"Circulating library" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Coleridge himself:—'From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer, a helluo librorum; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King's Street, Cheapside.' The more circumstantial explanation of Mr. Gillman is this: 'The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand, in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont, thrusting ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... value to me; 500 copies of a three-volume novel exhausted the likely demand. I got 12 copies to give to friends, and one copy I gave to Mr. Hare. His daughters were a little amused to see their father in a novel, and as the book was in the circulating library their friends and acquaintances used to ask, "Is that really your papa that it is intended for?" I did not at the time think of facing anybody in England, but I had been both amused and annoyed with the portraits ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... themselves at a loss how to spend their time. They had nothing to do. They pestered Mr. Korley to bring them up the last novels. But his mind was too full of stocks; he always forgot the novels. On Saturday he went over to Newtown, hearing there was a circulating library there. He found the sign, but no books. "I had some books once," the proprietor explained, "but the Wheathedge folks carried them all off and never returned them." Thus it happened that when the week after ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... founded and administers for the common benefit a Consumers' Society which maintains an economical kitchen with refectories, a recreation hall with a bar, (not limited to soda water, lemonade, and tea), and a circulating library. The statutes of this Society leave the members a wide range of liberty, and the managers are chosen by the members. Of the profits five per cent first go to the reserve fund; dividends may then be declared of not more than ten per cent, on the capital stock of 10,000 francs, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... better than remaining the whole year without being able to obtain a sight of any periodical whatever; and such would assuredly be our case, as, in the little wild moorland village where we reside, there would be no possibility of borrowing a work of that description from a circulating library. I hope with you that the present delightful weather may contribute to the perfect restoration of our dear papa's health; and that it may give aunt pleasant reminiscences of the salubrious climate ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... read to him Esmond, Hypatia, Never too Late to Mend, Les Maitres Sonneurs, La Mare au Diable, and other delightful books, English and French, which were sent once a week from a circulating library in Brussels. How they blessed thy ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... she could be content to sit there for ever and to listen to him. This was a realisation of those delights of life of which she had read in the thrice-thumbed old novels which she had gotten from the little circulating library at Bungay. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... on the other hand, are friends to occasional indulgences. They see nothing inherently or necessarily mischievous, either in the theatre or in the concert-room, or in the ball-room, or in the circulating library, or in many other places of resort. If a young female, say they, situated in a provincial town, were to see a play annually, would it not give her animation, and afford a spring to her heart? or if a youth were to see a play two or three ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the most popular novel of the London season of 1894 was "The Manxman," by Mr. Hall Caine. Its sale is said to have reached a fabulous number of thousands of copies, and the testimony of the public press and the circulating library is unanimous as to the supremacy of its vogue. In the United States the favourite book of the year was Mr. George Du Maurier's "Trilby." To the practical and prosaic evidence of the eager purchase of half a million copies ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... first met in an amusing way. Not long after the publication of his book 'On Neutral Ground' Reardon was spending a week at Hastings. A rainy day drove him to the circulating library, and as he was looking along the shelves for something readable a voice near at hand asked the attendant if he had anything 'by Edwin Reardon.' The novelist turned in astonishment; that any casual mortal should inquire for his books ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... superior women. They subscribe to the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet from the curate's wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets' wives. They devoted themselves ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... class of pupils. No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam," says Sir Anthony in the play, "a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year; and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony was no doubt right. But he takes it for granted that the longing ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... to be wondered at, ma'am; all that is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. On my way hither, Mrs. Malaprop, I observed your niece's maid coming forth from a circulating library: from that moment, I guessed how full of duty I ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... student at a cost little in excess of that of transportation. There is such competition among express companies that there will be little trouble in getting rates of transportation which will render this feature of extension teaching practicable. What Mudie's Circulating Library is to England, the extension travelling library may be to America. The result will be to place in the reach of all the best copyrighted books, and to strangle the reprints of worthless publications that are bought ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... binding (Pawson & Nicholson), the exquisite paper and typography, and, finally, for the pretty photograph vignette with which this volume is adorned. Mr. Leypoldt has benefited Philadelphia in many ways,—by his foreign and American circulating library, his lecture room, and by his republication in photograph of first-class engravings,—and we now welcome him to the society of publishers. His first step in this direction is a most ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... how children ever learn any history out of books of that sort. And, too, I began now to read the newspapers; I often saw articles which aroused my curiosity, but did not enlighten me. But one day I drew from the circulating library a book that cleared the whole mystery, a book that I read with the same feverish intensity with which I had read the old Bible stories, a book that gave me my first perspective of the life I was entering; that book was ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... you may be sure, knew all about this unwelcome visitor. They went with bottles and jugs secretly to bring him what he wanted; they went to the circulating library for him; they let him in when he had been out in the twilight all shabby and slovenly. They would not be human if they did not talk about him. They say he is very good-natured, poor gentleman—always has a pleasant ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Its complaint seems to contradict the cheerfulness of wisdom, yet it enjoys complaining; though life be not worth having on these conditions, it bottles every tear. A weak sadness fills great space in literature, stocks the circulating library, and counts its Werthers by the thousand in