This catalogue presents the first consignment of books sent to the Melbourne Public Library (1854) by the Library’s supplier, the London bookseller J. J. Guillaume, before the library officially opened its doors in 1856. Uncategorised and arranged alphabetically by author and title, the catalogue contains approximately 3500 volumes and includes places and dates of publication. The collection reflects the ambitions of one of its senior Trustees, Sir Redmond Barry to create a ‘great emporium of learning’. The catalogue includes several prestigious publisher series and ‘cabinet encyclopaedias’ including: Auctores Classici Delphini at Variorum (141 volumes), Auctores Classicis Graeci (169 volumes), Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopedia (133 volumes).
Non-fiction titles dominate the collection with science, philosophy and history well represented, including works by Charles Lyell, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday and 28 volumes of Joseph Priestley’s works. Periodicals also form an important part of the collection with 608 volumes in total, including: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (116 volumes), the Quarterly Review (93 volumes), and the Edinburgh Review (96 volumes).
Poetry is well-represented in the collection with Burns, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, Shelley, Southey, Tennyson and Wordsworth all featuring, in addition to the 21 volumes of Chalmers’ British Poets. The few works of imaginative literature include Defoe (20 volumes), Fielding (12 volumes), Sterne (4 volumes) and Scott (98 volumes). Very few women writers appear in this catalogue and their contribution is limited to memoirs of royalty by Lucy Aikin (6 volumes) and Agnes Strickland (10 volumes), Lady C. Bury’s A Diary of the Times of George IV (1839) and Sarah Austin’s translations of History of the Reformation in Germany and History of the Popes by Leopold Von Ranke.
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