This catalogue advertises the sale of books, along with other property, formerly belonging to Henry Grattan Douglass, held at the auction rooms of George and John Paul, in George Street, Sydney. One of the largest book sales then seen in Sydney, the Pauls exhibited Douglass’s books in the weeks leading up to the sale. According to the Sydney Gazette, the exhibition attracted ‘all the literati in the colony, and from the scarcity of some of the works, as well as the elegant binding of others, combined with the value generally of good standard works, we have little doubt but that interesting Library will not fail to bring a good price.’ Commencing on Monday 21 April 1828, the sale of books extended until Saturday 3 May.
The catalogue, printed by Robert Howe at the office of the Sydney Gazette, is divided into ten generic sections, and each of the 312 lots for auction contains a separate work—with the exception of the final lot of ‘Miscellaneous Pamplets, 22 doz[en].’ The sole extant copy of the catalogue, reproduced here, has been damaged with some loss of text, but it is clear that there were over 1000 volumes for sale at the auction. The first and largest section, under the heading ‘Miscellaneous Works’, contained two sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in different bindings, complete sets of the British Poets (100 vols) and Alexander Chalmers’s British Essayists (40 vols), multivolume sets of the works of Fielding, Smollet, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott, and a copy of Robert Southey’s Madoc (1805), alongside diverse other titles in philosophy, ethics, biology, education, languages, and colonial policy. As might be expected from Douglass’s profession, there were a substantial number of titles in the category of ‘Medical Works’ (71), with the rest of the titles divided into the categories of ‘Sacred Works’ (28), ‘Historical Works’ (8), ‘Works on Gardening, Agriculture, &c. &c.’ (14), ‘French works’ (39), ‘Law books’ (9), ‘Scientific Works’ (31), ‘Reviews, pamphlets etc’ (20). A further section of ‘Voyages and Travels’ (17 titles), included several works of local interest, including travel narratives by Arthur Phillip, John Hunter, John White, William Charles Wentworth, and Charles Jeffreys.
From archival records, we know that the Australian Subscription Library spent about £50 acquiring books at the Douglass auction sale. Annotations on this copy of the catalogue suggest that Robert Cooper, and John Dunmore Lang, may also have been among the purchasers at the sale. Further annotations suggest that Douglass’s bound volumes of the Edinburgh Review and Quarterly Review were sold at 8 shillings a volume, and 10 shillings sixpence a volume, respectively.
NG
