Lukemisen murrosaika - lukuseura ja varhaiset kirjastot Raahen kirjakulttuurissa

摘要

As a result of German and Anglo-American influence, reading societies were founded in Finland and Sweden in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In Finland these societies were organized by Swedish-speaking educated people across social class borders, which was exceptional at that time. Even though there are several pieces of research work on reading societies and their subscription libraries, there are almost none dealing with reading societies in the coastal cities of northern Finland, such as Oulu, Raahe, and Tornio. The article examines the subscription library founded in Raahe in 1821. The publication dates of the books in the library reveal that, in the beginning, the members of the society had a small collection with nearly equal amounts of fiction and non-fiction in their use. In the late 1820s the collection mostly consisted of more recent novels. Almost three-quarters of the literature published after 1825 was fiction, and most of the works were new, translated novels. Most of the fiction was translated from English, but German and French prose and drama also made up a significant part of the collection. Walter Scott and James Cooper had the largest number of single works in the collection, and historical novels were extremely popular among the people in Raahe. After the censorship authorities demanded that a tenth of the 174 works in the collection were to be impounded in 1830, the reading society announced that it would close down. The reading society was not only temporarily discontinued, as in Kokkola, where the society continued its operation in a more private manner. In Raahe the books were distributed among the members of the society and volumes were relocated in private collections. None of the forbidden books were given to the authorities. Even though the society's book collection was scattered, a project set up to create a popular library in the mid-1800s revived the idea of a jointly owned book collection for common use. Articles written in the 1860s and 1870s about Raahe's popular lending library show that it was rarely used by the Swedish-speaking upper class. The library was originally founded in the spirit of popular enlightenment to serve the common people, and the collection consisted mostly of books and newspapers written in or translated into Finnish.%Ruotsiin ja Suomeen perustettiin 1700-luvun lopulla ja 1800-luvun alussa pääosin Saksasta ja angloamerikkalaisista maista omaksuttujen mallien mukaisia lukuseu-roja. Suomessa seurojen toimintaan otti osaa ruotsinkielistä kaupunkilaisväestöä yli säätyrajojen, mikä oli poikkeuksellista. Mukana oli myöhemmin myös naisia joko taustalla tai miehensä osakkuuden perineinä. Lukuseurojen ylläpitämiä kirjastoja kutsuttiin lukukirjastoiksi. Maamme ensimmäinen lukukirjasto perustettiin Vaasaan vuonna 1794. Vaasan lukuseuran perustamisvuotta on alettu pitää Suomen yleisten kirjastojen alkuna, joskin kiistanalaisesti. Myöhemmin lukukirjastonsa sai tusina muutakin kaupunkia.