Helen O’Neill’s journey into the Library’s archive continues. In this second instalment, Helen discovers the Victorian membership records of some leading writers and thinkers – members who reflect social and cultural themes of the era…

We started our archival journey last month with four 20th century membership records. Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting to grips with the Victorian membership records and so here are eight records which date from 1841 and 1875 which reference some of the major scientific, literary, social and political themes of the 19th century.

The early membership records are a simple numerical list of the names and addresses of subscribers as shown in the entries for Charles Darwin and William Makepeace Thackeray.

Occasionally the early records include additional information as in the 1844 entry for Henry James, theologian and father of the American novelist.

In the bottom left of the entry is the name of the Library’s instigating force Thomas Carlyle.  This practice of including the name of the person introducing, nominating or vouching for the applicant rapidly becomes a standard inclusion in the records as can be seen in the entry of Miss Lynn in 1857.

Suffrage and the position of women were hotly contested issues in the Victorian era and no-one contested them more vociferously in the mainstream press than Miss Lynn. She is a contradiction and a conundrum: a woman with a ground-breaking career as a salaried journalist she popularised debate about the changing role of women through her articles in the Saturday Review. Her “Girl of the Period”piece became a catchphrase which passed into common parlance, even shortened to G.O.P in the mainstream Press, but she was adamantly opposed to those she termed the “screeching sisterhood”.  In 1854 Dickens published her article “Rights and Wrongs of Women” inHousehold Words and in 1856 he purchased Gads Hill Place from her, realising a childhood aspiration.

A number of Dickens’ close friends appear in the early records including the painter Daniel Maclise; the theatre actor and manager W.C. Macready; and his confidant and biographer John Forster. Dickens himself appears on the Library Committee in 1847 alongside John Forster, who remains on the Committee into the 1870s.

In 1862 Darwin nominates George Drysdale, an early advocate of contraception and promoter of women doctors.  He also introduces his eldest son William who was the infant object of detailed observational study by Darwin which was referenced in his 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

For good measure I have included the membership records of Alfred Russel Wallace because he is an interesting mix of social reformer, scientist and spiritualist; and Mrs Oliphant because she is introduced by the publisher John Blackwood – and the mix of publishers, editors, literary agents, writers, illustrators and reviewers in the records is of interest not least because this is the time of the ascendancy of the novel in the literary marketplace and the huge expansion of writing opportunities through the periodical press.

It is no surprise to find that the women’s rights campaigner, Helen Taylor (1831-1907) was introduced to the Library by her step-father John Stuart Mill. This record dates from 10 March 1873, a month before Mill died.

Mill credits both his wife Harriet and his step-daughter in hisAutobiography (1873) asking all who consider his work to see it as “the product not of one intellect and conscience but of three”. Helen Taylor had an active political life and edited all of Mill’s posthumous publications and Mill left almost half his estate on his death to women’s education.

Crowe had illustrated several of Thackeray’s novels before he accompanied him on his American lecture tour (1852-1853) and it is the work he produced at this time which depicted scenes of slave auctions which appeared in the Illustrated London News. Crowe is introduced to the Library by John Forster whose literary connections, longevity on the Library committee, and small stash of letters in the archive make him a person of particular interest in the Library’s early history.

I am currently capturing the information the membership records contain in electronic format so that we will be able to search, extrapolate and analyse the content they contain rigorously. I want to find out not merely who the members of the Library were, but when they joined, who introduced them, what occupation they held at the time.  I want to look at the literary, cultural and intellectual networks sitting beneath the entries using the people who nominate, propose or vouch for new members, and I want to map that network against the published work of members.

I have been struck, even in the sample of records I’ve examined so far, by the variety of occupations represented in the Victorian membership. In a single year the following occupations, among others, appear: academic, actor, advertising agent, army surgeon, authoress, barrister, civil engineer, governess, Head of a Ladies College, journalist, newspaper editor, MP, manufacturer, merchant, navy surgeon, periodical publisher, physician, spinster, stationer, student and Catholic, Wesleyan and Protestant clergy.

Capturing membership information electronically may allow us to look at the relationship between the Library and the literary life of the nation in greater detail, but it might also bring out into the light a unique and absorbing piece of social history.

