became an educational institution of benefit. The books were admirably selected, and the doctor's advice to readers was always available. His taste ran to the English classics, and he had all the standard authors in ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... to him Esmond, Hypatia, Never too Late to Mend, Les Maitres Sonneurs, La Mare au Diable, and other delightful books, English and French, which were sent once a week from a circulating library in Brussels. How they blessed thy name, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... which is perpetually changing owners, and making desperate attempts to establish itself as something or other, without any particular partiality for any particular line of business. It has been by turns a print-shop, a stationer's, a circulating library, a toy-shop, a Berlin-wool shop, a music and musical-instrument shop, a haberdasher's shop, a snuff and cigar shop, and one other thing which has escaped our memory—and all within the last seven years. Each retiring speculator ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... not cruelty, Miss Rayner. I suppose he holds the same views that so many seem to hold. And even in novels now that you get at a circulating library you constantly come across the same thing—a kind of contempt for the "old, narrow doctrines," as they call them, bringing down God's standard to theirs, and ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... Clarke's, Fulton street, near Orange. I had a nice desk and window-nook to myself; Edward C. kindly help'd me at my handwriting and composition, and, (the signal event of my life up to that time,) subscribed for me to a big circulating library. For a time I now revel'd in romance-reading of all kinds; first, the "Arabian Nights," all the volumes, an amazing treat. Then, with sorties in very many other directions, took in Walter Scott's novels, one after another, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... object is to aid the progress of musical instruction by establishing a centre to promote friendly relations among professors of music; by centralising their interests and studies; by organising a circulating library of music and a periodical magazine in which questions relating to music may be discussed; by establishing communication between French professors and foreign professors; and by seeking to bring together professors of ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... impressed Martin the most, because there was nothing of the crank about her. She went to theatres, to the seaside in the summer, took in The Queen, and was a subscriber to Boots' Circulating Library. She dressed quietly and in excellent taste—in grey or black and white. She had jolly brown eyes and a dimple in the middle of her chin. She was ready to discuss any question with any one, was marvellously ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... instruction—if any thing that existed could be dignified by that name—to be obtained in Scotland by a visit to the Low Countries or Italy, but Ramsay was the first to obtain a sound technical training. The author of "The Gentle Shepherd," to whom Edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent for art, and after some preliminary study in London, Allan fils was sent to "The seat of the Beast" beyond the Alps, where he became a pupil of Solimena and Imperiale and ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... his belongings. He had an invalid granddaughter, with a spine complaint and feeble eyesight, and Ida spent much time in amusing her, teaching her fancy works and reading to her. Unluckily it was only trashy novels from the circulating library that they read; Ida had no taste for anything else, and protested that Louie would be bored to death if she tried to read her the African adventures which were just then the subject of enthusiasm even with Herbert! Ida was not a dull girl. Unlike some who do not ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the school. He learned to like books, and to want knowledge; and when a boy gets really hungry and thirsty for knowledge it is not easy to keep him ignorant. When some of the neighbors joined in setting up a little circulating library, young Webster read every book in it two or three times, and even committed to memory a large part of the best of them. It was this eagerness for education on his part that led his father afterwards to send him to Exeter to school, and later to ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... to that excellent one of Christ's Hospital in London, the boys being boarded and clothed, as well as instructed, in the house. In two years his dislike to reading was so thoroughly overcome, that he spent the pocket-money allowed him by his mother in hiring books from a circulating library. He became reserved, thoughtful, and at times melancholy; mixed little in childish sports; and between his eleventh and twelfth years had made a catalogue of the books he had read to the number of seventy. It is to be regretted, that with a disposition thus studious, he was not instructed in any ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... not read Stephens's book on Central America, but only certain extracts from it in the last Quarterly, with which I was particularly charmed; but I admire your asking me why I did not send for his book from the circulating library instead of Paul de Kock. Do you suppose I sent for Paul de Kock? Don't you know I never send for any book, and never read any book, but such as I am desired, required, lent, or given to read by somebody? ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... dates, strung on a long string, were found dangling on the inner side of the fence—the knothole having provided the point of entrance for each date; once a small bunch of wild flowers graced it on the yard side. Again, for three months, the hole served for a circulating library. A whole story found lodgement there, a chapter at a time, torn from a paper-covered novel. Flibbertigibbet carried them around with her pinned inside of her blue denim apron, and read them to Freckles whenever she was sure of not being caught. Luigi ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... papers; and in returning to Gunnersbury he felt hardly more sense of vital connection with this suburb than with the murky and roaring street in which he sat at business. By force of habit he continued to read, but only books from the circulating library, thrown upon his table pell-mell—novels, popular science, travels, biographies; each as it came to hand. The intellectual disease of the time took hold upon him: he lost the power of mental concentration, yielded to the indolent pleasure of desultory page-skimming. