The Van Diemen’s Land Mechanics’ Institute was established in 1827 and was the first institute to open in Australia. Consisting of approximately 318 volumes this 1839 catalogue is arranged alphabetically by author, but occasionally by title too. The catalogue is not separated into any categories, but includes a brief ‘Addenda to Catalogue’ of 30 volumes. The catalogue includes space on the pages between the next alphabetical letter, perhaps allowing the librarian or institute secretary to insert the details of any new additions to the library as they became available. The catalogue consists mainly of medical, scientific, technical, history and philosophical works, with the occasional travel narrative like Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea by the Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land at the time, John Franklin.
Not surprisingly, technical books, specifically those concerning mechanics, and educational books dominate. The catalogue includes three publications by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge: 15 volumes of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, 5 volumes of the Library of Useful Knowledge and 6 volumes of the Penny Magazine. The catalogue also includes 6 volumes of Jeremiah Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues (1803), Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding (1689) and Madame Genlis’s Theatre of Education (1781). Notably, the catalogue holds almost no imaginative literature, the only novel that appears on the catalogue is Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the only poetry is William Cowper’s ‘Miscellaneous Works’. Even writers like Walter Scott and Oliver Goldsmith only have their non-fiction works included, for example, 9 volumes of Scott’s Life of Napoleon (1827).
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