"The Catalogue ... has been prepared with a view to accomplish two objects. One, to offer an inventory of all the books on the shelves of the Reference Department of the Manchester Free Library: the other, to supply ... a ready Key both to the subjects of the books, and to the names of the authors." - v. 1, the compiler to the reader.

Reading was one of Georgian England's defining obsessions. This book argues that the proliferation of library facilities greatly extended the quantity and diversity of texts available. It suggests that the resulting circulation of books on a previously unimaginable scale made possible the creation of a substantial and broadly based reading public.

An edited collection that studies the making of books in the long eighteenth century and advances understanding of book production and reception from a literary-historical perspective.