About Us

The mission of The Center for Fiction is to promote the reading, writing, and enjoyment of literature. To accomplish this, the Library acquires works of fiction and related non-fiction and circulates these works to its members, provides low-cost work-space to individual writers and non-profit literary organizations, and produces and presents programs of literary interest.

The Center for Fiction was founded in 1820 by merchants and their clerks before the advent of public libraries. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was thriving as one of the foremost cultural institutions in the United States, with an extraordinary collection of books in the humanities, and a popular lecture program that featured such renowned speakers as William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain. The Library offered classes on many subjects and was considered a meeting place for social and educational pursuits.

The Library currently focuses on collecting and lending fiction, both literary and popular, presenting literary programs for the general public, and renting low-cost space to writers and other literary organizations. It has developed one of the best collections of fiction in the United States and had benefited from six National Endowment for the Humanities grants for literary programming in the past ten years. The Center for Fiction is a not-for-profit institution classified by the Internal Revenue Service as a public charity under the statute 501 (c) 3. Contributions to the Library are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law.