When was the first public library opened in Britain?
The first public library (as we understand the inclusive notion of “public” today), was the Manchester Free Public Library, established in 1852 following the passing of the Public Libraries Act two years earlier. This legislation gave local authorities the option to raise local taxes to fund local library provision, available to all. This was a bold step, but it would be more than a century for the law to make such provision a statutory duty for each local government, with the Public Libraries and Museums Act of 1964.
While the landscape for public education was transformed by the 1850 act, there had been many other forms of library provision available to various “publics” before then. The 18th and 19th centuries had seen the growth of literary and philosophical institutes in many towns, all with libraries, while subscriptions libraries and book clubs open to the less well-off flourished in the age of “self-improvement”. Thanks to the provision of organisations such as mechanics’ institutes or co-operative societies, working-class readers had access to reading rooms.
From the mid-16th century, many parishes had libraries in churches or separate buildings that could be accessed by local parishioners, although this was often with many restrictions. The Bodleian Library in Oxford can lay claim to being the first library in Britain purposefully open to what its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, called the “whole republic of the learned”. From 1602, readers from all over the country, and Europe, came to access its fast-growing collections, but the access they enjoyed did not extend to our present notion of “the public”, as it was limited to male scholars.
Richard Ovenden, professorial fellow at the University of Oxford and Bodley’s Librarian