Circulating, or subscription, libraries evolved in the 18th century from private book clubs,
and enabled the rising middle class to have access to a broad range of reading material, especially
fiction. In resorts such as Bath, circulating libraries offered comfortable, spacious surroundings
in which customers could gossip, flirt, browse, examine newspapers and reviews, and choose from a
selection of every kind of book (Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, UCP, 2000).