Pleasure on the Page

In the century after 1750, a modest Sussex fishing town became the most fashionable resort in England, and more than a hundred libraries opened their doors to serve it.

These were no hushed reading rooms. Here visitors borrowed the latest novel, caught up on the London papers, played cards, gambled, bought fans and scent, and signed their names in a book that told the whole town who had arrived.

Fanny Burney, the celebrated novelist behind Evelina, called in. Jane Austen sent Lydia Bennet to Brighton. Anne Lister arrived with Mariana Lawton, the married woman she loved, recording their stolen hours in cipher, in a town that could tolerate such secrets and punish them harshly. Women as well as men ran the libraries, and a prince's pleasure palace rose at the end of the Steine.

Drawing on subscription books, advertisements, catalogues, guidebooks and diaries, Sarah E. Beamish brings to life the proprietors, readers and rivals of Brighton's hundred libraries. She shows how a seaside town turned the library into a place of pleasure and sociability, long before the public library was born.

'Excellent research and wonderful depth and breadth of coverage of the subject. A major contribution to our understanding of Georgian Brighton and the wider entertainment landscape of the Georgian seaside.'
- Dr Allan Brodie, seaside historian, Visiting Fellow, Bournemouth University

'A stimulating approach to the study of circulating libraries during this period.'
- Dr Sue Berry, author of Georgian Brighton