Private Libraries

During the Romantic period, private libraries emerged in a twofold function with respect to women’s writing: as manifestations of traditions and power, from which women had often been excluded, and as bourgeoning repositories of knowledge and conventions that invited emulating, appropriating, and undermining in order to make one’s marginalized voice heard. The Romantic period was also the age of “bibliomania” or “bibliophilia,” when book collecting reached new heights. The resultant growth of private libraries in number and size shaped the use of domestic space for both individual reading and the convivial exchange of ideas. Consequently, the history of women’s engagement with private libraries is reflected in fiction and historical sources alike, from Jane Austen’s depiction of Darcy’s private library in Pride and Prejudice against the backdrop of Austen’s personal use of her family’s collection to Charlotte Smith’s and Susan Ferrier’s contrasting notions of private libraries, as catalysts for fictional plots, and from female authors with access to private book collections, such as Frances Burney, Mary Lamb, and Mary Berry, to women who established or looked after such collections themselves, for example, Frances Mary Richardson Currer, Elizabeth Iremonger, and Helen Maria Williams.