Establishing and Promoting the Book Wagon: Mary Lemist Titcomb’s Negotiations of Gender, Class, and Region

Abstract In 1905, the librarian Mary Lemist Titcomb sent her library’s janitor into the Maryland countryside with a wagon full of books, thereby establishing the first bookmobile in the United States. Titcomb was a deliberate rhetor who proactively distributed her writings to encourage the adoption of the book wagon throughout the United States and the world. She used place-based rhetoric to establish her own ethos. She also leveraged her material environment in order to promote the book wagon, speak back to negative stereotypes of rural people, and negotiate gender and class associations surrounding librarians and their place.