Leighton Library, Dunblane

Scotland's oldest purpose-built independent library founded in 1687

Leighton Library has 1785 edition of "Chrysal : or, The adventures of a guinea" by Charles Johnstone

Added at 08:16 on 05 June 2025

#OnThisDay 5 June 1821, Mrs Hutcheson, a borrower at the Leighton Library, borrowed the library's 1785 edition of "Chrysal : or, The adventures of a guinea" by Irish writer Charles Johnstone. This was one of the first of what became an immensely popular eighteenth century genre known as "it-narratives" which tells the tale of an object (in this case, a coin) being passed from person to person and relaying the tales of conversations with scandals and human intrigue to which it bears witness. The book was so successful after its first publication in 1760 that the author brought out an expanded 4-volume version in 1765. The Leighton Library has two volumes from 1785 (xx & viii).

The Borrower, Mrs Hutcheson, was from Glasgow. She'd taken out a subscription to the Leighton Library on 20 May 1821, for the sum of 2 shillings and sixpence.

If you'd like to explore what other books were borrowed on this day in the Leighton Library then you can search the "Books and Borrowing: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers, 1750-1830" website database accessible from the Leighton Library website https://www.leightonlibrary.org.uk/books-and-borrowing-1750-1830

< Leighton Library has 1764 edition of "Philosophie rurale ou Économie générale et politique de l'agriculture" by FrVictor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau & François Quesnay Leighton Library has 1689 first edition of "Dissertationes in Irenaeum" by Henry Dodwell >