Book selection in the 1st class Lounge R&W room and 2nd class library

[Cara Ginter]

Would they have been carrying any Jane Austen aboard? I wonder, was she popular by then?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Jane Austen's books sold well in her own time (a hundred years before Titanic) and were even more popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, though they were not to everyone's taste. Sir Walter Scott thought that she had "a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." But for Mark Twain: "I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen".
.

 

[Marilyn Lena Penner]

I like Jane Austen's stories and she has admirers and imitators still, so I think it's safe to have Pride & Prejudice aboard a fictional Titanic library. Mark Twain's books too, I'm sure. (I'll put "The Innocents Abroad" and "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" in my fictional Titanic Library.) Sherlock Holmes would be there as well, and maybe Doyle's 'The Lost World'.
What about Owen Wister's 'The Virginian'? Wasn't that on Titanic?
P.G. Wodehouse: Jeeves wasn't created yet; but I wonder if Lord Emsworth and Psmith didn't appear around that time. Wodehouse was writing 'school stories' for boy's magazines then.
Would 'Strand Magazine' be one of the periodicals on board?

 

[George Pastarmatzis]

HELLO AGAIN! WHAT WAS REALLY THE USE OF THE LOVELY READING AND WRITING ROOM IN FIRST CLASS? I ASSUME IT WAS MOSTLY USED BY WOMEN AND ALSO USED AS A SITTING AREA. BUT, WHY WOULD ONE USE THIS AREA FOR SOMETHING THAT COULD EASILY BE DONE IN THE PRIVACY OF ONE'S STATEROOM? FOR A CHANGE OF AIR PERHAPS? I REALIZE THOUGH THAT THIS AREA HAD TO BE SMALLER OR OTHERWISE USED SINCE IT WAS -IN MY OPINION- RATHER LARGE AND NOT TOO CONVENIENT HOWEVER ELEGANT IT LOOKED!!! THANKS ...

 

[Bob Godfrey]

George, bear in mind that most 1st Class passengers didn't have luxury suites. Their cabins were small and barely furnished - basically just a place to sleep, wash and dress. For most people, the public rooms provided a much more comfortable environment for reading, writing or just relaxing or socialising.

 

[Mark Baber]

Hello, George---

Please don't use all caps. It's the virtual equivalent of shouting and is addressed in this Board's rules as follows:

- Never use ALL CAPS or a VaRiAtIoN. It is hard to read, considered rude and generally very unpopular!

Thanks.

 

[Mark Baber]

Many years ago, in the third message on this page, Bob Godfrey noted that White Star obtained its library books from The Times Book Club. This was touted in the line's display advertising in The Times, as follows:

The WHITE STAR LINE ROYAL MAIL STEAMERS Titanic, Olympic, Adriatic, Oceanic, Majestic, Baltic, Cedric, Celtic, and Arabic have a perfect circulating library service for passengers. By contract with The Times the advantages of THE TIMES BOOK CLUB are available for first-class passengers during every voyage without charge, and a liberal supply is carried of all the newest books.

Similar notes (with different ship names, of course) were contained in the ads for the Cunard, Atlantic Transport, American, Allan and Union-Castle lines. The Cunard and Allan ads mentioned first and second class passengers, Union-Castle's mentioned "saloon passengers," but the those of the three IMM lines mentioned first class only.

 

[Mark Baber]

http://timesonline.typepad.com/timesarchive/2010/04/what-were-they-reading-on-the-titanic.html

 

[Mette McCall]

Does anyone know what kind of literature the 2nd class library offered its guests? Were there magazine subscriptions too, etc.?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

See this thread:

Book selection in the 1st class Lounge R&W room and 2nd class library

Isnt it curious that 2nd class had thier own library, but 1st class did not? Granted there was a large bookcase in the 1st class lounge, and I dont think there were many books in the R&W room... Do we have any idea what books Titanic carried? I wonder if Lawrence Beesley kept that book he was...

www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

[Moderator's note: This message and the one above, originally a separate thread, have been moved to the thread Bob linked to. MAB]

 

[N Alison]

I've heard that Gracie tried getting others to read his book about the American civil war on board. Did he bring a copy himself or did the first class library have a copy on hand?

 

[Bob Godfrey]

It was his own copy, and I doubt that any of his fellow passengers actually read it. The Truth about Chickamauga was dull stuff for anybody but military historians like Gracie, and not likely to be in any best-seller list! It did, however, inspire the title for his most famous book - The Truth about the Titanic.

 

[N Alison]

Thank you for answering my question.

I imagine that the betterment through education angle that was predominant at the time would have led them to be careful about what was selected for their bookshelves. Would any history work have actually made the cut or would they have tried to stick to purely fiction? I believe I heard that they picked books that were current, sort of like book-of-the-month material.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

The books in the Titanic library cabinets were not selected by the White Star Line, being provided (and changed from time to time) under contract by the Times Book Club, so would have been mostly safe choices - books by well-known authors or which had at least been favourably reviewed. This could include popular histories, but nothing too academic.

 

[Sandy McLendon]

So, Bob....

No copies of Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, then?