H.E. Bates Companion

One of a number of submissions on the hundredth anniversary of the first Public Libraries Act. Bates writes: "More than half my education came from the shelves of the public library. There I browsed, groped, read and took first steps into the literary dark. Without it I should have had no easy access to literature, no means of forming for myself comparative standards of expression. It was my literary nursery." In The Library Assistant (August 1950, v. 43, no. 7, page 105).