Commercial lending-libraries, which began in the 18th c. as newspaper reading-rooms (see Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen), and mushroomed in the 1820s as providers of educational and leisure reading to the fast-rising number of readers who could not afford to buy books. By 1835 there were 500 cabinets de lecture in Paris alone, ranging from handsome libraries of contemporary fiction to dingy backrooms, charging 1 sou for reading a volume on the premises, and 2 sous for reading at home. The cabinets de lecture allowed the literature of the Romantic period to reach a mass public despite low print-runs and high prices. Pirated Belgian printings, then cheaper newspapers, and finally mass reprints brought the price of reading-matter down sharply between 1840 and 1860, and the cabinets de lecture faded away. [See Libraries, Public.]
[David Bellos]
