Old Library, Bristol

Old Library, Bristol
Location within Bristol
General information
Town or city	Bristol
Country	England
Coordinates	51°27′07″N 2°35′44″W / 51.451920°N 2.595460°W / 51.451920; -2.595460
Completed	1740

The Old Library (grid reference ST587727) is a historic building on the north side of King Street, Bristol, England. It was built in 1738–40 and has been designated by English Heritage as a grade II* listed building.

Until 1906 it housed the main collections of Bristol's public library, which was one of the first in England when it was founded in 1613 on the same site. Users of the library included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and Humphry Davy. From 1779 the building also contained one of the country's first public displays of fossils.

Founded in 1613, Bristol's public library was only preceded in England by those of Norwich in 1608 and Ipswich in 1612. It was originally housed in the King Street lodge of Bristol merchant Robert Redwood, who donated it to Bristol Corporation. When this building decayed the city replaced it in 1738–40 on the same site.

In 1772 the King Street library was taken over by the Bristol Library Society, a subscription library. Over time its private membership would include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and Humphry Davy. Southey joined in 1793 and his very first borrowing, William Enfield's History of Philosophy, contained utopian material which gave him ideas for a "Southeyopolis", recorded in his correspondence of that year. This was months in advance of his development of Pantisocracy with Coleridge in 1794. In 1795 his borrowings of Classical history books corresponded to topics he was covering in a series of public lectures in Bristol.