This catalogue of the Tasmanian Public Library is the institution’s fourth known printed catalogue, issued seven years after the catalogue of 1855. It was printed by the Hobart printers Pratt and sons. The preliminaries to the catalogue include a list of the office-holders of the library, and of the life members, a list of the rules, orders, and bye-laws, and a separate list of the bye-laws of the committee. There is also a preface giving a brief history of the institution to that point.
This catalogue dispenses with the complicated arrangement employed in the 1855 catalogue, instead listing the works in the library in a straightforward alphabetical arrangement by author or title. Bibliographical format and number of volumes is given for each title, and each entry is numbered (presumably with a catalogue or possibly accessioning number). It is notable that, whereas fiction had been sparse in the earlier catalogues of the institution, novels and other imaginative literature feature much more prominently here. There are 28 titles from Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 18 from Charles Dickens, 12 from Frederick Marryat, 7 from Maria Edgeworth, and 29 from the versatile American writer Washington Irving. There is also the ever-present Sir Walter Scott, with a complete 48-volume set of his novels, a 12-volume set of his poetry, and a 28-volume set of his Miscellaneous Prose Works. Publishers’ series were represented by the 10-volume Ballantyne Novelists Library, and the 35-volume Library of Entertaining Knowledge, and there were also number of different editions of Shakespeare, including A. J. Valpy’s edition of the plays in 15 volumes.
NG
