Two illustrated partridge cochins from The New Book of Poultry.

Library

Our library is the most significant specialist collection of printed material in the country for the study of the history of British agriculture, the countryside and rural society. Its role is to gather and make accessible resources which provide a record of rural life and agricultural history. 

The collection of about 80,000 volumes includes rare books, modern reference works and publications, pamphlets and periodicals, from the 1500s to the present day. 

Designed as a browsing library, the collection has its own classification scheme. There are uniquely accessible, extensive runs of historically significant farming and countryside journals from the nineteenth century onwards. 

The very wide-ranging collections embrace subjects such as: 

  • farming through the ages 
  • agricultural technology 
  • history of food and diet 
  • perceptions of the countryside 
  • social history of the countryside 
  • garden and landscape history 
  • the politics of land use 
  • conservation issues 
  • local history 

Early editions of publications by many important writers from the history of British agriculture are present, including works by Anthony Fitzherbert, Thomas Tusser, Walter Blith, John Worlidge, Arthur Young and Jethro Tull.

The library collections are complemented by material held in the University of Reading rare book collections (on the same site), particularly in the Overstone Library and the Reserve Collection.

Among the treasures of the collections is a 1471 edition of Crescentius’s Ruralia commoda, considered to be the first printed book on agriculture, husbandry and horticulture, and two copies of George Garrard’s A description of the different varieties of oxen, common in the British Isles (1800), an album of fine hand-coloured engravings of prize cattle.

Items from the library collections are on display in The MERL’s galleries where they tell the story of the English countryside, alongside items from the object and archive collections.

Specialist subject collections

More information