It was about the same date that we find even in Scotland a project for establishing throughout the country, in every parish, Reference or Lending Libraries, and some pamphlets on the subject have come down to us; but we hear nothing more about it. This was in 1699-1702, just when the indefatigable John Dunton was sending from the press his multifarious periodical news-books for the benefit of the more literary sort in South Britain.
The Circulating Library in the United Kingdom in its inception was intended more particularly for the better-to-do class, and even to-day its tariff is hardly compatible with very narrow resources. Perhaps the earliest effort to bring literature within the reach of the working-man was Charles Knight's scheme of "Book-Clubs for all Readers," mentioned in a letter to him of 1844 from Dickens.
A remarkable change in the fortunes and tactics of the collector has arisen from one in our social institutions. The book-hunter of times past, if he was a resident in the provinces, and worked on a more or less systematic and ambitious scale--nay, if he merely picked up articles from year to year which struck his fancy, relied, as he was able to do, on his country town. Thither gravitated, as a rule, the products of public and private sales from the surrounding neighbourhood within a fairly wide radius. If a library was placed in the market, the sale took place on the premises or at the nearest centre; there was no thought of sending anything short of a known collection up to London. The transit in the absence of railways was too inconvenient and costly. These conditions, which long survived better possibilities, naturally made certain headquarters throughout the kingdom a perfect Eldorado and Elysium, first of all for local enthusiasts miles round, and later on for metropolitan bargain-seekers, who made periodical tours in certain localities at present as barren as Arabia Petræa.
The principal points appear, so far as existing information goes, to have been in the North: Newcastle, York, Sheffield, Leeds; in the Midlands: Birmingham and Manchester; in the West: Plymouth, Exeter, and Bristol; in the South: Chichester; in the East: Norwich, Yarmouth, Colchester, Bury, and Ipswich. It was at Chichester that the poet Collins brought together a certain number of early books, some of the first rarity; his name is found, too, in the sale catalogues of the last century as a buyer of such; and the strange and regrettable fact is, that two or three items, which Thomas Warton actually saw in his hands, and of which there are no known duplicates, have not so far been recovered.