Libraries

Abstract

Just as forerunners of the novel can be found in Antiquity, long before the genre became rooted in society in the eighteenth century, the institution of the library can also be traced back thousands of years prior to the appearance of popular libraries around the eighteenth century. For most of their history, the aims and roles of libraries have been related to the formal institutions of state, church, trade, and education. The content of libraries throughout most of their history has been scholarly, religious, civic, and practical. From the eighteenth century on, however, a new type of library, the social or people's library, began to emerge. While not jettisoning the instructional dimension, nor forgetting that poetry and plays as well as scholarly writings had long offered pleasure as well as entertainment to their readers, the aims of the social library included a greater prominence of recreation and diversion, of which the novel was the prime vehicle.