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

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eBLJ 2019,  Article 5

The Reading Room in Literature  

P. R. Harris

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

by a number of other reading rooms in the British Museum.

The British Museum was founded in 1753 and opened to the public in 1759 in Montagu 

House which stood on the site of the forecourt of the present British Museum. During the 

interim period the Trustees drew up rules for the new institution, and one of these concerned 

the Reading Room.

The manner of admitting persons, who desire to make use of the MUSEUM for study; or 

shall have occasion to consult the same for evidence, or information.

THAT a particular room be allotted for the persons so admitted, in which they may sit, 

and read or write, without interruption, during the time that the Museum is kept open: 

that a proper Officer do constantly attend in the said room, so long as any such person, 

or persons, shall be there: and that any Book, or other part of the Collection, so far as 

is consistent with the safety thereof, and the attendance necessarily required from the 

Officers upon the other parts of their duty, be at their request brought to them by the 

Messenger; who is likewise to furnish them with pens and ink, if desired.

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The first Reading Room was in the NW corner of the basement of Montagu House, looking 

out on to the garden.  Not only books were consulted in this room but also MSS, prints, coins 

and antiquities.  It was placed under the supervision of a Keeper who was required to be present 

all the time that the room was open. The first occupant of the post was not happy with the 

conditions imposed upon him and only stayed for two years. The following is from Barwick’s 

history of the Reading Room:

The first Keeper of the Reading Room, as the title then ran, was ‘the ingenious Dr. Peter 

Templeman’, who received a salary of £100 per annum.  […] After much correspondence 

with the Trustees respecting the inadequacy of the apartments allotted to him, and the injury 

to his health from the long attendance of six hours daily required of him, he resigned in 

December 1760.  […] An entry of 30 August 1759, in his official note books, shows how he 

felt the dreariness of his task. ‘On Wednesday all the company going away a little after one 

of the clock, the Room being cold and the weather likely to rain, I thought it proper to move 

off too. Nothing material has happened that I know of.’  At this period only some five or six 

readers visited the Room in the course of the month, and it must have been a great temptation, 

on a fine day, to a gentleman nervous about his health and evidently bored, to step out into 

the open air and enjoy one of the best gardens in London. There was a story told of him 

that finding it more healthy and agreeable to walk in the garden than to look after his small 

flock of readers, he on one occasion came across a Trustee who was severe about exacting 

attendance to duty and who startled him with  a peremptory ‘Go back, sir’.

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 Editor’s note.  The typescript of this previously unpublished talk is dated in pencil 1/11/93. It was delivered 

twice, in 1990 and in a slightly modified version in 1993. Internal references show it was intended to be given at 

the British Museum, perhaps to the Friends of the British Library, with readings by Gabriel Woolf.  For further 

references to this subject, see Edward F. Ellis,

 The British Museum in Fiction: A Check-List 

(Buffalo, 1981).

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 Statutes and Rules to be observed in the management and use of the British Museum

 (London, 1757),  

pp. 9-10.

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  G. F. Barwick,