The Library of the British House of Commons was established in 1818 with the appointment of its first librarian, the conversion of a small committee room at the Palace of Westminster into library quarters, and the transfer of parliamentary papers, printed journals and tracts, and a small collection of books from several scattered locations. Soon outgrowing such limited quarters, the collections were installed in a new library designed by John Soane in 1827 in the Gothic-Revival style. By 1833 the Library had been enlarged further by the addition of two former committee rooms. This library, with most of its contents, was lost in the Great Fire of 1834, which destroyed the old Palace of Westminster. The new Houses of Parliament, designed by Sir Charles Barry and A. W. Pugin, included a spacious new Commons’ Library that opened in 1852. These quarters, with modest augmentations, constitute the Commons’ Library today.

Librarian of the House of Commons Dr. David Menhennet, who has written extensively on the history of the Commons’ Library, has described the library at the turn of the century: 

The Commons’ Library occupied, as it does today, a prime position in the ‘new’ Houses of Parliament. . . . [Members] could reach their Library in less than one minute’s walk from the chamber, and found themselves in a fine suite of four large and two small adjoining rooms running along the river front, with views over the Terrace towards St. Thomas’s hospital, Westminster Bridge, and Lambeth Palace. Situated on the principal floor of the building, the Library was thus well placed for ease of access not only from the chamber but from the lobbies, restaurants, and smoking rooms on the same floor and from the committee rooms on the floor immediately above. This strategic position was, and remains, a factor of crucial importance. Barry and Pugin intended that the Library should be a central amenity for Members during the long hours which they spent at Westminster and they must have seen that however handsome or spacious the apartments themselves might be, the latter would be under-used unless they were close to the chamber itself. Photographs taken at or towards the turn of the century show that the overall appearance of the Library, despite differences of detail in the arrangement of furniture, was very similar to the first impression which a visitor to the Library, at a time when the House is not sitting, has today. Dark-painted ceilings with their patterns reflected in the carpets, fine carved woodwork, silver-plated stationery racks and penholders on the long writing tables, green leather chairs and armchairs, large Gothic-style windows looking east across the Thames: these features have given the Library an air of dignity and com­fort from the start. (The House of Commons in the Twentieth Century [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979], pp. 612-613)

 The collections in the Commons’ Library, which predate somewhat the establishment of the Library itself, were in the first instance the official printed records of the House and volumes of parliamentary papers. A working reference collection was expanded and developed during the Library’s first decade; at the time of the 1834 conflagration, the holdings totaled about 6,000 volumes. The greatly enlarged space in the new Library of 1852 permitted not only the replacement of what had been lost in the fire but also a major expansion of the collections, which grew to about 30,000 volumes in five years (they total about 130,000 volumes today).

Although these continually expanding holdings concentrated on the mandated “Historical and Constitutional Information,” much general literature was also acquired: books on general subjects and the classics of English, French, Greek, and Latin literatures. By the turn of the century, the Library was being criticized for failing to adhere to collecting the strictly relevant literature and for being more of a “country gentleman’s library” than a modern legislative one. (A case can, and has, been made for importance to Members of Parliament of the ancient and modern classics which were frequently quoted or cited in debates, and especially of books in Latin and French, which were once official languages of the government.) The Commons’ Library responded slowly to these criticisms, however; its acquisitions policies changed little until after World War II, when postwar conditions demanded a parliamentary library more responsive to the members’ legislative needs.

Since 1946 the parliamentary holdings have assumed clear primacy—with many rare books, for example, being dispersed (whence the ex­ample of the bookplate on the cover) and a legislative reference library (Parliamentary Division) along with a research facility and staff (the Research Division) being developed. Today the Commons’ Library (use of which is limited for the most part to Members of Parliament) provides the services of a modern legislative library for its users: a reference and research library for the House, its committees, and individual Members. 

Bradford Stocker

St. Louis Public Library