Without a central figure, did how the Turgenev Library present itself, and how did it operate? Apart from the ads, let us examine another part of the catalogues: the page for general information and membership rules, similar to the Shakespeare & Co’s flyer in terms of content and function. There are two versions, printed at the beginning of the 1924 belletristic catalogue and at the end of the 1929 catalogue respectively (fig. 3-18 & 3-19). Both pages contain the name (in Russian and then French) and address (in French and then Russian) of the Library, followed by: a chart of the opening hours (rather limited, as previously discussed); a note indicating that subscription is available by mail in France and overseas; an overview of the available genres; a note saying that the library is always open for new donations, elaborated in the 1929 version, specifying donations “of books and journals published in Russia or abroad,” which reveals a hope to explicitly broaden the scope of the types and sources of reading materials being solicited.

After the generic information, there is a “правила подписки” section, which is translated and summarized as below: Prospective members will pay a deposit of 20 francs for each book and 50 centimes of subscription fee. The reading fee is 3 francs per book per month, to be paid in advance on the first day of the next month. When calculating for an incomplete month, the reading fee will be charged weekly, or daily (15 centimes per book per day). Those who are unable to pay the reading fee can be exempted by the Board for three months and borrow one book. For nonresidents, the deposit (20 francs) and subscription fee (50 centimes) remain the same, but the reading fee would be 3 francs 50 centimes per month per book. Books can be sent by registered packages at the expense of the subscriber. An additional deposit is required for rare or valuable books. Books and magazines are given out for two weeks, or one month for nonresidents. The latest issues of magazines or books with great demand are given out for a week or two days. Requests to keep the book for a longer period should be declared to the librarian verbally or in writing.

Upon first reading, these rules are confusing; the co-existence of a subscription fee (абонементныйлистск) and a reading fee (плата за чтеше) seem superfluous and rather unclear: is the 50 centimes of subscription fee charged monthly/periodically or a one-time expense? For the reading fee, what does it to calculate for an incomplete month (“при разсчег за неполный месяц”)? Does it mean calendar months (i.e. if the reader joins the library on the 15^th of April, s/he would pay half of the monthly price to be able to borrow books for the rest of that month), or self-prescribed time periods (i.e. a reader could choose to borrow books for just two weeks in a given month and thus only pays half of the monthly fee)?

It might be difficult to interpret these rules without placing them in context. We can start by comparing them to the subscription rules of Shakespeare & Co. from one of their 1920 flyers shown below. Sylvia Beach’s library takes only 7 francs of deposit per book, but charges 8 francs (of what seems to be equivalent to Turgenev’s reading fee) per book per month, with additional options of borrowing two books at a time (for 12 francs per month) and of longer subscription periods (3 months, 6 months, or 1 year). Shakespeare & Co. presents the various subscription options in legible chart format, and without a separate subscription fee like the 50 centimes charged by the Turgenev, making the whole system appear clear to the readers.

The most striking difference between the two pricing systems lies in the discrepancy between the deposit and the reading fees. The 50-centime subscription fee aside, the Turgenev Library charges a deposit three times as high as Shakespeare & Co., but less than half of the latter’s monthly reading fee. It is unlikely that Russian books were generally three times as expensive as English books in Paris at the time, so the pricing might reflect the two libraries’ operative values and priorities rather than the market economy. The Turgenev Library was more concerned with keeping the books safe and within circulation, perhaps because many of the books were smuggled out of Russia precariously by fellow émigrés and therefore rare or valuable. The Library was making an effort to make sure that people who wanted to read books would be able to, instituting such initiatives as short-term (i.e. three months of) fee exemption for those experiencing hardship, presumably a common situation for recent émigrés who had just escaped from Russia and not yet achieved financial stability in the new environment. It remains unclear who exactly the Board (Правление) constituted, as the decision maker on these exemptions. This flexibility, inclusivity and generosity on the part of the Library suggests that it resembled more of a non-profit cultural organization than a commercial venture. Charging a larger reading fee than the deposit suggests the opposite for Shakespeare & Co. – not that making-money was to be condemned, but that Sylvia Beach did need the income from the subscriptions to support the publishing of new works (e.g. helping James Joyce publish Ulysses), on top of sustaining the operations of the library.

With a similar logic, the overdue fines were explicitly laid out on Shakespeare & Co.’s flyer (0.1 francs a day for each volume, and 0.15 addition for magazines and reviews), yet unmentioned in the Turgenev’s case. Those wanting an extension on their borrowing term only had to inform the librarian (again, it did not seem to matter who exactly the librarian was; if there were multiple, we could assume that an internal system of record keeping and exchange was in place to ensure that such information would be shared in time). It is unclear what the overdue consequences would be, if any.

