'The whole tragedy of leisure in penury': The South Wales Miners' Institute libraries during the Great Depression

From the late 1860s, the mining communities of South Wales developed a distinctive form of general library linked to well over a hundred miners' institutes. These libraries were genuine working-class facilities, largely funded, run, and managed by the communities in which they were located. As the economic depression of the late 1920s exacerbated the slump in the British coal-mining industry, these miners' institute libraries experienced increasing financial difficulties and turned to external bodies, including public libraries, social service agencies, and government-funded schemes, for assistance. This prolonged their existence but undermined the very independence that made them so unique.