The Library World Volume 8 Issue 9

Abstract

EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment of heaven is called down upon the fiction reader, and the library authorities are condemned as a set of ignorant and inefficient office‐holders, who pander to a depraved public taste. The last assailant of this sort whom we had the pleasure of setting right was Mr. J. Churton Collins, who used the Nineteenth Century and After, as the medium for conveying his accusations. Now comes Mr. W. H. Harwood, who fills six‐and‐a‐half pages of the Westminster Review for February, 1906, with a quantum of twaddle about libraries, which differs from most recent articles of the same sort only in its dulness. In his use of this journalistic cliché, Mr. Harwood displays the customary ignorance of the Public Libraries Acts, by styling his paper “Free Libraries and Fiction,” and by his failure to prove even one of his statements by reference to a single concrete fact. Briefly, Mr. Harwood's position is this:—

Citation

(1906), "The Library World Volume 8 Issue 9", New Library World, Vol. 8 No. 9, pp. 228-260. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb008888