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the table and washstand. On this little green stood her Shaker rocking-chair and a round white-pine light-stand with her work-basket and a few books. Against the wall hung some white-pine shelves with more books,—quite a little circulating library they were for invalids and read-out people, who came to the mountains, like foolish virgins, with scant supply of the oil of literature for the feeding of their brain-lamps. Besides these, there were engravings ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... shut up there. At least I should be. Are there lots of novels in the house? Mind you send for a batch to-morrow. Novels are the only chance a man has when he's laid up like that." Before breakfast on the following morning Madeline had sent off to the Alston circulating library a list of all the best new novels of which ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... noise and chatter will make my head ache. You may take my purse, Bessie, and buy something of Minnie and Eleanor;" and Edna threw down her work and began looking over the batch of novels that her mother had sent in from the circulating library, leaving Bessie to digest her dismay and disappointment as well as ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in a servants' hall or in the back parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard, were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson—as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... tried was establishing a circulating library of technical books on trades and agriculture, and of polite and scientific literature, in ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the utmost privacy is secured throughout the whole arrangement of the Institution. On this floor are the suites of offices, parlors, and private consultation-rooms, some fifteen in all; also a well furnished reading-room and circulating library, for the use of the inmates of the Institution. On all sides are beautifully frescoed walls adorned with numerous choice engravings and other pictures. All the rooms throughout the house are furnished ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... respectable inn to watch every passer-by on the dusty boulevard below, in spending half the day indoors, let it be ever so comfortably, or in merely turning out in the evening to shop in the puny town, whilst we bemoaned the want of a circulating library and a brass band. It was even more intolerable, as the Post had been built perversely with its back to the fine view of the glaciers. Moreover, the whole establishment was in the hands of bricklayers, painters and glaziers, who were enlarging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... walker—sometimes wandering for hours in the Central Park. His Southern life, passed partly among plantations, had given him a relish for trees and rocks and waters. He was also a hungry reader of novels. When he had devoured our slender store of fiction, which was soon done, he took books from a small circulating library on Sixth Avenue. That he gave no thought whatever to the future was clear. He simply drifted down the gentle stream of the present. Sufficient to the day was the ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... kisses as she went. The library she mentioned was one in connection with the school, and somewhat chaotic in condition. Joyce had bought a selected lot of good reading matter in paper covers, with which to start a circulating library, and with the assistance of the Bonnivels, was getting it in shape. In the absence of a catalogue the books were now numbered on the backs, and when issued the corresponding number, on a slip of paper marked the vacant place on the shelf. In addition, the name of the drawer had to be ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... himself:—"From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a helluo librorum; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King's Street, Cheapside." The more circumstantial explanation of Mr Gillman is this: "The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, his hand came ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... died all over the hearthrug if she spoke a cold word to them she had nothing but scorn. She dreamed wistfully of those brusque cavemen of whom she read in the novels which she took out of the village circulating library. The female novelist who was at that time her favourite always supplied with each chunk of wholesome and invigorating fiction one beetle-browed hero with a grouch and a scowl, who rode wild horses over the countryside till they foamed at the mouth, and treated women like dirt. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... of leisure. Rejoicing in deliverance from Sabbatarianism, he generally spent the morning in a long walk, and the rest of the day was devoted to non-collegiate reading. He had subscribed to a circulating library, and thus obtained new publications recommended to him in the literary paper which again taxed his stomach. Mere class-work did not satisfy him. He was possessed with throes of spiritual desire, impelling him towards that world of unfettered speculation ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Suburbs, and keep on describing them as dull? I am sure that a place which, like the one I write from, contains a Lawn Tennis Club (entrance into which we keep very select), a Circulating Library, where all the new books of two years' back are obtainable without much delay, a couple of handsome and ascetic young Curates, and a public Park, capable of holding twenty-six perambulators and as many nursemaids at one and the same time, can only fitly be described as an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... well-known government official. Then I learned that my indefinite gentleman had been a partner of the forger's brother, and that his name was Strawman. Later on I learned that the aforesaid Strawman used to run a circulating library, but that he was now the police reporter of a big daily. How in