Next time – Between 1857 and 1893 the Librarian, Robert Harrison scribbled snippets and anecdotes in a commonplace book of personal reminiscences. He described a particular member as “one of the most massive intellects of our times” and another as “morbidly sensitive about strangers noticing him in any way” To whom was he referring?

© Helen O’Neill

Helen O’Neill, Head of Reader Services, is about to spend a year examining the Library’s archive, including its remarkable membership records tracing 171 years in the literary life of the nation. Who and what will she find? She’s going to tell us on The London Library Blog.

In this first instalment, coinciding with the BBC’s adaptation of Parade’s End (screenplay written by our President, Tom Stoppard) we catch an archival glimpse of Ford Madox Ford and some of his illustrious London Library contemporaries.

At the end of the month I will be away from my post as Head of Reader Services for a year while I undertake a masters of research degree at UCL on the Library’s institutional archive.  Over the course of the year I will be sharing with you research findings which extend our understanding about the Library’s relationship to the literary life of the nation.  To get the ball rolling I am going to jump into the world ofParade’s End and show you in four archival documents why the archive so richly deserves focused research attention.  The joining forms of Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), T.S.  Eliot (1888-1965), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and Violet Hunt (1862-1942) are in turn arresting, illuminating and intensely moving, and for what are basic administrative records they are also credibly rich in detail.

So let’s do this in date order. All three men joined the Library in their thirties.  Ford, or more exactly F.M. Hueffer, is first through the door in 1907 and the date I think is significant.  The following year he foundedThe English Review which ushered in the writers that would dominate modern 20th century literature, and number 84 Holland Park became open house to an extraordinary number of them. The date on the document allows us to pinpoint exactly where Ford is in his literary, as well as his personal life.  He published three books in 1907, includingThe Spirit of the People: An Analysis of the English Mind, all still available on the Library’s shelves.

The 30 year old Eliot is up next. He joins in 1918, a year afterPrufrock; four before The Waste Land. Eliot provided a list of sources forThe Waste Land in The Criterion and we are currently investigating how many of them were available on the Library’s shelves in 1918. This document captures Eliot still at Lloyd’s bank before his move to Faber & Faber.

In the same year as The Waste Land appeared in The Criterion (1922) Siegfried Sassoon arrived in the Issue Hall, and it is difficult not to be moved by his joining form. The word “none” never fails to register. A single word that could signify defiance, honesty or a complete shift in meaning attached to notions of “position” and “occupation” brought about by the First World War.  It is such a powerful word in fact, that it is possible to miss the second signature on the form.  It was E.M. Forster who introduced Sassoon to the Library.

If you have been captivated by Sylvia Tietjens and the complex sexual politics at play in Ford’s Parade’s End, you’ll understand why the joining form of the writer, literary hostess and socialite Violet Hunt is so meaningful in this thematic archival slice. In the 1890’s Violet was what was referred to as a “New Woman” or as D.H. Lawrence put it, in admiration, “a real assassin”.   A successful novelist in her own right, Violet founded the Women Writers’ Suffrage League; was in at the outset of The English Review (she appeared in its first issue); and embarked on a long, complicated, messy relationship with Ford just after The Review set out its stall. It was a relationship that had enormous repercussions for them both.  Violet’s identity as “Mrs F. Madox Hueffer” (still evident in the Library’s printed catalogue from 1920 onwards), had no legal basis and was challenged successfully and publicly through the courts by Hueffer’s first (and very un-divorced) wife Elsie. Just look at Hunt’s use of the double apostrophe on her form in 1916.  A story entire, told in punctuation marks.

The Library’s remarkably intact membership records, which date from 1841, are not only a record of the writers and thinkers who have used, enriched and shaped the Library, they are documents which reflect the nation’s literary heritage.  Showing the intersection of world events and social change with the personal biographies and intellectual endeavour of some of the most significant (and some of the most forgotten) writers in the English language, they reveal a host of literary and intellectual connections in the process. When the Library’s archival material is viewed within the wider Library collections things really start to spark and fly. The English Review and The Criterion, for instance, grace the periodical shelves in the Basement, and as the Library has never weeded or judged its collections on the grounds of popularity, fashion or taste, the works of Ford, Eliot, Sassoon and Hunt are to be found on the Library’s shelves, amassed from the point of publication. The subtitle of Violet’s novel Of Human Interest – A Study in Incompatibilities (1899) could be strikingly good shorthand for the push and pull of Christopher and Sylvia’s relationship in Parade’s End.