The Turgenev Library’s 1929 catalogue maintained the same membership rules, besides a proportional raise of prices (deposit - from 20 to 30 francs; subscription fee – from 50 to 75 centimes; reading fee – from 3 to 5 francs of per month per book), which most likely results from a general inflation in the French economy around that time. There were no systematic changes in the Library’s pricing or financial structures. Shakespeare & Co., in contrast, gradually developed a new system of subscription throughout the 1920s and 30s, evidenced by an undated pamphlet from those decades (see below). Rates increased across the board for about three times as before, a sharper raise than that of the Turgenev (about 1.5 times), suggesting that this version of the subscription fees dates to a later time than the 1929 Turgenev catalogue, likely in the 30s when France was affected by the Great Depression, later than many other countries. Notably, by this point Beach had also started charging a high deposit – 50 francs per book, a drastic increase from the previous 7 francs – perhaps due to a high volume of books being lost at the hands of the borrowing members.

A major change is the installation of two membership categories: “Subscription A” for “all books excepting those that appeared within the last twelve months,” and “Subscription B” which included “the new books.” The rules seem quite harsh, and discrepancy between the two categories is significant: the latter’s monthly fee for one book is even more expensive than the former’s for two books; new books could only be borrowed for a week (versus two weeks for ordinary books), or else came with a 2 franc/day overdue fine (versus 0.5 francs/day for ordinary books). The Turgenev Library also held a distinction between ordinary books and new/in-demand books or journals (“последние номера журналов, новые книги или те, накоторые есть большой спрос”), but only in terms of borrowing length, not price.

Perhaps Shakespeare & Co.’s members were more intent on reading the most up-to-date works, and the overwhelming demand prompted Beach to charge extra, so that the less wealthy readers might opt for the more budget-friendly “Subscription A” and wait for a year to read the new materials. As we have seen from the list of books borrowed by the sample group, most Turgenev readers did not borrow the newest publications (i.e. published within a year), but rather older classics or contemporary works from the past several years or the past decade. While this might result from a lack of means to acquire the most recent publications, it could explain why the Turgenev did not need two subscription categories.

Beach could also have devised this dual-category method to encourage buying. It is easily forgotten yet crucial that unlike the Turgenev, Shakespeare & Company is both a lending library and a bookshop, which means that it would want to expose readers to a variety of books, including the newest publications, but not necessarily making everything available for borrowing. Reviews and magazines, for example, “are not lent but can be read in the library, or purchased.” By making new books either more expensive or on-site-use only, the library would increase its revenue through both subscriptions and sales.

Another notable difference between the two pricing systems is that Shakespeare & Co. had multiple options for longer subscription periods, which suggest an expectation for long-term membership. Though membership dates are not available on SCP’s open source exportable dataset, they are featured on the website’s searchable “Members” section, and a quick count through a random 100-member sample in that section yields around 30 members who were active for more than one year, a higher percentage than the Turgenev sample we have been working with, where 19 out of 103 members have multiple years of activity recorded on their cards. Due to the incompleteness of the Turgenev archive, however, this data might not be conclusive enough to suggest that Shakespeare & Co. was indeed more successful in retaining members over the years.

The Turgenev Library shone on the opposite end of the spectrum: it had options for weekly or daily subscriptions, offering great flexibility for readers who might have been moving around, not yet settled, or about to depart, and thus unable to commit for a whole month of subscription. This feature is consistent with the Library’s aforementioned reader-centric mode of operation. Shakespeare & Co. partially adopted this feature in its later version of the subscription rules, offering “Subscription A” holders the opportunity to borrow new books (which would be typically outside of their category’s permissions) at an additional charge of 2 francs per day, ten times the Turgenev’s daily reading fee (20 centimes in the 1929 version). While it did allow some flexibility for readers to both hold a cheaper subscription and occasionally indulge in the newest publications, the fee might be deterring, and would have forced one to read very quickly, or else end up buying the book.

Last but not least, the two libraries had contrasting approaches towards non-resident readers. In the new price sheet, Shakespeare & Co. charged those “who do not live in Paris” 10% extra, on top of the carriage of books by registered post. This extra portion would amount to 2.5 francs for “Subscription A” and 5 francs for “Subscription B” in the new price sheet. The Turgenev Library also charged the mailing fee, but only 50 centimes extra per month in both 1924 and 1929. Beach perhaps adopted the extra charge as the Library began to attract more and more members living outside of Paris or even France, to offset the labor costs of dealing with mailing – human resources are precious, considering that Shakespeare & Co. was mostly a one-person endeavor - and the risk of losing books in the process. It would be easier if those readers simply bought the books, so that books did not have to be mailed back for forth. Such was not a major concern for the Turgenev: with a relatively larger staff and a commitment to support émigrés wherever they were located, the Library even allowed for a longer borrowing term for nonresidents – one month versus two weeks for the locals – presumably to account for the time spent on transit. This attests to the Library’s decentralized network as its operative model.

Is the Turgenev Library more accessible, more democratic than Shakespeare & Co. then? That would be an oversimplification, as there are many factors at play within each library’s administrative decision-making process. Ideology is a part of it, but there are also practicalities. The library is a process rather than a finite product, an ever-evolving space that connects to myriad other spaces, real or imaginary. This project itself has become one of these spaces; an archive of an archive, a process about a process.

Works Cited:

Joshua Kotin, “Becoming a Member of the Shakespeare and Company Lending Library.”

“Members,” Shakespeare and Company Project, version 0.29.0, Center for Digital Humanities, Princeton University.