This, the earliest printed catalogue of the books in the library of the University of Sydney, was produced in 1860 by the Sydney printers Wellbank and Reading. Established in 1850, the university was granted a royal charter in 1858, and was the first in the Australian colonies. The early growth of the institution was slow, with the number of students in 1861 said to be ‘about 50’.
The catalogue, which records some 1,634 titles in the university library, is arranged as an alphabetical list either by author or title, with occasional cross-referencing by subject. Bibliographical format, place, and date of publication are listed for each work. The collection reflected the university’s ambition to offer colonists a classical education along the lines of the Oxbridge model. Only about half the titles are in English; there are also 480 works in Latin, as well as 170 in French, 99 in German, and 75 in other European languages. Dictionaries, grammars and philological works feature prominently, as do works in mathematics and law. There is a significant collection of reviewing periodicals. Also notable is the significant holdings of the works of Romantic and later poets and writers, possibly reflecting their use in the liberal arts curriculum strongly supported by the university’s early principal and professor of classics, John Woolley. The library holds collected editions of the works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Joanna Baillie, John Clare, Thomas Campbell, Leigh Hunt, Walter Scott, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Felicia Hemans, Thomas Hood, Robert Southey, W. S. Landor, Thomas Moore, James Montgomery, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
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