Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere

Lara Atkin is a European Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland.Sarah Comyn is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland.Porscha Fermanis is Professor of Romantic Literature at University College Dublin, Ireland, and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded ‘SouthHem’ project.Nathan Garvey is a European Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland.

• 1. Introduction.- 2. From Community to Public Libraries: Liberalism, Education, and Self-Government.- 3. Cultivating Public Readers: Citizens, Classes, and Types.- 4. ‘A mob of light readers’: Holdings, Genre Proportions, and Modes of Reading.- 5. Knowing the ‘Native Mind’: Ethnological and Philological Collections.- 6. Conclusion.