Book and the people

Monday 30 March 2026 to Friday 29 May 2026

One hundred years ago, a group of publishers, writers, businesses, and libraries were challenging who had access to books while defending the importance of reading for pleasure. In her Books and the People (1938), socialist Margaret Cole described the new book clubs and commercial high street libraries of the 1920s and ’30s as the ‘opening stages of a real revolution […] in the world of English-language book production’. This exhibition looks at a moment before book-buying was possible for most people and some of the changes interwar that made access to new books easier, more convenient, and sometimes cheaper, helping to develop more democratic, shared cultures of reading.  The exhibition includes examples of everyday printed ephemera that book clubs and societies produced and that tell us about how access to books was encouraged and promoted. Curated by Nicola Wilson, Sue Walker and Emma Minns.