What is happening on Friday evenings at 9pm on BBC2 demonstrates a very simple literary truth and it is this: good books never become obsolete, they simply bide their time and wait for their moment.  That the baton of this particular literary relay race was picked up and taken across the primetime finishing line by the Library’s current President, 105 years after Ford first crossed the threshold, is particularly poignant when you look at the library through a long-angled lens; and archival documents have provided the key to unlocking that story.

Before the last installment of Parade’s End, you might like to read the poems To Any Dead Officer by Siegfried Sassoon, and Antwerp by Ford Madox Ford.

© Helen O’Neill

The London Library’s vast collection of Russian material covers a wide range of printed works. The Russian element of the collections was first introduced by Robert Harrison, Librarian from 1857 to 1893. His successor, Sir Charles Hagberg Wright (Librarian from 1894 to 1940) had an even stronger interest in Russia, its culture, literature and currents affairs, having received part of his education in that country and being personally acquainted with Gorky and Tolstoy among others.

Our present-day Russian cataloguing and acquisitions specialist, Anna Vlasova, tells the story of one particularly fascinating treasure, The Ostrog Bible…

The London Library houses an extensive collection of Russian material, among which some gems of the early Slavonic printing can be found. Certainly the most treasured one is the first printed edition of the entire Bible in Old Church Slavonic. It was printed by the pioneer of Russian printing Ivan Fedorov in Ostroh (modern territory of Ukraine) in 1581 and is thus known as the Ostrog Bible. This monumental publication lavishly decorated with woodcut panels and initials that were cut by Fedorov himself presents a marvellous example of the 16th century Cyrillic type. The Ostrog Bible was the first Bible printed in Cyrillic, and it became a model for printing later Russian editions of the Bible.

The story behind the printing of the Ostrog Bible is fascinating and shows how the printing press could help advance one’s interests. From the outset, the printing of the first Bible in Old Church Slavonic was not a commercial endeavour, but rather a political move by Prince Constantine of Ostrog. Constantine was an ardent supporter, promoter and protector of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in spite of his domains being a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where Catholicism was dominant. To help him fight for his cause the prince decided to establish a printing press in Ostrog with the intention to publish the first complete Bible in Old Church Slavonic.

The greatest challenge of printing the biggest and the most authoritative book in the Christian world was to obtain the correct text of the Scriptures, therefore the hunt for manuscripts began much earlier than the actual press was established. Handwritten notes by a previous owner found pasted in the London Library copy of the Ostrog Bible shed some light on Constantine’s efforts to procure accurate manuscripts. ‘In order to obtain a correct text, The Duke [sic] assiduously collected all the M.SS. he could find’, read the notes, ‘but … he was not able to procure any codex containing the whole of the Scriptures in the Slavonic language.’ Luckily, in 1572 Constantine received a manuscript of the full Bible (the so-called Gennady’s Bible) in Old Church Slavonic from the Tsar Ivan IV (also known as Ivan the Terrible). However, many discrepancies and faults were detected by the collation, and therefore Constantine continued to gather and collate as many other manuscripts as he could lay his hands on. Constantine ‘wrote letters, and sent messengers to many distant parts, to Italy, The Islands of the Archipelago, to many Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian monasteries, and even to the head of the Oriental Church, earnestly requesting that persons might be sent him who were skilled in the Greek and Slavonic languages, and that they might bring with them corrected and authenticated copies of the Sacred Text’. As we read further in the notes: ‘His application was not without success. Both labourers and M.SS. were forwarded to Ostrog, and by mutual consultation and aid, they prepared, in the course of some years, a copy of the whole Bible for the press’.

