The South African Public Library was founded in 1818 as a reference library. From 1822-28 it was funded publicly by a tax on wine exports and from 1829 onwards it was funded by subscription, although it retained its role as a public library open to all inhabitants. The circulation library opened in May 1829 and was housed in the same building as the reference collection. The 1829 catalogue was compiled by the SAPL librarian Alexander Johnstone Jardine and includes a list of benefactors, contents page, index and a list of regulations governing the library of circulation. Books that could be not be included in the library of circulation are indicated in the catalogue by an asterisk.
In total 1,584 titles are listed in the catalogue and are listed by author, title and date of publication. The contents page divides the collection into eight classes: theology and divinity (71 titles); jurisprudence, government and politics (180 titles); sciences and arts (206 titles); surgery, medicine and chemistry (120 titles); mathematics (96 titles); belles lettres (225 titles); history (377 titles) and foreign languages, ancient and modern (283 titles). History was the most popular classification, with the majority of the history collection consisting of 213 voyages and travels sub-divided by geographical region, including 22 about the Cape of Good Hope. As well as collecting books in all genres about the Cape, the library collected the products of the Cape presses. The pamphlets listed are very diverse in nature, ranging from satirical magazines, to sermons and hymnals, to the reports of various voluntary associations of Cape Town. These pamphlets were written in English and Dutch.
By 1829, the SAPL subscribed to 31 periodicals, magazines and newspapers, including 4 Cape newspapers. Lyric and dramatic poetry is the most numerous sub-division of the belles lettres, containing 42 titles. The best represented authors are Scott (10 volumes), Byron (8 volumes), Pope (9 volumes), Dryden (2 collected works of 8 and 10 volumes) and Shakespeare (2 collected works each of 9 volumes). There are also two poetic works of specific interest to an Anglophone Cape audience, including Thomas Pringle’s Ephemides; or occasional poems written in Scotland and South Africa (1828) and R.J. Stapleton’s edited collection of newspaper and periodical poetry, Poetry of the Cape of Good Hope, selected from the periodical press of the colony (1828). There are 30 titles listed under works of imagination, most prominent is Anna Letitia Barbauld’s fifty volume The British novelists with an essay and prefaces, biographical and critical (1820). The most popular author is Walter Scott, with 57 volumes of his novels and tales listed. After Scott, Fielding was the most collected novelist, with copies of Tom Jones, Amelia and Jonathan Wild all available. The library also stocked two copies of Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas .
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