Library Reading Chair

A chair in the corner of the library that a reader could use to sit forward or backward. It has red leather on its seat and armrests, and a surface for writing attached at the top of the chairback.

Library Reading Chair

This style of chair with an adjustable book rest is probably derived from a design illustrated in Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book (1794). Sheraton writes in his text that the chair was intended "to make the exercise [of reading] easy, and for the convenience of taking down a note or quotation from any subject." Currently, the book on the rest is The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. by William Makepeace Thackeray.