MUDIE'S

Evening Star, Issue 22460, 3 October 1936, Page 23

MUDIE'S

For woll-nigb a century now, Mudie’s select library has been a literary landmark in London, and the name “ Mudie ” synonomous with books throughout the English-speaking world, so that it is a matter for regret that the famous library has fallen on hard times, even to the extent of the appointment of a receiver. The library is not, however, to disappear. Subscribers have received a definite assurance to that effect, so that the millions of books to which it nould lay claim when it was transferred from its original home in New Oxford street to its new building in Kingsway, six years ago, will not be dispersed. Charles E. Mudie sot up a subscription library in Bloomsbury—at a penny a volume—in 1844. He was the author of several hymns, and the first English publisher of dames Russell Lowell’s poems. About 1860 the library—with a catalogue of rather less than 5,000 hooks—began its long association with New Oxford street. M hen the last of the Mudies, Mr Arthur O. Mudie, died in 1933, at Ihe age of 88, the catalogue had multiplied its contents by 200.