ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to retrieve and describe the point at which work and the institution and home and the human met in the late-Victorian metropolitan public library. The extension of the date range to 1940 reflects the fact that most of the librarians examined in this study stayed in post until the inter-war period; where appropriate and practical they also resided in their library apartments until retirement. It then explores the material world and the built environment of the live-in librarian and his non-resident colleagues. It describes the scale and splendour of the first rate-assisted libraries in London but, rather than viewing these spaces simply as products of design, the focus throughout is on how individual librarians responded to their surroundings and the extent to which they displayed and exercised personal control. This chapter has described the point at which the institution, the home and the human or social intersected in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century London public library.