every age. Now we expect this malady, as we look for mumps and measles in the growing child. It is feminine,—unwilling to be weak, yet not able to stand and go. The strong ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... books was divided into five sections, which were placed in separate cases, and located at convenient distances about the island—where they were taken charge of by friends—the largest being reserved for the town. The intention was to exchange these cases in rotation, and so establish a circulating library in the most comprehensive sense of the term. But this was, in reality, never carried out, for after the volumes had been read in their respective stations, they were returned to their places, and left to slumber unused, until Mr. Guille once more came to the island in 1867, with the intention ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... private circulation, and with the Warden's name on the title-page; a London newspaper of the preceding day; Lillebullero, Chevy Chase, and the old political ballads; and, what a little amused Redclyffe, the three volumes of a novel from a circulating library; so that Redclyffe came to the conclusion that the good Warden, like many educated men, whose early scholastic propensities are backed up by the best of opportunities, and all desirable facilities and surroundings, still contented himself with gathering a flower or two, instead of attempting ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the commonest question asked at the circulating library by dainty ladies just out of the carriage; and the librarian, after looking them over, can usually tell. In the days we have now to speak of, however, he answered, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... as she went. The library she mentioned was one in connection with the school, and somewhat chaotic in condition. Joyce had bought a selected lot of good reading matter in paper covers, with which to start a circulating library, and with the assistance of the Bonnivels, was getting it in shape. In the absence of a catalogue the books were now numbered on the backs, and when issued the corresponding number, on a slip of paper marked the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson—as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if it were ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to say that "woman's looks were his only books and folly was all they taught him," which shows, I suppose, that what he knew about the sex he learned from a circulating library. ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... which will come home to most of us in Malaprop, notwithstanding her ignorance and stupidity, giving her opinion authoritatively on education. She says that Lydia Languish has been spoiled by reading novels, in which Sir Anthony agrees. "Madam, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It blossoms through the year, and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last." Not only Mrs. Malaprop, but also Sir Anthony, form an entirely wrong estimate ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... outright, or on approval, to any place within a hundred miles of London, and in one day they can be examined, discussed, and returned—at any rate, in theory. The mistress of the house has all her local tradesmen, all the great London shops, the circulating library, the theatre box-office, the post-office and cab-rank, the nurses' institute and the doctor, within reach of her hand. The instrument we may confidently expect to improve, but even now speech is perfectly clear and distinct over ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... read Stephens's book on Central America, but only certain extracts from it in the last Quarterly, with which I was particularly charmed; but I admire your asking me why I did not send for his book from the circulating library instead of Paul de Kock. Do you suppose I sent for Paul de Kock? Don't you know I never send for any book, and never read any book, but such as I am desired, required, lent, or given to read by somebody? being, for the most part, very indifferent what I read, and having ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... myself to sleep with La Dame de Monsoreau, which I have procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr—(the literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the godfather of my landlady)—and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... earliest in youth! Do the ladies who now find Scott slow, and Miss Austen dull, and Dickens vulgar, and Thackeray prosy, and Fielding and Richardson impossible, come to this belief because they began early with the volumes of the circulating library? Are their memories happily stored with the words and deeds of modern fictitious romps, and passionate governesses, and tremendous guardsmen with huge cigars? Are the people of—well, why mention names of living authors?—of whom you will—are those as much to the young ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... arrangements; he could suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library (you could see what they were—the very covers told you—at a glance) tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now to feel it "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts; but as he stood before his hostess and her companions he ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:—Henry Masterton, three volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it in, next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed in drab; and read it together ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... penetrated to every isle of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective books, Rob Roy, Auerbach's Auf der Hohe in the German, and a prize temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian circulating library. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... been called, Night Raven, kept the country-store in Walton. One naturally thought of afternoon rather than morning at seeing his olive complexion, dark eyes, and thick-clustering black curls. Such romance as was to be had in Walton, without the aid of a circulating library, certainly gathered about Swan Day. An orphan, born of a Creole mother and a British sergeant, he had been left early to his own resources. He had found them sufficient thus far, in a cordial neighborhood like Walton, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Texas yet, before they get to Fat Jenny. First, they helped themselves out of their own commissary departments, horses, provisions trains, cannon, everything. Decently uniformed for the first time, and the War over! You should of seen 'em, a forest of Sharpe's carbines, a regular circulating library of Beecher Bibles. There were four Colts and a dragoon sabre and thousands of rounds of ammunition to each man. They had fighting tools to spare, and they cached a lot of the stuff up in the state of Coahuila. And they fed, and got sleek. This ain't ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... dark beauties in our own country with a moustache which must be the envy of "young shavers." And, apropos, the poet Rogers is said to have had a great dislike of ladies' beards, such as this last described; and he happened to be in a circulating library turning over the books on the counter, when a lady, who seemed to cherish her beard with as much affection as the young gentlemen aforesaid, alighted from her carriage, and, entering the shop, asked ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... of what has been published. By an arrangement with her and her English publishers, all her books are to be brought before the American public, where she is almost wholly unknown, except to the readers at LORING'S CIRCULATING LIBRARY, and they are