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11 200400151 Writing a History of Nineteenth-Century Commercial Circulating Libraries Problems and Possibilities W ALLACE KIRSOP Two documents or testimonies, one from 1886, the other from 1990, will dem- onstrate the extent of the problem posed by circulating libraries in more than two centuries of existence. The first, quoted by Priya Joshi in her recent book In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India, is drawn from a letter from Sir Frederick Macmillan to Thomas Hardy on 31 May 1886. Seeking the novelist's agreement to inclusion in his projected Colonial Library, the publisher noted the need for cheap books for the Indian and colonial market. In particular he asserted that 'Colonial readers have no circulating libraries to go to and grumble very much at the difficulties they experience in getting new books'. The source of his information lay in the reports he had received from Maurice Macmillan during his tour of India and Australia in 1884-1885.' It would be easy to accuse the younger man of blindness or at the very least of dis- ingenuousness. It suited the Macmillans to launch their Colonial Library, and any excuse was good enough. 2 But how could circulating libraries in the Empire be so invisible? The second testimony concerns not participants of the time but modern scholars. In the preface to his Die deutsche Leihbibliothek Alberto. Martino re- counts the rediscovery of the lost world of commercial libraries in German- speaking Europe in the last third of the twentieth century. As late as 1966 and 1971 some researchers were confidendy assetting that no catalogue of such a library had survived and that it was therefore impossible to reconstruct what was made available to borrowers and readers.' Fortunately there were people around - some of them direcdy involved in the creation in 1976 of Intemationales Archiv jUr Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur - to go out and find the catalogues and then to set about systematic study of them. Martino's 1170 pages provide a syn- 1. Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture. and the English Novel in India, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, pp.98-101, esp. p.IOO. 2. Another echo of Maurice Macmillan's somewhat surprising claims will be found in Simon Nowell-Smith, International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the &ign of Queen Victoria, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, pp.93-94. 3. Alberta Martino, Die deutsche Leihbibliothek: Geschichte einer literarischen Institution {1756- 1914), Wiesbaden: Ono Harrassowitz, 1990, p.xI. BSANZ Bulletin vol.27 nos 3 &4, 2003, pp.71-82 ofFuJl Text rests with the original owner and, except as pennitted under the Act! 968, copying this copyright material Without the pennission of the owner or Its licensee or agent or by way of a licence from Copynght Agency Limited. For infonnation such licences contact Copyright Agency Uml'ed on (02) 93947600 (Ph) or (02) 93947601 (fax)

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11200400151

Writing a History of Nineteenth-CenturyCommercial Circulating Libraries

Problems and Possibilities

W ALLACE KIRSOP

Two documents or testimonies, one from 1886, the other from 1990, will dem-onstrate the extent of the problem posed by circulating libraries in more thantwo centuries of existence. The first, quoted by Priya Joshi in her recent book InAnother Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India, is drawnfrom a letter from Sir Frederick Macmillan to Thomas Hardy on 31 May 1886.Seeking the novelist's agreement to inclusion in his projected Colonial Library,the publisher noted the need for cheap books for the Indian and colonial market.In particular he asserted that 'Colonial readers have no circulating libraries to goto and grumble very much at the difficulties they experience in getting newbooks'. The source of his information lay in the reports he had received fromMaurice Macmillan during his tour of India and Australia in 1884-1885.' Itwould be easy to accuse the younger man of blindness or at the very least of dis-ingenuousness. It suited the Macmillans to launch their Colonial Library, andany excuse was good enough.2 But how could circulating libraries in the Empirebe so invisible?

The second testimony concerns not participants of the time but modernscholars. In the preface to his Die deutsche Leihbibliothek Alberto. Martino re-counts the rediscovery of the lost world of commercial libraries in German-speaking Europe in the last third of the twentieth century. As late as 1966 and1971 some researchers were confidendy assetting that no catalogue of such alibrary had survived and that it was therefore impossible to reconstruct what wasmade available to borrowers and readers.' Fortunately there were people around- some of them direcdy involved in the creation in 1976 of Intemationales ArchivjUr Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur - to go out and find the catalogues andthen to set about systematic study of them. Martino's 1170 pages provide a syn-

1. Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture. and the English Novel in India, New York:Columbia University Press, 2002, pp.98-101, esp. p.IOO.2. Another echo of Maurice Macmillan's somewhat surprising claims will be found in SimonNowell-Smith, International Copyright Law and the Publisher in the &ign of Queen Victoria,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, pp.93-94.3. Alberta Martino, Die deutsche Leihbibliothek: Geschichte einer literarischen Institution {1756-1914), Wiesbaden: Ono Harrassowitz, 1990, p.xI.

