‘Educate a Woman and You Educate a Generation’

This essay discusses the geographies of learning and the vital creative cultural space of the public library. Discussion attends to how public libraries have facilitated emancipatory spaces for learning, highlighting the importance of the public library both in its employment of and the cultural opportunities it has afforded women. Based on verbatim records, a creatively written account of a pre-school parent's book club shows how individual librarians and library users have come together to 'stage' a book club held within a public library. It records the vital enrichment of collective book reading to a group of people who may otherwise get forgotten in discussions of cultural need, and serves as a reminder of how public libraries are able to facilitate the habit of reading enriching the lives of those involved and who witness such an act.