The Boston Library Society Archives

Special Collections, Boston Athenæum

Contact Information:

Reference Department

Boston Athenæum

10 ½ Beacon Street

Boston, Massachusetts 02108

617.227.0270

Appointment Form

Encoded by:

Lisa Starzyk-Weldon, September 2001.

© 2001 Boston Athenæum.

Descriptive Summary

	Boston Library Society Archives, 1792-1939(?)
	Boston Library Society
	30 linear feet (34 boxes; 156 bound volumes)
	Boston Athenaeum. Reference.
	The Boston Library Society (1792-1939) was the earliest proprietary library in the Boston area. It provided residents of Boston with access to the works of American authors, as well as to the classics and to European literature. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Boston Library Society began to lose its proprietors and subscribers to the Boston Public Library. The reduction in its membership made it difficult for the Society to expand its collection and maintain its library. In 1939 the proprietors were forced to close the doors of the Boston Library Society and agreed to operate under the auspices of the Boston Athenaeum. The Boston Library Society Archives consist of records, preserved by the Society and acquired by the Boston Athenaeum, that document the activity of nearly every division of library operations. They occupy a storage space of about thirty linear feet.

Acquisition Information

Acquired by the Boston Athenaeum, c. 1939.

Related Materials

Historical Note

The Boston Library Society, founded in Boston in 1792 by several of the federal town's leading merchants, statesmen, businessmen, and educators, was the earliest proprietary library in the Boston area. This group of men, including Charles Bulfinch, the Reverend John Eliot, Judge George Richards Minot, Dr. Redford Webster, and Charles Vaughn established an institution dedicated to "...making large collections of books for extensive and useful knowledge...[for] not only literary amusement, but the informing of the great body of the people..." Incorporated by the state of Massachusetts in 1794, the Society's popularity grew as rapidly as the collection of books it had pledged to amass.

The Boston Library Society immediately became an encouragement to the cultural development of the city. Residents of Boston with a membership in the BLS could enjoy all the literature they desired: philosophy, current American geography or the popular novel, without the cost of buying everything that they wished to read. Also, the works of American writers, especially local authors, became more widely read, as they became available through the Boston Library. While the people of the United States were forging a distinct literary style that mirrored their recent political independence, the lending library made uniquely American creations available alongside the classics of ancient Rome and Greece and the literature produced in Europe. The Boston Library Society, accessioning both foreign books from London merchants and American periodicals and volumes, exemplified this trend.

The Boston Library Society served as a precursor for another privately funded membership library: the Boston Athenaeum, established in 1807. However, it was the Boston Public Library that exerted the strongest influence on the Boston Library Society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Library Society, located on Newbury Street, could not compete with the new public library in the Back Bay once it began to lose its proprietors and subscribers to the BPL. Lacking the necessary funds to continue the expansion of its collection, and descending steadily into debt merely from the cost of maintaining the library, the Boston Library Society was eventually forced to close. The proprietors, in a contract made with the Athenaeum in 1939, agreed that the Boston Library Society would continue to operate under the roof and regulations of the Athenaeum from that time forward.

At the bicentennial of its incorporation, the Boston Library Society still has shareholders and an annual meeting. The books that did not become part of the Athenaeum's collection were purchased by or donated to several local institutions, including Harvard University, the Boston Public Library, and Wellesley College. The records of the Society, held in storage for over fifty years, are now part of the Athenaeum collection, cataloged as the Boston Library Society Archives.

Scope and Content Note

The records contained in this collection include both official and unofficial documents. Official records include establishment documents, minutes and the records of various Boston Library Society offices and committees such as treasurer, trustees, proprietors, catalog department, acquisitions department and circulation department records. . Unofficial history records include a WPA survey, newsletters and other documents that provide an informal view of the Society.

Local Subject Headings

Boston Library.

Series Description/Content Notes