P. R. Harris This is a celebration of the Reading Room which was built in 1854-57. It was however preceded

 

Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibly (eds.), 

Correspondence of Thomas Gray

, 3 vols (Oxford, 1935); letter to 

William Mason, July 1759 (vol. ii, p. 629); Letter to James Brown, July 1759 (vol. ii, pp. 632-3).

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   Isaac  D’Israeli, 

The Illustrator Illustrated

 (London, 1838), p. 5.

---

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The Reading Room in Literature

eBLJ 2019,  Article 5

The first American reader (a gentleman from Philadelphia) had been admitted in 1765. In 

1815 his compatriot Washington Irving described the Reading Room of that date.  The following 

extract comes from his work entitled 

The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

.

I was one summer’s day loitering through the great saloons of the British Museum, with 

that listlessness with which one is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather; 

sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometimes studying the hieroglyphics 

on an Egyptian mummy, and sometimes trying, with nearly equal success, to comprehend 

the  allegorical  paintings  on  the  lofty  ceilings. Whilst  I  was  gazing  about  in  this  idle 

way, my attention was attracted to a distant door, at the end of a suite of apartments. It 

was closed, but every now and then it would open, and some strange-favoured being, 

generally clothed in black, would steal forth, and glide through the rooms, without 

noticing any of the surrounding objects. There was an air of mystery about this that 

piqued my languid curiosity, and I determined to attempt the passage of that strait, and to 

explore the unknown regions that lay beyond.  The door yielded to my hand, with all that 

facility with which the portals of enchanted castles yield to the adventurous knight errant.  

I found myself in a spacious chamber, surrounded with great cases of venerable books.  

Above the cases, and just under the cornice, were arranged a great number of black 

looking portraits of ancient authors.  About the room were placed long tables, with stands 

for reading and writing, at which sat many pale, studious personages, poring intently 

over dusty volumes, rummaging among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes 

of their contents.  The most hushed stillness reigned through this mysterous apartment, 

excepting that you might hear the racing of pens over sheets of paper, or occasionally, the 

deep sigh of one of these sages, as he shifted his position to turn over the page of an old 

folio; doubtless arising from that hollowness and flatulency incident to learned research.

     Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small slip of 

paper, and ring a bell, whereupon a familiar would appear, take the paper in profound 

silence, glide out of the room, and return shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon 

which the other would fall tooth and nail with famished voracity. […]

     My curiosity being now fully aroused, I whispered to one of the familiars, as he was 

about to leave the room, and begged an interpretation of the strange scene before me. A 

few words were sufficient for the purpose.  I found that these mysterious personages […] 

were principally authors, and were in the very act of manufacturing books.

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In 1827, after the completion of the east wing of the new British Museum building designed 

by Robert Smirke to accommodate the library of George III, the Reading Rooms were moved 

from the decaying Montagu House to the rooms at the south end of the new wing – now the 

Middle and South Rooms of the Department of MSS. They held about 120 readers, but soon 

became very crowded and, it is reported, very smelly.

It was these rooms which Dickens used after he obtained a reader’s ticket on 8 February 

1830 (the day after his eighteenth birthday). In the following extract from