Rare 270-year-old book found in SC library vault

[Rowan]

(that's South Carolina for all you non-Americans who haven't memorized our state abbreviations )

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A rare book almost 270 years old has been found in the vault of the oldest library in the South, but after all this time the library won't be able to keep it.

The 1743 tome, "Dissertation Upon Parties" by Henry St. John Lord Bolingbroke, was one of 800 volumes that planter and diplomat John Mackenzie donated to the College of Charleston in the 1700s.

His library was housed at the Charleston Library Society, founded in 1748, until a proper library could be built at the fledgling college. But a devastating 1778 fire ripped through the Library Society and only 77 titles from the Mackenzie collection were thought to have survived.

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[boswellbaxter]

I walked past that library when I was in Charleston last year--it's one of the few remaining subscription libraries in the US. I would have loved to have gone in, but it was after hours.

[Rowan]

What's a subscription library?

[princess garnet]

[quote=""Rowan""]What's a subscription library?[/quote]

From ODLIS Online:
www.abc-clio.com/ODLIS/odlis_s.aspx

subscription library
A type of library that developed in Britain during the second half of the 18th century as a natural extension of private book clubs, in which a group of fairly prosperous readers in a community joined to form a "reading society" that included a library for the exclusive use of members. Michael H. Harris notes in History of Libraries in the Western World (Scarecrow Press, 1995) that dues were usually collected from members on a monthly or yearly basis, and the quality of the reading matter available was generally higher than that provided by circulating libraries of the same period. At first, subscription libraries were usually housed in rented quarters, with a person on duty at certain hours, but by the mid-19th century, many had acquired their own facilities. The London Library, established in 1841 and still in existence, is one of the most successful examples, containing over 500,000 volumes by 1900. For a brief history of subscription libraries, see the entry by Peter Hoare in the International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science (Routledge, 2003). Compare with proprietary library.

[Divia]

How exciting. Its always cool to find such treasures. Now, granted I dont think it would be on my reading fun list, but what a treasure!