Established in 1837, the Singapore Institution Library (1837-1844) occupied a single room of the newly completed Singapore Institution. Although primarily a school library with free borrowing rights for students, teachers, and donors of the Singapore Institution Free School, access was free for members of the public. Lending privileges were extended for a fee of 25 cents per month, making it the colony’s first subscription library. Printed within the Singapore Institution Free School Management Report for 1837-1838, this catalogue lists 476 titles. Given that numerous titles are listed more than once (i.e. once within a larger collection of volumes and once in their own right), the actual number of books in the library is similar to the 350 titles listed in the 1843 catalogue of the same library.
As to be expected in a school library, the books stocked are mostly biographies, travels, histories, geographies, natural histories, and dictionaries, with very few imaginative works: 2 novels by Walter Scott (Chronicles of the Canongate (1827-8) and Kenilworth (1821)), and only those poetic works extracted in Samuel Johnson’s 75-volume Lives of the Poets (1779-1781). Many of the books are part of useful or improving collections considered suitable for families and school children; for example, the Family Library (75 volumes). Also of interest are titles such as Sarah Trimmer’s Instructive Tales (1810); John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) (in Bengali and English); and Richard Baxter’s devotional tract A Call to the Unconverted (1669) (in Bengali and English).
PF
