This is the fifth full catalogue of the South African Public Library . The 1862 catalogue was compiled by the librarian, Frederick Maskew. The catalogue excludes two collections also held by the library: The Dessinian Library, which has a separate catalogue compiled in 1821 and the Sir George Grey Collection , which has separate catalogues compiled in 1858 and 1867. The catalogue includes a list of committee members, donors and regulations of the library and an index. It is divided into 8 classes, according to J.C. Brunet’s classification scheme: theology, divinity and ecclesiastical history (428 titles); government, politics and law (343 titles); sciences and the arts (655 titles); surgery, medicine, chemistry(206 titles); mathematics (151 titles); history, biography, geography and voyages and travels (2,957 titles); belles lettres (1,344 titles) and classical literature and modern languages (367 titles). There are two additional sections: South Africa (236 titles) and parliamentary papers (357 titles). The parliamentary papers section has papers from Britain and around the world including India, China and the settler colonies. It also includes a section of parliamentary papers on emigration.
This is notable for being the first of the South African Public Library catalogues to have a section specifically devoted to books about and from South Africa. The South Africa section has voyages and travels about the Cape (44 titles), the products of the Cape presses including newspapers, poetry, sermons and scientific treatise (34 titles) and grammars and dictionaries of various southern African languages. Of particular note in the South Africa section are the 157 works in indigenous languages taken from the library of former governor Sir. George Grey (1812-1898). Languages represented include Nama, Khoemana, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, and the Ba-Bolong and Ba-Hlapi dialects of Tswana. Details of the places these books were printed and distributed are also given. As always, the South African Public Library is very strong in voyages and travels (1,103 titles). The next best represented genre is novels (850 titles). The novelists with the most titles are Fanny Trollope (21titles); James Fennimore Cooper (14 titles); Catherine Gore (13 titles); G.P.R. James (10 titles) and Charles Dickens (8 titles). Family Libraries has its own section and consists of 308 volumes of titles such as Constable’s Miscellany Murray and Tegg’s Family Library and Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia.
LA
