Reading Walter Scott on the Solway Firth: Books and Borrowing at the Wigtown Subscription Library, 1828–36

This article analyzes a previously unstudied set of borrowing records covering 1828–36 from the Wigtown Subscription Library in Galloway, southwest Scotland. It describes the context of the library and key features of this borrowing data, including the finding that forty-one Walter Scott titles accounted for 19 percent of all borrowing in this period. Galloway famously provided the outland setting of Scott's Guy Mannering (1815); this borrowing data enables an alternative view of the region and his influence on it. The article argues that readers at the Wigtown library were encountering an expansive network of "thickly" described localities through Scott.