enthusiastic ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... that keeps girls in the schoolroom reading simple stories, without reading Scott and Shakespeare and Spenser, and then hands them over to the unexplored recesses of the Circulating Library, has been shown to be the most frivolizing that can be devised." She sets forth as the result of her experience that a good novel, especially a romantic one, read at twelve or fourteen, is ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... engaged. He found it an arduous and not too profitable post. He has described it as "a dreary town, where the pupils studied music with true German placidity." They procured all their music from a circulating library, where the choice of novelties was limited to late editions of the classics and a good deal of sheer trash, poor dance music and the like. His work, which was unmitigated drudgery, consumed forty hours a week. For a time he took up his quarters in Darmstadt; but he missed the ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... and that its disappearance has not had a vulgarising effect on artistic work of all kinds, and the club has been proved impotent to replace it, the club being no more than the correlative of the villa. Let the reader trace villa through each modern feature. I will pass on at once to the circulating library, at once the symbol and glory ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... and it struck me that Jessie—Mrs. Somers—had better move to a distance, and out of the Captain's reach, and that Will would do better in a less out-of-the-way place. And then, by good luck, I read in the newspaper that a stationary and a fancywork business, with a circulating library, was to be sold on moderate terms at Moleswich, the other side of London. So I took the train and went to the place, and thought the shop would just suit these young folks, and not be too much work for either; then I went to Miss Travers, and I had a lot of money lying by me from ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one day an extraordinary thing happened! Talk of story-books, as Betty said,—talk of three volume novels,—talk of a whole circulating library at once, and never, no never, could you think of anything more ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... The Circulating Library in the United Kingdom in its inception was intended more particularly for the better-to-do class, and even to-day its tariff is hardly compatible with very narrow resources. Perhaps the earliest effort ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... this enterprising city are well up in the ways of the wicked world, for the storekeeper takes The New York Weekly and the 'Widder' Pendleton subscribes for The Fireside Companion. The back numbers, which are not worn out, are the circulating library of the village. It's no use, Miss Thorne—you might stand on your hilltop and proclaim your innocence until you were hoarse, and it would be utterly without effect. Your ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... as in all libraries are considered holy, is given out to any inhabitant of Boston, without any payment, on presentation of a simple request on a prepared form. In point of fact, it is a gratuitous circulating library open to all Boston, rich or poor, young or old. The books seemed in general to be confided to young children, who came as messengers from their fathers and mothers, or brothers and sisters. No question ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... circulating library that Warren patronized occasionally. There was also the nucleus of a free library, but so far people had been too busy to think much about reading, except the scholarly minds. Books were expensive, too, and very few persons accumulated any stock of them. Of Mr. Adams' ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... its first circulating library, establishing a branch in the store. One could buy a book at a moderate price, and either keep it or exchange it for a fee of a few cents. I disputed the wisdom of this move, alleging, and with reason, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... in a servants' hall, or in the back parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed among his neighbours for a great scholar if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarleton's Jests, and the Seven Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then existed, even in the capital; but in the capital those students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The shops of the great booksellers, near St. Paul's Churchyard, were crowded every ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... me that for the present season he had rented a corner of the wagon as a book-store, which, as he wittily observed, was a true circulating library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many uncommon felicities in the life of a book-pedler, especially when his ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... forgery committed by a well-known government official. Then I learned that my indefinite gentleman had been a partner of the forger's brother, and that his name was Strawman. Later on I learned that the aforesaid Strawman used to run a circulating library, but that he was now the police reporter of a big daily. How in the world could I hope to establish a connection between the forgery, the police, and my little man's peculiar manners? It was beyond me; and when I asked a friend whether Strawman had ever been punished for something, my ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... Twice a-year a balance-sheet came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the beginnings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... it in due bounds by the variety of household occupations, in which she expected them not merely to take a part, but to become proficients, thereby occupying regularly a good portion of every day, they were allowed to get books from the circulating library at Keighley; and many a happy walk up those long four miles must they have had burdened with some new book into which they peeped as they hurried home. Not that the books were what would generally ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... epigram upon one of his father's creditors. He accompanied his father to the King's Bench Prison, and there Christopher Smart and others petted the lad, lent him books, and encouraged his literary aspirations. During his father's later troubles he managed to keep up a subscription to a circulating library and would read two volumes a day, chiefly plays and novels, and, above all, the 'Grand Cyrus' and other old-fashioned romances. His mother tried to direct him to such solid works as Rapin's History, and he learnt her favourite Young's 'Night Thoughts' by heart. ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... am sick of bazaars, and the noise and chatter will make my head ache. You may take my purse, Bessie, and buy something of Minnie and Eleanor;" and Edna threw down her work and began looking over the batch of novels that her mother had sent in from the circulating library, leaving Bessie to digest her dismay and disappointment as ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... miracle of precocity and beauty. His mother took in fine ironing to pay for his private tuition from a public school-teacher who lived in the neighborhood. He learned fast and eagerly. His father, at the teacher's suggestion, subscribed to a circulating library and the same kind friend selected books for the cripple's reading. There was a hundred dollars in the savings bank, against the name of "Topliffe Briggs, Junior," deposited, dollar by dollar, and representing countless acts of self-denial on ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various |