BSANZ Bulletin vol.27 nos 3 &4, 2003, pp.71-82

ofFuJl Text rests with the originalowner and, except as pennitted under theAct! 968, copying this copyright materialWithout the pennission of the owner or

Its licensee or agent or by way ofa licencefrom Copynght Agency Limited. For infonnation

such licences contact Copyright AgencyUml'ed on (02) 93947600 (Ph) or (02) 93947601(fax)

David Large

72 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

thesis of a decade and a half ofwork on a substantial archive. Appropriately, duenotice is taken of investigations done elsewhere in the Western world, even if ananalogous case pointed out in print in 1969, namely the survival of an 1874 cata-logue of a German club in Bendigo,' was missed and the North American sec-ondary literature is patchily reported.' It is often so difficult to get historians outof their national tunnels that any genuine effort to look further afield has to besaluted. None the less the stumbling on what was always there has to be seen inthe context of German literary scholarship that, a generation or two ago, wasextraordinarily lacking in curiosity about the ways texts reached their audiences.

In the sketch that follows I do not want to separate the Australian experi-ence from what was happening in other cultuses and countries. It seems to memany problems and difficulties are shared. In defining a programme of research- even more resolutely after writing the very preliminary short synthesis destinedfor volume I ofA History ofthe Book in Australia - I am aware ofwhat we canlearn from the British and North American cases and from France and Ger-many. Ultimately it is permissible to redefine difficulties as possibilities andchallenges for the cultusally, socially and economically aware book historian.

Three questions above all require attention. What libraries were there andhow do we compile a list of them? What was the content of these libraries? Whowere the borrowers and readers and how did they approach the bookstocks set infront of them?

It is safe to say that we do not have for any country a comprehensive list ofthe commercial lending libraries that operated within their frontiers. DavidKaser in his A Bookfor a Sixpence: the Circulating Library in America provides a'Checklist ofAmerican Commercial Library Enterprises, 1762-1890' based on avariety of sources. Separately, in his first appendix, he notes the 'Circulating Li-brary Catalogues Examined in the Course of this Study" Martino, in conjunc-tion with Georg Jager, offers, over 100 pages, a census of surviving lending-library catalogues.' The arrangement is by city across the German cultural area.In France the printed catalogues held by the Bibliotheque nationale de France

4. See Wallace Kirsop, Towards a History oftheAustralian Book Trade, Sydney: Wentworth Books,1969, pp.12, 28: also W. Kirsop, 'Bendigo's Nineteenth-Century German Library', BSANZBulletin 18, 1994, 169-172.5. There is no mention ofRobert E. Cazden, A SocialHistory of/he German Book Trade in Americato the Civil War, Columbia, se: Camden House, 1984 - an BOO-page study that deals inter aliawith German circulating libraries from the first in Philadelphia in 1785.6. David Kascr, A Book/or a Sixpmce: the Circulating Library in America, Pittsburgh: Beta Phi Mu,1980: 'Checklist', pp.127-163: 'Appendix 1', pp.165-172.7. Die "'ut"he Leihbibliothek, pp.917-1017.

Commercial Circulating Libraries in the 19th Century 73

and now available in microfonn tend to delimit the field. 8 In particulasPasent-Lasdeur's books of two decades ago' ase based on this collec-

tion and, to a lesser degree, on the records kept by various authoritarian nine-teenth-century regimes of applications for licences to conduct such establish-ments. Some notion of the work still to be done in France for the provinces andfor the periods beyond 1830 can be gleaned from the essays brought together inCanada recently by Graham Falconer under the title of Autour d'un cabinet delecture.I. In a much smaller compass the documents assembled by Michel Schlupfor an exhibition on reading societies and circulating libraries in the principalityof Neuchatel between 1760 and 1830 do not claim to exhaust the subject."Should we wonder then that the Australian field remains so little explored?

