"Founded in 1797, the Athenaeum is a unique remnant of Georgian Liverpool's cultural renaissance and one of only a handful of subscription libraries surviving from the eighteenth centure on either side of the Atlantic. In the course of two generations, Liverpool had grown from a small fishing community of little more than 5000 people to a bustling transoceanic port of well over 70,000 and the second city of the burgeoning British Empire. The Athenaeum was established to marry commercial success with cultural prestige, and the documents presented here - including the original proposals for the new institution together with its first Minute Book, chronicling committee meetings from 1797 though to 1809 - detail how members went about building their institution, its rule book and its book collection. These documents shed detailed light on the intellectual and commercial concerns that motivated eighteenth century Britons to found voluntary subscription libraries, while also pointing to the importance of books, news, information, coffee and social space in their daily lives"--jacket flap.