ABSTRACT
If the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s represented a slow start for the opening of public libraries and the completion of new public library buildings, this was to change in the 1880s and 1890s as contributions from what might be called 'serial philanthropists' replaced the one-off donations of the earlier period. William Ewart Gladstone, one of the most prominent political supporters of the Free Library, himself drew attention to the dramatic change in the pace of Public Library Act adoption in the years just before and after the Queen's Jubilee in 1887. Maurice Adams's 1890–1 series on public library buildings in The Building News was a path breaker. The Swansea Public Library which opened in 1887 shared its building with a technical college, art school and exhibition gallery occupying the upper floors, leaving the library itself at ground level. Glasgow and Liverpool were both cities with extensive experience of design for public buildings.
