This catalogue advertises the auction sale of the books of John Oxley, which took place a few months after the latter’s death in May 1828. Oxley appears to have been generous in lending out his books; the day after the sale opened on 19 August, Oxley’s executor James Norton, and the auctioneer John Bodenham, advertised for the return of a number of ‘Lost Books’ from Oxley’s library, the lack of which rendered incomplete some of the multivolume sets for sale. The sale of Oxley’s books lasted until 29 August. The catalogue was printed at the office of the Sydney Gazette.
Arranged in a somewhat haphazard, mostly alphabetical, author-short-title or title-only fashion, the catalogue lists 331 titles, and some 1,175 volumes for sale (though some of the latter are noted as ‘wanting’). A subtitle in the catalogue after lot 251 suggests the final 80 volumes may have been reserved for sale at the later date. Oxley’s was a well-rounded personal library; he had assembled significant collections of voyage and travel narratives, of literary and general-interest periodicals, and notably, of imaginative literature—nearly two-thirds of the titles for sale at auction were fiction or poetic works. Oxley apparently remained an active book collector, importing recent publications throughout his time in the colonies; a significant portion of the novels advertised in the catalogue—such as Don Esteban: Memoirs of a Spaniard (1825), Granby (1826), Recollections of a Pedestrian (1826), and Blue-Stocking Hall (1827)—had only been published in the last years of Oxley’s life. There is little evidence that the sale of books improved the situation of Oxley’s estate, but from archival records we know that the Australian Subscription Library spent £100 at the Oxley sale.
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