Research Catalog

Title

A library in America, 1758-1858.

Author

Schorsch, Anita.

Publication

1986.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 280, [69] leaves : ill., maps; 29 cm.

Summary

Abstract -- 'This story is a exploration into the relationship between a literary institution and the ideology of its directors and readers, between their religious attitudes and their taste as the two interacted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study focuses on the voluminous set of original records belonging to this subscription (social) library in the town of West Jersey called Burlington. With Quakers and Anglicans from Philadelphia chartering the initial library and Presbyterians from the College of New Jersey influencing it in the nineteenth century, the books in the Library change substantially and the cataloguing system changes substantially. Even the meaning and use of genre titles change substantially. Chapter One concerns itself with a social, political, and religious history, elements that comprise much of the meaning behind the iconography of the first Library seal, the visible symbols of which are Concord, Religion, and Liberty. Chapter Two treats the organization of Library business, that is, the work entailed in the directors' Minutes, the membership's Borrowing Records, and the librarians' catalogues. Chapter Three, consisting of an analysis of non-fictive literature, and Chapter Four, dedicated to fictive prose and poetry, incorporates the literary struggle which led to the iconography of the new Liberty seal. It delineated Science, Art, Literature, and a rock labelled Truth. The seals in themselves capture the changes in the imaginative life of these people and in their taste.'

Subjects

• Subscription libraries > New Jersey > Burlington
• Library Company of Burlington

Thesis (note)

• Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 1986.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: leaves 273-280.

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library