Like the earlier 1829 catalogue, this 1833 catalogue of the journalist, bookseller, and pastoralist William McGarvie (1810-1841) pertains to a circulating library operating out of his bookshop, the Australian Stationary Warehouse, on Lower George Street, Sydney. The library’s fees and regulations are set out in the front of the catalogue. Unlike the previous catalogue, this catalogue is organised alphabetically by title with volume numbers printed to the left of titles. The number of volumes has increased substantially from 469 volumes in 1,829 to 1849 volumes in 1833.
Of the 1,849 titles held in the library’s collection, the primary genres are novels, romances, and tales; short stories; histories, voyages, and travels; biographies, correspondence, and memoirs; and poetry. Of these genres, novels (especially romances) are still by far the most prevalent. Among the numerous popular Minerva Press romances, such as Agnes Lancaster’s Abbess of Valtiera; or, Sorrow of Falsehood, (1816), Regina Maria Roche’s Castle Chapel: A Romantic Tale (1825), and Ann Julia Hatton’s Gerald Fitzgerald: An Irish Tale (1830), are novels by Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Daniel Defoe, Henry Mackenzie, Cervantes, Washington Irving, Maria Edgeworth, John and Michael Banim, Francis Burney, Goethe, Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Maturin, James Fenimore Cooper, Sophia Lee, John Galt, Catherine Porter, Francis Burney, William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Mary Brunton, Charlotte Lennox, Jane Porter, Anna Maria Porter, Mary Hays, Alain-René Lesage, Madame de Glenlis, and Madam de Stael. The amount of poetry in the collection has increased significantly since 1829, now including works by Milton, Pope, Percy, Beattie, Bowring, Goldsmith, Cowper, Akenside, Smollett, Young, and Ann Campbell. The number of works of history and so-called ‘general literature’ has also increased, now including works by Lord Kames, Smith, Paley, Cleland, Voltaire, Rousseau, Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Macgill, and Voltaire. Surprisingly, there are no works of Shakespeare in the collection, although Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales makes an appearance.
PF
