‘A reading people’: mapping the personal libraries of prominent British Methodists

Abstract

Reading is acknowledged to have been a key means of transmission and reinforcement of the Methodist message in Britain, yet the role played by libraries in the history of the movement has been comparatively neglected, certainly in the aggregate. This article offers a preliminary collective overview of non-institutional private libraries and collections of Wesleyana formed by individual British Methodists, from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, and seeks to ascertain what became of them over subsequent years. Information is assembled about ninety-five collectors, a combination of ministers and laity, who mostly achieved some prominence in British Methodism. Although the need for further research into the topic is recognised, it has already been possible to detect several trends, not least the historically relatively weak appetite of what is now the Methodist Church of Great Britain for the acquisition and preservation of its library and documentary heritage, a reticence which has contributed to the loss of a significant portion of it overseas.