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A break in the establishment of libraries with a larger
readership can be seen in the 18th century. Under the
influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment there was a shift
from reading spiritual works to worldly ones, and the 18th
century is called the century of the novel. This brought with
it a fundamental change in the nature of reading: intensive,
that is to say repetitive reading, which is natural in taking
in spiritual literature was replaced by extensive reading –
meaning several books at the same time. Readers could not
afford all the new books that they were interested in, and
therefore the demand for new sorts of libraries arose. These
came into being in Germany; France, England and elsewhere
in Europe in the form of commercial libraries, also called
lending libraries. The owners of these libraries did not limit
reading according to status or other criteria. Everyone who
could afford to pay the reading fees was welcome.
The oldest information about a lending library in Estonia
is from Tallinn. The owner was Johann Christian Allée.
He published his library’s catalogue in 1777. Allée’s library
was located at Nunne street 2. Looking inside the house
one has to assume that he had the rooms occupied today by
the shop. By the way, from 1907 until 1921 these premises
contained the Tallinn Municipal Free Public Library and
Reading Room (Estonian abbreviation: TLMAR)!
The catalogue of the first lending library in Tallinn leaves
a very favourable impression. There were 350 titles (over
500 volumes), contemporary German and French literature
(two-thirds having appeared in the previous four years
– 1774–1777), truly new literature for new readers. It
was predominantly travel letters, and books with historical
and geographical content. There were all the famous
writers-enlighteners (G. E. Lessing, J. W. Goethe, Ch. De
Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau). The fee
for using the books was one ruble per quarter of a year.
Acquisition costs must have made themselves felt and the
return was small, for probably in 1781 he sold his library
to the merchant Johann Gottlob Hasse, who in turn sold
it on. In the last decade of the century there were three
lending libraries in Tallinn, three in Tartu, one each in the
county towns. But at the end of the 18th century the lending
libraries and all sorts of foreign books in the Baltic provinces
were caught up by trouble from the imperial house: foreign
books started to be banned. The reason was the French
3
Revolution. In 1796 censorship offices were established in
five cities, including Riga, to monitor literature arriving from
abroad. In1799 a censor was put in place at the harbour of
Tallinn. The first list of banned books was created, which
banned all books printed in France during the revolution.
In 1800 the book banning reached a peak – Czar Paul I
banned all foreign books no matter what they were about.
All bookshops and lending libraries were sealed up, banned
literature was looked for. This was a catastrophe for local
German and French book culture. Fortunately not for
long, f