Historically, prison libraries have not had narrower book holdings than have public libraries. The pioneering public libraries that Thomas Bray established in American about 1700 held a higher share of religious books than did the prison library in Philadelphia in 1809. Nineteenth-century U.S. prison libraries held recent best-sellers, as well as books that were publicly controversial.

Overall, the distribution of book holdings in mid-nineteenth-century U.S. prison libraries was roughly comparable with book holdings in broadly used libraries outside prisons. The New York Society Library, a subscription library, was the largest library in New York City in 1850. At that time, it held about 22% fiction, literature, and poetry and 11% religious titles. The Library’s leadership deliberately reduced the share of novels from 8.4% in 1838 to 3.3% in 1850 in order to better promote the “march of improvement” in society.^ The Apprentices’ Library of New York City, a large library open to apprentices at no cost, held 27% fiction titles and 10% religious titles in 1855.

Given considerable scope for inconsistency in classifying books, nineteenth-century prison libraries had broadly similar book distributions to those of public libraries. New York State prison libraries about 1850 held 16% fiction and 31% religious books. The Philadelphia prison library in 1854 held 20% fiction and 16% religious books. Prisoners, on average, almost surely were less educated and less wealthy than users of the New York Society Library and the Apprentices’ Library. Adjusting book holdings for library user characteristics other than imprisonment status would make the prison and non-prison library collections even more similar. In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe were the novels most frequently found in prison libraries.^ Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe were also among the most popular books for the working classes outside of prison in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain.^

While the composition of collections in prison and non-prison libraries changed across the nineteenth century, both types of libraries still had roughly similar collections in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1893, the U.S. Bureau of Education and the American Library Association (ALA), with extensive help from the New York State Library and the enthusiastic support of Melvil Dewey, issued a premier, authoritative list of books recommended for the average public library. In a prefatory letter, the U.S. Commissioner of Education declared:

Sir: I have the honor to transmit for publication a catalog of a model library of 5000 volumes selected by experts of the American Library Association, and representing as nearly as possible the 5000 books that a new library ought to obtain first for its collection.^ ^

That list included 29% fiction, literature, and poetry and 4% religious works. In 1877, the New York Prison Association’s catalog of recommended books for prison libraries included 37% fiction, literature, and poetry, and 15% religious works. In 1883, the prison library in the Southern Illinois State Penitentiary at Chester held 47% fiction, literature, and poetry and 13% religious works. The relatively utilitarian, information-oriented ethos of the public library movement may account for the somewhat lower share of imaginative and religious works in the 1893 American Library Association model public library catalog. Across the nineteenth century, the share of religious books decreased, and the share of fiction, literature, and poetry increased, in both prison and non-prison library collections. Both prison and non-prison libraries maintained broadly similar book distributions across the nineteenth century.