Two printing dates, 1580 and 1581, are found in the colophons of the surviving copies, which has caused some confusion as to the number of editions of the Ostrog Bible. However, it is now considered that there is only one edition, as the date on the title page is invariably 1581. As the collation and editing of the procured manuscripts took time, the printing of the Bible was delayed, and thus was finished in 1581, almost a year later than expected. To fill in the downtime of the printing press, parts of the Bible that didn’t need corrections, namely the Psalms and the New Testament, were printed separately in 1580.

At great expense and despite the difficulties and delays, Constantine succeeded in publishing the first Bible in Old Church Slavonic language, which became the authorised version of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Constantine immortalised his patronage in the form of his coat of arms printed at the back of the title page and in the introductory text where he declares that he ‘was made worthy to lay the foundation and to see the accomplishment of this most venerable, and superior to every thing work ’. Acting as a defender of the Eastern Orthodox faith Constantine distributed copies of the Bible in Bulgria, Serbia, Montenegro and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He also sent a number of copies to Ivan IV, who was so impressed by the Bible that he offered a copy to the English ambassador Jerome Horsey (c. 1550 – 1626). Horsey left Russia in 1591 and that was probably when the first copy of the Ostrog Bible travelled to the British soil. Horsey’s copy of the Ostrog Bible is now at the British Library.

Almost a hundred years after its printing, the Ostrog Bible remained the only Bible printed in Cyrillic characters, and only in 1663 a reprint, revised by Arsenios the Greek and Zakharii Afanasev, was published in Moscow. The London Library copy of the Moscow Bible, like the Ostrog Bible, came to us from the Allan Library. Around 350 copies of the Ostrog Bible are still in existence today, 13 of which are found in British institutions. It is known that Fedorov took 400 copies of the Bible with him when he left Ostrog, after falling out with the prince. The number of surviving copies suggests that the edition was quite substantial for the time, by some estimates of 1000 to 1500 copies.

The earliest ownership mark found on the London Library copy of the Ostrog Bible is a bookplate of Franz Gregor, Graf von Giannini (1688-1758), canon of Olomouc. As Constantine distributed the Bible all over Eastern and Southern Europe, it is not surprising to learn that it once was on the territory of Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, and in the possession of a priest. Later the Ostrog Bible came in the collection of Thomas Robinson Allan (1799-1886) who formed a library to provide a resource for Wesleyan Methodist ministers. Allan travelled widely and was always on the lookout for rare and valuable books, so it is possible that he acquired his copy of the Ostrog Bible outside Britain. Finally, the Allan Library was acquired by the London Library in 1921 and Allan’s copy of the Ostrog Bible has been residing here ever since.

Anna Vlasova, Aug 2012

In celebration of the Olympics our Head of Bibliographic Services, Dunia explores the Library’s Sports section, including the first book ever published on the modern games! The perfect way to celebrate Team GB’s first Gold medal win!

Members of the Library who want to browse the sports section need to climb up to the 6th floor of the back stacks. Upon arrival the intrepid reader will face dark metal shelves that in the gloom appear to float between aisles of green glass lit from below.  A quick scan of the stack board signs will show that S. Sports &c. (the ‘&c.’ in this case stands for pastimes) naturally lies between S. Spies &c. and S. Stamps.  Where else?! After musing on the possible connections between secret agents, philately and international sporting events he or she can finally take a closer a look at what S. Sports &c. has to offer.

Almost 400 books occupying thirteen and a half shelves (plus a few more volumes in the quarto sequence, which is one floor below) will satisfy the reader’s curiosity on everything from playground games to kite flying, darts, surfing, Scrabble, Olympic Games, snooker, croquet, backgammon, table tennis and even rat-catching! The reader may well wonder at the person who decided to shelve the Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher, after 25 Years’ Experience under sports and pastimes. In fact, the book’s presence in this section illustrates the challenges London Library cataloguers face every day when trying to classify a book on a subject for which Sir Charles Hagberg Wright, Librarian from 1893 to 1940 and the genius behind the Library’s unique scheme,  did not create a shelfmark!

Oddities aside this section is typically comprehensive, in true London Library fashion, in its treatment of the subject of sports and pastimes.  The earliest book one can borrow from these shelves is a 1730 edition of Académie Universelle des Jeux, a compendium of instructions on all the fashionable games played at the court of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour while one of the most recent ones is the Cambridge Companion to Baseball.

