Guild sold books from his shop at no.8 State Street from around 1785 until 1786, when he moved to Cornhill (1786-1792).[12] In addition to the bookshop, he ran a circulating library, one of the first in post-war Boston. The library contained "several thousands" of volumes, which, according to its 1787 newspaper advertisement "will furnish such a fund of amusement and information as cannot fail to entertain every class of readers ... whether solitary or social -- political or professional -- serious or gay."[13] Subscribers paid eight dollars per year, or "two dollars per quarter -- to have the liberty of taking out two books at a time and no more -- to change them as often as the subscriber pleases -- and no book to be retained longer than one month."[14] Guild stipulated that "any book lost, abused, leaves folded down, writ upon or torn, must be paid for."[14] After his death in 1792, Guild's bookshop and library were taken over by William P. Blake.[15]
Among the titles in Guild's circulating library in 1789:[16]
^"Mr. Benjamin Guild, late tutor of Harvard College, lately arrived from Holland, and who saw Mr. [John] Adams there in August last ..." cf. Salem Gazette, November 15, 1781
^American Recorder and the Charlestown Advertiser, June 6, 1786
^"Charter of Incorporation", Records of the Academy (American Academy of Arts and Sciences), no. 1964/1965, p. 38
^E. W. Pitcher (1980), "Fiction in the Boston Magazine (1783-1786): A Checklist with Notes on Sources", William and Mary Quarterly, 37 (3): 473–483, doi:10.2307/1923813, JSTOR1923813
^Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser, October 26, 1786
An addition to a catalogue of a large assortment of books ... to be let or sold by Benjamin Guild at the Boston Book Store, no.59 Cornhill, Boston, 1788
New select catalogue of Benjamin's Guild's circulating library ... at the Boston Book-Store, Boston: Benjamin Guild, 1789
