In 1747, recent Yale graduate and aspiring (if unenthusiastic) lawyer William Livingston entered public life with the publication of Philosophic Solitude, a lengthy poem in which he imagined an idyllic life spent in rural retreat from the corruption and insincerity of high society. Livingston envisioned a life of intellectual stimulation in conversation with God, Nature, a carefully chosen circle of friends and wife, and the ideas contained in a carefully curated library.

In the years that followed, Livingston would find little of the solitude he craved, but he would continue to engage with the world of ideas in the public sphere. With two of his closest friends, he launched The Independent Reflector Or, Weekly Essays on Sundry Important Subjects, More Particularly Adapted to the Province of New-York, a short-lived but ambitious journal featuring essays on topics ranging from religion and education to immigration and free speech. In 1754, believing that accessibility to books was key to the enlightenment of American Society, Livingston and five other civic-minded New Yorkers founded the New York Society Library, a subscription library that survives today.

Like his fellow Enlightenment thinkers, Livingston believed not just in the power of books, but also in the power of education. In a 1755 letter to his cousin Philip, then a student at The College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in hopes of persuading him to stay in school, Livingston extolled, “. . . as learning is evidently growing into Fashion tis highly probable that by the time you are settled in the World, it will be a scandalous reflection on a . . . man of Distinction not to have the best education the country can afford.” Livingston’s belief in the importance of education was not just personal and familial: he advocated publicly for the creation of King’s College in New York City (that would eventually become Columbia University), but the free-thinking Presbyterian Livingston fought to ensure that the school not be connected to the Anglican Church.