Some members may be surprised by the absence of books on cricket, particularly after seeing at least three other books on baseball in this section. This is far from being an unforgivable oversight, quite the opposite.  As many members would agree, cricket is far too important to sit among other works in S. Sports &c and as such it has a section of its very own, S. Cricket, boasting some 260 books.

Going back to S. Sport &c. we can see that while the books shelved here were published over 300 years the period they cover is much, much broader. There are books on gladiatorial combats in ancient Rome, on sports and games in ancient Egypt, on Aztec competitions, and on chariot racing in the Byzantine Empire alongside works on French games from the 16th to the 18th centuries, on the ‘accomplishments and pastimes of the English gentleman’ from 1580 to 1630, on ‘gamesters of the Restoration’, on sport in Georgian England and on the Edwardians at play. The evolution of the subject is brought up-to-date with books on sport in the USSR and other countries behind the Iron Curtain as well as a book on the role of commercial giants like Adidas and Puma in ‘the making of modern sport’.

The geographical coverage of the section is no less impressive: in addition to books with a global coverage of the subject there are monographs on the Japanese game of “Go” and on the sports and games of the inhabitants of Abyssinia, Korea, New Zealand,  Scandinavia, South Africa, the Scottish Highlands, South Carolina, Crimea and the Caucasus.

As well as covering every period and location the books in our collection deal with every possible aspect of the subject.  There are sports histories as well as many narratives describing the unusual games observed by travellers journeying through foreign lands but there are studies dealing with the psychological, social, political and even erotic aspects of sports and pastimes.

The social historian will also find plenty of source material here with books on street games and pub games on the one hand; titles such as The Gentlewoman’s Book of Sport,  Sport at Oxford, Cambridge and the Great Public Schools on the other and a work entitled Sport and the English Middle Classes, 1870-1914 falling somewhere in between.

Of course, this is not all that the Library has to offer on the subject of sports and pastimes. We have already seen that books on cricket merit a shelfmark of their own and the same applies to books on archery, athletics, ballooning, billiards, boxing, canoeing, chess, cycling, fencing (under S. Duelling &c.), fishing, football, gaming, golf, hockey, hunting, mountaineering, polo, racing, riding, rowing, shooting, skating & skiing, swimming, tennis, wrestling, yachting!

Still, if we want to find our books on the Olympics we need to return once more to S. Sports &c. This is where we’ll find both official reports of the modern games as well as studies on their political significance, particularly when it comes to Hitler’s manipulation of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Other books deal with the horrific events that took place in Munich in 1972 and the tension between the Communist and Olympic ideals of Beijing 2008.

Perhaps the most fascinating of all is the first book ever published on the modern games: The Olympic Games, B.C. 776-A.D. 1896. The work in two volumes is in itself a perfect example of international cooperation. With parallel text in German and English the book was co-published in Athens, Leipzig and London over 1896 and 1897 to coincide with the first modern Olympic Games. The first volume is a history of the games in ancient times written by Spyridōn Paulou Lampros and Nikolaos Politēs with the second volume being an account by Pierre de Coubertin and Timoleon Philemon of the 1896 games celebrated in Athens.  A view of the host city, including the ‘stadion’ purposely rebuilt over the ruins of the ancient arena decorates the cover and inside there are many portraits of victorious athletes, such as Aristides Constantinidhis, winner of the cycling race from Athens to Marathon and back. The image shows him balancing on his bike and sporting the obligatory handlebar moustache.  The facing page is taken up by a panoramic view of the ‘stadion’ filled with spectators cheering the triumphal arrival of Marathon runner Spyridon (“Spyros”) Louis, flanked by Princes Constantine and George, who overcome by joy rushed onto the track to join the him for the last few metres. The illustration captures the moment a Greek national hero was born. Because this quite a rare work (only three others are listed on Copac at the time of writing) it now lives in one of the Library’s safes but can still be consulted under supervision.