the world could I hope to establish a connection between the forgery, the police, and my little man's peculiar manners? It was beyond me; and when I asked a friend whether Strawman had ever been punished for something, my ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... rather jerkily introduced, amongst whom a family of good-natured and thoroughly "nice" Americans, who help to straighten things out and bring people to a better understanding, are most conspicuous. But that piece of blotting-paper! If I were a stationer and kept a circulating library, I think I should try to turn an honest penny by selling sand to my customers along with their packets of linen-wove and blue-black writing-fluid. "Simple, effective, and leaves no chance to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... thing for a library like this would be not to attempt to buy books, but to subscribe like a club to a circulating library, and to let a certain number of new volumes flow through the place and lie upon the tables for a time. But, on the other hand, here in the University there seems to be little time for general reading; ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... prematurely old in reading, year out year in, aloud to Mr. Demetrius, one after another, all the German translations of French novels procurable at Robert Lempel's circulating library without understanding a single word of them. Mr. Demetrius had, naturally, no library of his own, for reading to him, in his condition, was pretty much the same as medicine, and who would ever think of keeping a dispensary on his own premises? I may add that the reader received free board and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... The Circulating Library in the United Kingdom in its inception was intended more particularly for the better-to-do class, and even to-day its tariff is hardly compatible with very narrow resources. Perhaps the earliest effort to bring literature within the reach of the working-man was Charles Knight's scheme ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... habits, and devoted himself to money-making; but not exclusively, since at this time he organized a club of twelve members, called the "Junto,"—a sort of debating and reading society. This club contrived to purchase about fifty books, which were lent round, and formed the nucleus of a circulating library, which grew into the famous Franklin Library, one of the prominent institutions of Philadelphia. In 1730, at the age of twenty-four, he married Deborah Reid, a pretty, kind-hearted, and frugal woman, with whom he lived happily for forty-four years. She was a true helpmeet, who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... drawing-rooms and irregular meals and untidy arrangements; he could suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library (you could see what they were—the very covers told you—at a glance) tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now to feel it "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts; ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Floyd," which has penetrated to every island of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective books, "Rob Roy," Auerbach's "Auf der Hoehe," in the German, and a prize temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian circulating library. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were taken from the adult fiction lists in the Monthly Bulletins of the New York Free Circulating Library from November, 1895, to March, 1897, inclusive, and are all such titles as contain a possessive, whether expressed by the possessive case or by the preposition "of" with the objective. Some titles are included in which the grammatical ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... time to excite their interest in real persons, and real events. In childhood that taste is formed which leads the youth to delight in novels, and romances; a taste which has become so general, that every town has its circulating library, and every shelf in that library is ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... more extensive, than that founded some years ago by Mrs. Peter of Philadelphia. The upper portion of the building will be arranged for drawing classes, wood-engraving, and the various branches of Design; and the lower, corresponding in size and general appearance, I intend for a circulating library for our county. Over that School of Design I want you to preside; your talents, your education, your devotion to your Art fit you peculiarly for the position. The salary shall be such as to compensate you for your services; and, when calmer days dawn upon ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... necessary consequence, German authors are not paid so well as of right they should be.[1] This, however, is precisely the state of things that, as we are now assured, should be brought about in this country, prices being raised, and readers being driven to the circulating library by reason of the deficiency of the means required for forming the private one. It is the one that would be brought about should our authors, unhappily for themselves, succeed in obtaining what ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... the milliner's shop. The neighbouring chemist received, soon afterward, a prescription of a soothing nature to make up for Mrs. Yatman. The day after, Mr. Yatman purchased some smelling-salts at the shop, and afterward appeared at the circulating library to ask for a novel descriptive of high life that would amuse an invalid lady. It has been inferred from these circumstances that he has not thought it desirable to carry out his threat of separating from his wife, at least in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... mind; readily assorted by my power of connection and memory, and gilded, if I may be permitted to say so, by a vivid and active imagination. If my studies were not under any direction at Edinburgh, in the country, it may be well imagined, they were less so. A respectable subscription library, a circulating library of ancient standing, and some private book-shelves, were open to my random perusal, and I waded into the stream like a blind man into a ford, without the power of searching my way, unless by groping for it. My appetite for books was as ample and indiscriminating as it was indefatigable, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Malaprop, notwithstanding her ignorance and stupidity, giving her opinion authoritatively on education. She says that Lydia Languish has been spoiled by reading novels, in which Sir Anthony agrees. "Madam, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It blossoms through the year, and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last." Not only ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... prances through the pages upon his head, causing enough "tumult" to satisfy any one. So why drag in Pan? Miss VALLINGS can tell a story, cannot keep down the volume of her puppets' talk, has a sense of movement and colour, and ought to win for herself a good circulating library constituency. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... three years before "Evelina" appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of fathers and husbands when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and reflecting increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious people, took without ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... interesting pages in biography than those which record how Emerson, as a child, was unable to read the second volume of a certain book, because his widowed mother could not afford the amount (five cents) necessary to obtain it from the circulating library. ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... do it, if you will follow my advice. I taught you how to write a fashionable novel, it will be hard, indeed, if I cannot send you up the Rhine. One little expense must be incurred—you must subscribe a quarter to a circulating library, for I wish that what you do should be ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... only—"Mudie's" and a few more being exceptions. Very few people, I suppose, ever bought three-volume novels; and the fact that they went almost wholly to the libraries, and were there worn to pieces, accounts for the comparative rarity of good copies. The circulating library has survived both the decease of the three-volume novel and the competition of the so-called free library. But it is pretty certain that it was a chief cause—and almost the whole sustaining cause—of the three-volume system itself. Nor was the connection between ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... river, in Ohio, is Belpre (short for Belle Prairie, and now locally pronounced Bel'pry), settled by Revolutionary soldiers, on the Marietta grant, in 1789-90. I always think well of Belpre, because here was established the first circulating library in the Northwest. Old Israel Putnam, he of the wolf-den and Bunker Hill, amassed many books. His son Israel, on moving to Belpre in 1796, carried a considerable part of the collection with him—no small undertaking ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... distinguished them from the fluid impulses of her kind. He knew that, having once asked for the book, she would not forget it; and he put aside, as an ineffectual expedient, his momentary idea of applying for it at the circulating library and telling her that all the copies were out. If the book was to be bought it had better be bought at once. He left his office earlier than usual and turned in at the first book-shop on his way to the train. The show-window was stacked with conspicuously lettered ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... This was Carol's "Circulating Library." Every Saturday she chose ten books, jotting their names down in a diary; into these ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the most a week, which John occasionally spent at Thornby Place, were necessarily ephemeral, and the weakness of Mrs Norton's sight rendered continuous reading impossible. Sometimes Kitty Hare brought a novel from the circulating library to read aloud, and sometimes John forgot one of his books, and a volume of Browning still lay on the table. The room was filled with shadow and mournfulness, and in a dusty grate ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... other hand, are friends to occasional indulgences. They see nothing inherently or necessarily mischievous, either in the theatre or in the concert-room, or in the ball-room, or in the circulating library, or in many other places of resort. If a young female, say they, situated in a provincial town, were to see a play annually, would it not give her animation, and afford a spring to her heart? or if a youth were to ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan's book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical publication whatever; and such would assuredly be our case, as in the little wild, moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of borrowing or obtaining a work of that description from a circulating library. I hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa's health, and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... for his return. I had enough of my father in me to turn at once to the books for company; and by the side of some graver works which I had recommended, I found certain novels in French that Vivian had got from a circulating library. I had a curiosity to read these; for except the old classic novels of France, this mighty branch of its popular literature was then new to me. I soon got interested; but what an interest!—the interest that a nightmare might excite if one caught it out ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hot, too fierce or too fond, for our tastes; they are also so evidently intended for any human being except the one to whom they were addressed, or rather for all human beings—they were so palpably "private effusions" for the public ear—sentiments stereotyped, and sympathies for the circulating library—that they possessed as little the interest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... bright, cordial manner. She explained that she thought there was a circulating library in every town. When she was visiting in Quebec her friends had got a novel for her at two cents a day. And then she said Principal Trenholme bought a good many books, and he had once told her mother that he would lend ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... subscription and circulating library, the first in America. This library was the beginning of the present Philadelphia ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... have read 'Shirley' lately; it is