Innerpeffray, Scotland’s first lending library, has welcomed readers from all walks of life since 1680
The pages of the borrowers’ register for Innerpeffray library are crowded with lines of arching inky script. It is open at the year 1870, and notes the prompt return by the schoolgirl Helen Boyd of The Lamplighter, a popular novel about an orphan’s salvation. On the opposite page, the aptly named Thomas Stalker, a local gamekeeper, took home the Lifeworks of Robert Burns.
This register, spanning across two centuries, offers a unique reading history of a rural Perthshire community. It is one of the many quietly astonishing artefacts to be discovered at Scotland’s first free, public lending library, which on Friday receives a funding boost that should allow it to proclaim its treasure trove for bibliophiles more widely.
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