James McCowan's Library
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... Half a century later, the library of James McCowan, tenant of the Stockbridge Coalworks, bore a more modest yet strikingly diversified character. Apart from a number of bibles and "Psalms of David", McCowan's library included:
McCowan's library comprises a good example of the range of human responses to the profound social and economic changes of the late eighteenth / early nineteenth centuries: evangelical Christianity; Scottish history; the romanticized Scottish past; and a curiosity for others within the widening sphere of British influence. The sorry plight of those wrested from the soil into poverty by the relentless forces of economic change was another theme in the early nineteenth century literature. The rural cottar society had been destroyed and some writers thought not that it should be forgotten:
Politics and the reform movement was another reaction that received more and more attention in the media as social problems became increasingly acute. In the British government's response to the French Revolution, many of the Scottish authors of this type of literature were charged with sedition. From When The Ground Fails: An Economic Watershed
James McCowan took his wife, eight children -- and his precious library -- from Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, to Scarborough, Upper Canada, in 1833. James’ library, letters and an account book were left with his fourth son William. William’s executor was Alexander McCowan. Alex’ daughter, Georgina, and then her brother David A. came into possession of the bulk of the collection. With respect to James McCowan's interest in other cultures, including Hindooism, we suspect that George McCowan, Surgeon to His Majesty's Police of Calcutta, may have been one of his cousins with whom he corresponded. |