This is the fourth full catalogue of the South African Public Library In 1842 the whole collection of the library was approaching 30,000 volumes. The 1842 catalogue was compiled by the South African Public Library’s librarian, Alexander Johnstone Jardine and includes an index and a list of the library’s committee members, presidents, trustees, librarians and donors. It also lists for the first time the name of the library’s London bookseller, James Mallcott Richardson (1771-1854), who continued to supply the library until 1848. Also included in the printed catalogue is a short introduction outlining the history of the library’s collections and a list of the rules and regulations governing the management of the library. A final notable feature of this catalogue is the voluminous scholarly and literary critical footnotes Jardine has provided on the texts in the collection that he considered the most intellectually and aesthetically valuable.
The catalogue begins with a contents page dividing the collection according to J.C. Brunet’s classification scheme into the following classes: theology (280 titles); jurisprudence, government and politics (325 titles); science and the arts (467 titles); surgery, medicine, chemistry, physics (174 titles); mathematics (207 titles); belles lettres (1,661 titles, inclusive of 95 periodicals); history (1,439 titles); languages, ancient and modern (210 titles). Publications marked with an asterisk are not included in the library of circulation. The most populous class is history, which includes 574 voyages and travels including 44 specifically about the Cape. The next most populous class is belles lettres. The library subscribes to 98 periodicals and magazines, including specialist scientific publications, Indian periodicals and all the major quarterly and monthly British magazines. Of particular note is the large collection of English language works of imagination (644 titles). Although most works of imagination are listed by title only, the names of the most popular writers are given. The best represented writers here are Walter Scott (32 titles); Captain Fredrick Marryat (19 titles) and Maria Edgeworth (17 titles). Other popular writers include John Gault (13 titles), G.P.R. James (12 titles) and Edward Bulwar-Lytton (10 titles). The SAPL also assiduously collected the products of the Cape presses. These include 17 volumes of pamphlets and short imaginative works printed at the Cape and copies of all 9 Cape newspapers and periodicals. There are also 394 volumes of prestigious publishers’ series’ such as Constable’s Miscellany and Murray and Tegg’s Family Library.
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