Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America

“Story Develops Badly, Could Not Finish”: Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenæum in the 1920s

I n the 1920s, the Boston Athenæum implemented a system for members to comment on books they read. A slip pasted into new fiction invited readers to record their opinions for the guidance of others. Readers were seldom unanimous about a book and argued vigorously about some books. This essay examines and comments on a sample of these reviews and uses other Athenæum records to describe the scheme, an early peer-to-peer book review system among members of a socially exclusive library. It draws comparisons with online reviewing programs, such as the Athenæum website’s recommendations , Facebook’s “We Read,” and LibraryThing. The Boston Athenæum is a venerable institution, having celebrated its twohundredth birthday in 2007, and is often perceived as conservative, perhaps on account of its age. It is also seen as elitist, probably because it is a private subscription library. It states on its website that “today, it remains a vibrant and active institution that serves a wide variety of members and scholars.”1 In 1851 its mission was “to be a foundation, at which all, who choose, may gratify their thirst for knowledge. . . . The Athenæum will contain a variety, adapted to the diversity of the dispositions, views, and characters of its patrons and visiters [sic]. Every class of readers must derive profit and pleasure from a constant access to the foreign and domestic journals, and the periodical publications and pamphlets of the day.”2 One consequence of this mission has been a strong emphasis on providing popular fiction as an aspect of its users deriving “profit and pleasure.” Katherine Wolff suggests that an early decision by Joseph Buckminster (the Athenæum’s first official book scout and longtime friend of the Athenæum’s 64 “Story Develops Badly, Could Not Finish”  Member Book Reviews at the Boston Athenæum in the 1920s ross harvey first librarian, William Smith Shaw, who held office from 1807 to 1822) to purchase “popular and useful books” was a key factor in the library’s flourishing.3 The popularity of fiction in social libraries is well documented and, according to Thomas Augst, was so well established by 1852 that the Trustees of the Boston Public Library “had perhaps learned from social libraries the importance of institutionalizing reading as a practice of leisure rather than study.”4 Adding fiction to the collections of social libraries and public libraries was tolerated , rather than embraced, as a way to encourage reading and eventually to lead the reader to “books belonging to high-culture canons in order to elevate the public taste and educate citizens,” as Wiegand notes.5 It can be conjectured that fiction was included in the Boston Athenæum’s collection from an early date, and indeed, Wolff provides some evidence for this but also provides a caution with the comment “Real reading habits . . . are difficult to ascertain.”6 Some of the popular fiction in the Athenæum’s collection contains printed slips inviting readers to provide their reviews of the book to which they are affixed. Although the reviews are not in themselves particularly significant and seem unlikely, from a current perspective, to have been of value to other readers , annotations and reviews reflect the tastes and interests of a period and of a social group and are therefore worth investigating. They are also evidence of an early peer-to-peer book review scheme among members of a library. Most of the research into reading in libraries in the United States is in the context of public libraries, so this description of the Athenæum’s book review program sheds some light on the question of whether social libraries, with their socially exclusive membership, differed from public libraries and, if so, how they did. This investigation also attempts to engage with Wayne Wiegand’s argument that library history ought to be about “the library in the life of the user” rather than, as is more frequently the case, about “the user in the life of the library.”7 It is fortunate that the Athenæum has kept most of its records and makes them available to researchers.These provide a unique perspective on the library’s users. This chapter uses some of the Athenæum records to investigate the inception of the review scheme, to note the reasons for it, and to describe its context. The call for papers for “Library History Seminar XII: Libraries in the History of Print Culture” (Madison, Wisconsin, September 10–12...