Abstract
In order to understand the history of the modern public library in the United States, we have to start with the history of the social libraries of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The public libraries we know today evolved from these early public libraries. And that evolution sheds light on and is an important part of the history of books and reading. The history of public libraries helps us understand race, class, and gender in the construction of the reader; the reception of fiction and the role the market played in what readers read; and the public and private goods that reading was expected to serve. Public libraries were also, from their inception, protean public institutions. Their history allows us to explore the shifting definitions of a public institution and the public good; and how, why and to what extent government was expected to promote that public good. The history of American public libraries is a critical part of the social, cultural, and political history of the United States.