'I can't resist sending you the book': Private Libraries, Elite Women, and Shared Reading Practices in Georgian Britain.

By outlining the contribution made by private libraries to the intellectual and cultural lives of a specific group of readers in the rural north-east of Scotland, this article asks what role family libraries played in the growth of library provision in the long eighteenth century. With book lending becoming something of a social imperative in the polite culture of late Georgian Britain, private libraries often served as a practical resource for the wider community, providing books that could not be acquired elsewhere, and filling important gaps in 'public sphere' provision in rural communities without access to subscription or circulating libraries. More importantly, though, the practice of book sharing had far-reaching consequences for community cohesion, shared reading habits, and intellectual culture. In particular, this essay points to the role played by the physical exchange of private books in the dissemination and widespread acceptance of new ideas relating to female education, child-rearing, and separate spheres associated with James Fordyce and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]