Description

Mentioned in letter no 42. CMY mentions in Old Times at Otterbournethat a lending library for poor people was also run through the Penny Club with books originally given in memory of James Yonge by his grieving father the Rev. John Yonge: ‘In 1834 their father gave what made, as it were the second foundation of the Lending Library, for there were about four-and-twenty very serious books, given in Archdeacon Heathcote’s time, kept in the vestry at the old Church.  They looked as if they had been read but only by the elder people who liked a grave book, and there was nothing there meant for the young people.  So there were a good many new books bought, and weekly given out at the Penny Club, with more or less vigour, for the next thirty years or so.’ The Club was evidently still going in 1870, when Mary Yonge seems to have taken over her sister Anne’s subscription of 2/2.