# The Best Hundred Books/What Books are most Read

WHAT BOOKS ARE MOST READ.
WE now pass from what ought to be to what is. On the whole the transition has not been so painful to us as might have been expected. The Free Public Libraries of which we give statistics below, are no doubt fairly typical; and although the readers in the large towns have still much to learn from Sir John Lubbock and our other authorities, their literary taste appears meanwhile to be as healthy as could reasonably be expected. Mr. Ruskin will be pleased to hear that "Gibbon and Grote are oftener begun than finished," although his satisfaction will be dashed on learning that Darwin's "Origin of Species" circulates "almost like a popular novel." Carlyle is read, but "not so much as he was a year or two ago": is this the result, one wonders, of Mr. Froude's candid friendship? It may be an illustration of the saying that novelists have usurped the functions of preachers, that in nearly all the public libraries "Prose Fiction" is most demand, "Religion" in least.
Birmingham.
Our statistics in the case of Birmingham refer not to books issued at the free libraries themselves, but to books lent out for home reading from the central lending library. This is clearly the better test of the two as to a town's choice of books; readers at the library itself sip and skim, they take home what they really enjoy. We give the first six favourites in each of the divisions of the library, although, in view of the greater run on fiction, we enlarge the number under that head to twenty:—
Fiction.
Poetry.
Biography, History, and Travel.
Arts, Sciences, &c.
Classics and Modern Languages.
Miscellaneous Literature.
Theology and Philosophy.
Darlington.
Here, too, the facts sent us by the librarian applied to the lending library, but the number of times the different books had been read in the course of a year was not given. Those which were generally in most request were enumerated, but we unfortunately have not space to print the list here. We regret to notice that the librarian's list of the hundred books which are the favourites with his clients includes only nine of those given by Sir John Lubbock.
Portsmouth.
The figures here present very much the same general features as those given for Birmingham:—
| Fiction | 283,539 |
| Voyage and Travel | 12,287 |
| Magazines | 7,166 |
| General Literature | 5,660 |
| History | 2,595 |
| Science and "Useful" Arts | 2,399 |
| Law and Politics | 2,289 |
| Educational | 2,275 |
| Poetry and the Drama(including Classics) | 2,255 |
| Natural History | 2,065 |
| Biography | 2,008 |
| Religion and Philosophy | 1,267 |
| | 325,805 |
Liverpool.
Mr. Peter Cowell, the chief Librarian of the Liverpool Free Libraries, sent us the following table, in addition to some interesting remarks, from which we have quoted above, and for which we regret not to be able to find room. The table shows the number of volumes issued last year and their classification:—
| | Classification. | Volumes. | Daily Average. |
| 1. | Prose Fiction | 215,403 | 755 |
| 2. | Miscellancous Literature (principally collected Works, Magazines in Volumes, &c.) | 147.241 | 515 |
| 3. | Heraldry, Encyclopædias, and Works of Reference | 56,923 | 199 |
| 4 . | Science and the Arts | 32,781 | 115 |
| 5. | History and Biography | 30,161 | 105 |
| 6. | Theology, Morals, &c | 25,085 | 87 |
| 7. | Natural Philosophy, Astronomy, &c. | 21,732 | 77 |
| 8. | Poetry and Dramatic Literature | 13,446 | 47 |
| 9. | Voyages and Travels | 13,045 | 45 |
| 10. | Education and Language | 10,504 | 37 |
| 11. | Topography and Antiquities | 8,983 | 31 |
| 12. | Natural History | 8,597 | 31 |
| 13. | Jurisprudence, Law, and Politics | 6,256 | 21 |
| 14. | Commerce, Political Economy, and Statistics | 4,839 | 17 |
| 15. | Latin and Greek Classics, and Translations | 4,837 | 17 |
| | Total | 599,844 | 2,099 |