not equal to 'Jane Eyre' in spontaneousness and earnestness. I found it heavy, I confess, though in the mechanical part of the writing—the compositional savoir faire—there is an advance. Robert has exhumed some French books, just now, from a little circulating library which he had not tried, and we have been making ourselves uncomfortable over Balzac's 'Cousin Pons.' But what a wonderful writer he is! Who else could have taken such a subject, out of the lowest mud of humanity, and glorified and consecrated it? He is wonderful—there is not another ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the Vicar of Wakefield for sixpence, i.e. for the half of an English shilling. In what estimation our German literature is held in England, I was enabled to judge, in some degree, by the printed proposals of a book which I saw. The title was, "The Entertaining Museum, or Complete Circulating Library," which is to contain a list of all the English classical authors, as well as translations of the best French, Spanish, ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... a cheap and delightful way of travelling, that a man may perform in his easy-chair, without expense of passports or post-boys. On the wings of a novel, from the next circulating library, he sends his imagination a-gadding, and gains acquaintance with people and manners whom he could not hope otherwise to know. Twopence a volume bears us whithersoever we will;—back to Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion, or to Waverley ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good seaport has now and always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring one. It will not be discovered any where in this book. If the reader will call at the circulating library and mention my name, he will be furnished with books which will afford him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me. He sat dressed in a long gown in a modern and rather luxurious chair at a low long table of chestnut wood, on which he had placed a few books, which I saw were in several languages and two of them not only in English, but having upon them the mark of an English circulating library which did business in the great town at our feet. There was also upon the table a breakfast ready of white bread and honey, a large brown coffee-pot, two white cups, and some goat's milk in a bowl of silver. This meal he asked ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... admit, and there has been much of delight—even luxury and idleness—between the carnage hours of battle. Is it not so? Ask that boyish-hearted old scamp whom you have seen scuttling away from the circulating library with M. St. Pierre's memoirs of young Paul and his beloved Virginia under his arm; or stepping briskly out of the book store hugging to his left side a carefully wrapped biography of Lady Diana Vernon, Mlle. de la Valliere, or Madame Margaret Woffington; ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Rickerton's was not in the whole town; indeed, for that matter, I believe it was the only one among us, and it had edified, as Mr Binder the bookseller used to say, at least three successive generations of young ladies, for he had himself given it twice new covers. We had, however, not then any circulating library. But for all her antiquity and lappets, it is not to be supposed what respect and deference Miss Jenny and her brother, the laird, received—nor the small praise that came to my share, for having had the spirit to invite them. The ball ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... differentiated by shades so fine that we need not trouble ourselves to make distinctions. A public school and university education does as little for the Squire Westerns one meets at country dinner-tables as a three-guinea subscription to a circulating library for the kind of matron one comes upon at a table d'hote. Five minutes after hearing the news of Browning's death I stopped an acquaintance in the street, a professional man of charming manner, and repeated it to him. He stared for a moment, and then ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... market town, which really is a town, perhaps a county town, or at least with a railway station, here one or two stationers may be found. One has a fair trade almost entirely with the middle-class people of the town; farmers when they drive in call for stationery, or for books if there is a circulating library, as there usually is. The villagers do not come to this shop; they feel that it is a little above them, and they are shy of asking for three pennyworth of writing-paper and envelopes. If they look in at the window in passing they see many well-bound books from 5s. to 10s., some of the more reputable ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the most fastidious collector, from the elegance of its type and decorations, and from the reasonableness of its price; but the highest ambition of its author is, that it may be a part of the furniture of every Circulating Library in the Kingdom. If he were not conscious that GOOD would result from its perusal, he would not venture upon such ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the ordering of bindings for any public or circulating library where books are given out to all classes of people, and subjected to the handling which such books must receive, I should, from my experience as a ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... of its own in the Lower Temple, with circulating library, piano and all the cheerful furnishings of a parlor in the home. To this bright room comes many a girl from her dreary boarding house to spend the evening in reading and social chat. It has been the cheery starting point in many a ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... impatience and, glancing about the room, perceived on a small table of the same type as the secretary a somewhat massive book with the label of a circulating library, which she proceeded to pick up as for refuge from the impression made on her by her boy. He watched her do this and watched her then slightly pause at the wide window that, in Buckingham Crescent, commanded the prospect they had ramified rearward ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs. Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place. Ephie, too, had already had time to learn ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson |
