| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

James Raven. London Booksellers and American Customers: Transatlantic Literary Community and the Charleston Library Society, 1748–1811. (The Carolina Low Country and the Atlantic World.) Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 2002. Pp. xxii, 522. $59.95.

Part one of this volume offers an accurate and engaging history of the Charleston Library Society (CLS) from its founding in 1748 through 1811. Unlike most early American libraries, several records survive from which to reconstruct that history in its local, regional, and transatlantic contexts. The most important of these sources, a manuscript "Copy Book of Letters" containing 120 letters written from 1758 to 1811, is transcribed with annotations in part two. 1

James Raven argues that the CLS provided "both an intellectual and social center" (p. 26) for Charleston. The CLS was founded with seventeen members in 1748 and had grown to 129 members by 1750 and to 280 by 1819. However, CLS membership was "exclusive" from the beginning, and became more so over time. Theirs was a "private community" (p. 228). Two appendixes listing members support Raven's assessment. Members in the published list of 1750 included "Honorable Gentlemen" such as John Cleland and Charles Pinckney, "Gentlemen" such as Gabriel Manigault, clerics such as Rev. John Baxter, doctors such as John Lining and David Oliphant, and numerous merchants and planters including Robert Brisbane, Christopher Gadsden, and John Scott. These men (there were no women members) were diverse in their political leanings and religious persuasions. They came from "a broad cross-section of the propertied and professional of Charleston." They were also men who were "profoundly aware of the isolation of their town" (p. 41). . . .

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