Established in 1848, the South Australian Library and Mechanics’ Institute (SALMI) had its origins in the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association (1834) and the Adelaide Mechanics Institute (1838). In 1856, SALMI was amalgamated with various other institutions to form the South Australian Institute (SAI), whose 1861, 1863 and 1869 catalogues are available in this archive. An 1851 catalogue of SALMI is also available.
Printed by the publisher and stationer George Dehane, this 1848 catalogue has prefixed to it the library’s bye-laws and reading room regulations. The catalogue is divided into 28 classes and contains approximately 858 titles (excluding duplicates): Antiquarian (6); Arts, Manufactures, &c (29); Belles Lettres (18); Biography (76); Dictionaries, Catalogues, Lists, Grammars, Etc. (21); Essays, Lectures, Etc. (27); Encylopaedias (5); Fine Arts (4); Fiction (120); Geography (8); Geology and Minerology (17); Horticulture, Agriculture, &c. (9); History (108); Law and Medicine (3); Medicine (8); Metaphysics and Mental Philosophy (11); Miscellaneous (136); Natural History, Vegetable Phisiology [sic], Etc. (42); Oratory (3); Poetry, the Drama, Etc. (42); Political Economy, Statistics, and General Politics (50); Physiology, Phenology, Etc. (8); Periodicals (17, but 9 volumes of Mechanics’ Magazine are listed as separate titles); Sciences, Natural Philosophy, Etc. (66); Theology, Ethics, Etc. (37); Translations (23, primary of Greek and Latin texts); and Topography (21); Travels, Voyages, Description of Places, Etc. (114 titles). In some cases, inconsistencies in the way titles/volumes are recorded prevent an exact number of titles. Titles within publisher series or collected libraries, such as Lardner’s Cyclopaedia, are recorded as separate titles in the catalogue.
Fiction, History, Travels, and Miscellaneous literature make up the largest categories in the collection. The Topography and Travels sections includes Charles Sturt’s Expeditions in Australia (1849) and a number of other texts on various Australian colonies and provinces, especially South Australia, New South Wales, and Western Australia. The collection of poetry and drama is relatively developed for a small library of the period, and contains translated works of Spanish, Italian, and German poetry and drama (Schiller, Tasso etc.), as well as works by seventeenth and eighteenth-century British poets, and the most popular nineteenth-century poets, such as Burns, Ossian, Byron, Shelley, Scott, and Hunt. The best-collected novelists are listed under sub-headings of the author’s name, including Scott (26 titles); Bulwer Lytton (12 titles); G. P. R. James (12 titles), and Dickens (11 titles). A number of female novelists are included in the collection, such as Harriet Martineau, Mary Brunton, Christian Isobel Johnstone, and Sarah Stickney Ellis. As might be expected, the collection also contains publications pertaining to mechanics’ institutes, such as The Glasgow Mechanics’ Magazine.
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