This master's thesis studies Utländska biblioteket, a 19th century foreign literature subscription library in Karlskrona, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate Utländska biblioteket between 1835–1864. The material consists primarily of primary sources from the archive of Utländska biblioteket. The main primary sources are the library's accounts book, its minutes, and two book catalogs. Using analytical tools from Jürgen Habermas, feminist criticism of his ideas and from Pierre Bourdieu, as well as results from previous research on older library forms and female organization in the 19th century, the thesis answers questions relating to the library as a society, its members and its book collection. The investigation shows that Utländska biblioteket was a subscription library as well as a book circle. Based on its regulations, it should be viewed as a sort of public sphere, but in reality Utländska biblioteket was an exclusive group, consisting of a socially homogenous group of people who in large extent knew each other. Its members were in large part female and aristocratic. The reading of foreign literature and the focus on quality, can be viewed as an act of distinction. Utländska biblioteket was, compared to other similar libraries, unusual primarily because of its large female membership. This is in the thesis explained through the viewing of the library as a female organization, where the male members in part play a role as acting agents in the library's contact with for example book dealers. Also, the book collection shows proof of a certain female subject interest. Based on these facts, Utländska biblioteket can be viewed as a female counter public, where women created a space for themselves where they, through the literature and through the membership in a society, could reflect on their identities, as well as make claims on what a woman was and could do. This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

This thesis examines provincial literary culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, through the printed and manuscript records of reading associations, the diaries of their members, and a range of other print materials. These book clubs and subscription libraries have often been considered to be polite and sociable institutions, part of the cultural repertoire of a new urban, consumer society. However, this thesis reconsiders reading associations' values and effects through a study of the reading materials they provided, and the reading habits they encouraged; the intellectual and social values which they embodied; and their role in the performance of gender, local and national identities. It questions what politeness meant to associational members, arguing for the importance of morality and order in associational conceptions of propriety, and downplaying their pursuit of structured sociability. This thesis examines how provincial individuals conceived of their relationship to the reading public, arguing that associations provided a tangible link to this abstract national community, whilst also having implications for the 'public' life of localities and families. The thesis also considers how these institutions interacted with enlightenment thought, suggesting that both the associations' reading matter and their philosophies of corporate improvement enabled 'ordinary' men and women to participate in the Enlightenment. It assesses English and Scottish associations, which are usually subjected to separate treatment, arguing that they constituted a shared mechanism of British literary culture in this period. More than simply a 'polite' performance, reading, through associations, was fundamentally linked to status, to citizenship, and to cultural participation.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished