New York Mercantile Library
Coordinates: 40°45′22.93″N 73°58′38.23″W / 40.7563694°N 73.9772861°W
The Center for Fiction, originally called the New York Mercantile Library, is a not-for-profit organization in New York City at 17 East 47th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues in Midtown Manhattan, which works to promote fiction and literature and to give support to writers. It originated in 1820 as the (New York) Mercantile Library and in 2005 changed its name to the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction. although it presents itself as simply "The Center for Fiction".
The Center, which is one of 17 remaining membership libraries in the United States, three of which are in New York City, maintains a large circulating library of 20th and 21st century fiction, in addition to many stored volumes of 19th century fiction. It also stocks non-fiction volumes on subjects related to literature. It maintains a Reading Room, operates a curated independent bookstore primarily featuring works of fiction, rents space to writers at low cost, and presents literary programs to the public. The organization also awards the annual Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
The foundation of the Mercantile Library Association was instigated by the New York Chamber of Commerce, which placed newspaper advertisements in November 1820 asking merchant clerks to meet at a local coffee house to discuss forming an organization based on the Mercantile Library in Boston, which had been created earlier that year. The purpose of the new organization was to provide the city's growing population of clerks with an alternative to what were considered to be immoral entertainments and other vices of the city.
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