Evidence of Reading: The Social Network of the Heath Book Club

This paper analyzes the history, membership, and rules of the Heath Book Club operating near Wakefield, Yorkshire, in the 1850s in order to gain insight into the lives of readers during the Victorian period. Members included several wealthy landowners, clergymen, and other prominent residents, as well as a few professionals and one tradesman. As members of a book club, readers had access to otherwise hard-to-attain books. As a social network, the book club may have provided additional economic, social, or political returns to the members.