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Early Circulating Libraries in Jamaica by RODERICK CAVE is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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In the West-Indies, every gentleman almost takes out his own library with him; and what books may be wanted are generally sold in the stores of merchants, who import them from England with other goods, although the capital of each of the islands has one person who calls himself a bookseller, keeps a small reading-Library, binds, deals in stationery, and keeps a few books, such as he judges are most in demand, which he sells at an advance of 70 1. and 100 1. per cent." In these few lines, appended to Henry Lemoine's article on 'Printing and bookselling in America' which he contributed to the November 1796 issue of the Gentleman's Magazine, 1 the West Indian book trade and West Indian libraries are dismissed in a characteristic way. The economic decline of the sugar colonies from the 1830s until well into the present century, and the social changes which came about with the decline of the planter class in the islands, have tended to conceal the importance that the Caribbean colonies once had as a market for English publishing. 2 Yet, as Giles Barber has shown in his elegant analysis of the Customs House records, 3 between 1701 and 1780 the West Indian colonies imported books to a val

Who reads Early Circulating Libraries in Jamaica?

Author

RODERICK CAVE

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Published

1980

Language

EN

Field

Social Sciences