A commemorative volume that can be borrowed is the Olympic Games London, 1948 :  Official Souvenir. This was London’s second turn in hosting the games and once again there was little time for making the necessary preparations. The 1908 Games had been allocated to Rome but the plans changed at the last minute leaving London only two years to get ready for the friendly invasion. When preparing for 1948, things again had to be done in a hurry: on page 19 the booklet explains the absence of a great, specially built arena in London as ‘such a building would take many years’ planning and building and this country was, until 1945, otherwise occupied.’  The booklet, which opens with an essay on the ancient games, followed by brief histories of previous modern games includes a colour map of London showing which events will take place where.  Despite being known as the ‘Austerity Games’ the colourful booklet oozes post-war optimism and a desire to let bygones be bygones: the description of the 1936 Berlin Olympics is full of gallant praise for the organisers of the German Games.  Each of the events or sports included in the 1948 Games is then explained and blank tables have been printed where the owner of the booklet can write the names and scores of winning competitors. A great portion of the little volume is made up of adverts for all kinds of products, from support underwear to cigarettes, brandy, fountain pens and luxury cruises.

Near the end of the souvenir there is an explanation of what the closing ceremony will be like. It describes how the Olympic Banner will be lowered and the flame extinguished. This is the final line:

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros - Head of Bibliographic Services

Former London Library member Richard Conyngham on seeking refuge from cocker spaniels and finding his own special literary sanctuary at The London Library…

The following article was published in the Summer issue of Slightly Foxed:  The Real Reader’s Quarterly - 96 pages of lively personal recommendations for books of lasting interest. It’s an eclectic mix, covering all the main categories of fiction and non-fiction, and contributors are an eclectic bunch too! Visit the Slightly Foxed website for a trial issue.

Who are they, I wonder, these elderly gentlemen fast asleep in the red leather armchairs? Retired brigadiers whiling away their autumn years in a room full of books, or eminent scholars dreaming of literary pursuits? That young woman with the windswept hair, foraging in Fiction S–Z, is she a lost and lonely bibliophile or the next Rebecca West? And how can that dandyish fellow in the crimson sports jacket afford to scoff and snort through the periodicals all day?

When the editors of Slightly Foxed first suggested I take my editorial work to the London Library, I confess I knew very little about the place. From afar, it seemed a refuge for posh authors and a pitstop for peersen route to their clubs, not a place for an unkempt youth like me. And yet, at the Slightly Foxed office, the situation was becoming urgent. With the cocker spaniels growing increasingly distracting and the phones always ringing, how was the editorial assistant ever to do his work? The London Library was the obvious solution, but then there was the issue of the membership fee.

In the end, it was a customer at the Slightly Foxed bookshop on Gloucester Road who had the final word. Overhearing my doubts, he leant across a shelf of battered green Penguins and boomed: ‘My boy, at £1.20 a day, it’s a steal. You won’t look back.’ And so it was that two weeks later, on a frosty January morning, I set out for 14 St James’s Square with a list of titles to take out on loan, a catalogue to write, and a newly acquired membership card to guard with my life.

Having twice missed its entrance, I eventually found the Library tucked away in the west corner of the square, between the Cypriot Embassy and the East India Club. Abandoning my coat and umbrella in the Issue Hall, I bounded up the red-carpeted staircase, past the Reading Room and the portraits of the Library’s former presidents, among them Tennyson, Eliot and Leslie Stephen, to the lowest floor of the Literature stacks. It was barely 10 o’clock but the narrow, book-lined passages, with their low ceilings and softly puttering fluorescent lights, gave the illusion of night. Squinting at the jacketless spines around me, I saw that I’d arrived at French fiction – Coulevain to Dumas. Some of the volumes were crisp, sturdy, yet-to-be-taken-out; others carried the marks of time: scuffed edges on brittle, ornate bindings. Wandering further, fishing out books at random, I paused in astonishment at those that were centuries older than the Library itself.

