The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. Glimpses at the Rural Library Problems in Ireland. Part 1 & Part 2. Publisher’s green title wrappers bound together in half morocco, marbled boards. Repair to front & rear wrapper of Part 1, otherwise a fine bright set.

Published for the information of the Trustees only, and strictly confidential.

Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-American industrialist, donated a substantial sum of $10 million to establish the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust in 1913. The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust played a significant role in shaping the landscape of public libraries in Ireland. The trust funded the construction of 603 libraries in the United Kingdom and 62 libraries in Ireland.

In Ireland between the years 1915 and 1917 the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust commissioned two reports into the situation of rural libraries. The reports found that the rural district schemes instigated by the Trust had, for the most part, been a failure. These reports were written by two men who worked tirelessly for the promotion of the library ideal, the (Abbey) playwright Lennox Robinson and a librarian from the Co-operative Reference Library, Cruise O’Brien, father of the political commentator Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Their observations give a fascinating and humorous insight into the social standing of public libraries in the Ireland of the early 1900s and are of much value from a socio-historic point of view. They give a glimpse of a pre-industrial Ireland, a country very much rooted in an old rural way of life, suffering quietly from the ravages inflicted by war and poverty yet poised to become a new republic with all its attendant opportunities and problems. [Irish Rural Libraries: Glimpses of the Past: Mícheál Ó hAodha]