After a few minutes I realized there were two further floors above me, both partially visible through the iron-grille ceilings. With this sudden, dreamlike shift in perspective, the stacks seemed to become extended versions of themselves – towers of books rising up over three storeys. For a moment, it was as though I’d become weightless, suspended, enveloped in literature. Breathing in the scents of dust and old leather, and bewitched by the dim light and the faded russet bindings, I had fallen under the Library’s spell. Much later I discovered that, from the same vantage point, Raymond Mortimer had remarked: ‘I feel inside the brain of mankind.’ That morning I experienced a similar epiphany. Across the chasm of each passageway, it was as if the volumes were communicating silently, with me and one another.

With fifteen miles of books, a history spanning 171 years, and a seemingly endless list of distinguished past and present members, the London Library has, unsurprisingly, developed a folklore of its own. Everywhere you look you encounter the shades of the great. In idle moments I’ve watched Edith Sitwell stare down her nose at the staff behind the Issue Desk. On the carpeted stairway, I’ve passed Eliot and Forster. I’ve held the door to the Gents’ for Dickens. In the Reading Room, I’ve watched a tiptoeing librarian ask the Woolfs to lower their voices. And while researching subjects for the Slightly Foxed catalogue, I’ve even rubbed shoulders with Vita Sackville-West in Topography and Darwin in Science & Miscellaneous.

Since 1841, when Goethe’s Theory of Colours became the first of its books to be borrowed, the Library has been a remarkably generous lender. Even some of its rarest antiquarian volumes can be taken home, and ‘country members’ who live out of town can borrow and return theirs by post. One can only begin to imagine the unlikely corners of the world these books have visited – colonial forts, alpine cabins, farmhouses in the Outback, trading posts on the veld – and that’s before considering the volumes whose globe-trottings preceded their acquisition, such as a collection of medical essays that, in 1790, travelled all the way to Pitcairn on HMS Bounty.

Yet with such literary generosity, of course, there come risks. During the Great War, for example, books were routinely dispatched from St James’s Square to members at the Front. Most were returned in fine condition, but among those lost forever was one struck by a shell, together with its borrower, the poet and critic T. E. Hulme, in a trench in West Flanders. Other casualties include a selection of the Library’s Conrad and Conan Doyle novels that went down with Kitchener on HMS Hampshire and a copy of Mein Kampf flung into the Atlantic by an outraged reader.

The most exceptional provenance, however, must go to G. Fraser Melbourn’s The Planter’s Manual: An English, Dutch, Malay and KehChinese Vocabulary (1894): it sank with SS Halcyon off Folkestone Pier in 1916, was rescued from the depths of the Channel six months later, watermarked but intact, and donated to the London Library. The collection is indeed a wonder, but no more so than the daily stream of readers for whom 14 St James’s Square is a second home. There are some I admire, like the toiling men and women, all curiously alike in their overcoats and sensible shoes, who arrive within a minute of opening time and leave as the doors are being locked for the night. Some I loathe, like the muttering readers, the heavy breathers and the emphatic, two-fingered typists. And some I even recognize – the blonde film star whose presence draws the attention of every youth in the room, and the portly actor, familiar to me from an evening at the Cottesloe, who eyes me through a chink in his armful of books.

Initially, there were members who frustrated me with their seemingly aimless wanderings. But, over time, I grew to appreciate a rare state, exemplified by these blithe spirits, which the Library’s former president Lord Annan described as ‘creative laziness’: that is, ‘reading the books one ought not to be reading, and becoming so absorbed in them and following the trails along which they lead you, so that at the end of the day you still have most of the reading to do that you had before that morning’. This tradition, in itself a tribute to the joys of reading, is alive and well at 14 St James’s Square. And, whether they know it or not, it is the likes of the elderly gentlemen dreaming in the red leather armchairs, the young Rebecca West foraging in Fiction S–Z, and the dandyish fellow scoffing over the periodicals, who are among its custodians.

Now that my year as a member has come to an end, I salute this extraordinary cast of characters and the enchanted labyrinth they inhabit. In any library, as in any book, there are many trails: long may they be followed.

© Richard Conyngham 2012

RICHARD CONYNGHAM is about to cycle from Mexico to Patagonia on a shoestring. In his pannier bags he’ll be carrying a Spanish phrasebook, an abridged Lonely Planet, and a handful of battered Penguins.

From Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly issue 34, Summer 2012 – www.foxedquarterly.com