As we shall see, surviving printed catalogues do not offer us a vety conven-ient way of grasping the importance and the extent of the phenomenon in Aus-tralia. The problem is even more acute for New Zealand, where one list onlyseems to have come down to us from the half-century before 1890. Other strate-gies, therefore, have to be employed.

One resource - a fairly obvious one in colonial societies that justifiablyprided themselves on producing high-class utilitarian works like almanacs,handbooks and directories - is to look up the appropriate references. IfMauriceMacmillan had bothered to consult Sands & McDougall's Directory of Victoria1884, he would have found listed as 'Circulating Libraries' in Melbourne:

Adcock, G.C., 77 Bridge-rd, Rd.MulIen, Samuel, 29 & 31 Collins-st east.

A yeas later Adcock had moved to Wellingron-pas, E.M.' while MulIen hadstayed put, However, there were two new players:

Hansen, A.H. (music), 160 Clasendon-st, S.M.Kenyon, AH., 63 Bridge-rd. Rd.

Even if the suburban locations were beyond or beneath the notice of a visitorfrom the imperial centre, the MulIen establishment, the 'Melbourne Mudie's',

8. A guide to the catalogue of microfilms from the series 0:.8 was written by Catherine Cassan-Toui! and published by the library at Sable-sur-Sanhe in 1989.9. aParis DU temps de Ba/uc: Les cabinets de lecture aParis 1815-1830, Paris: Editions del'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sodates, 1981; and its slightly more popular reworking LesCabinets de lecture: La lecture puhlique iJ Paris sous la &stauration, Paris: Payor, 1982.10. Toronto: Centre d'Etudes du XIXe siecle Joseph Sable, 2001. Catherine Cassan-Touil's guideto the BNF collection (cf. note 8 above) is reproduced as an 'Introduction', pp.9-26.11. Michd Schlup, ed., Sociitis de lecture et cabinets littiraires dans la principautt de Neutbdtel (1760-1830), Neuchiitel: Bibliotheque publique et universitaire, 1986.

74 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

was boldly planted in the heart of the Collins Street 'Block', a retail locationwithout peer." Invisible? Inaccessible? Across the Tasman, in the Dunedin ofthe second half of the 1860s, three circulating libraries are shown in Wise's Di-rectory. William Hay and ]oseph Mackay in Princes Street North, Henry Mun-yard in George Street. Dlago Almanacs of 1864 and 1865 show Mackay runninglibraries in other places, notably Oamaru. From these small examples it is clearthat a systematic census can, and indeed should, be undertaken on the basis ofdirectories alone.

Not that the search should stop there. The annual glimpses of trade activityenshrined in directories are not always effective in dealing with fly-by-night op-erations and marginal businesses in suburbs and country towns and on the gold-fields. Photographs like those of the Holtermann Collection can reveal institu-tions whose lives were no longer than a few months.13 Even more important, butmore laborious to search, are the advertisements carried by metropolitan andprovincial newspapers. Advertisement columns or pages, carefully scrutinised byElizabeth Webby for the decades up to 1850,14 provide almost unimaginableriches. Since existing indexing projects concentrate on editorial matter, exploita-tion of the advertisements carried in Australian and New Zealand newspapers intheir golden age in the second half of the nineteenth century requires new andspecific ventures. For the moment things are left largely to chance. Looking fortraces of the passage ofWi1liam Kellett Baker at Bendigo in the early 1850s Idiscovered in the fragmentary remains of the Bendigo Advertiser for the periodnot only some new material on 'Baker's Gold-Diggers' Go-a-head Libtary andRegistration Dffice for New Chums' and on a lost edition of Baker's Go-a-headGolden Almanac, but also a mention of 'Porter's Yankee Circulating Library,View-place, Near the Church'." Such mentions of the inevitably ephemeral havetheir place alongside the more eloquent photographs preserved from that time,like, for instance, the one of the Eaglehawk Circulating Library held in theNorth Central Goldfields Library." Ultimately it is possible to envisage a map

12. The most recent account is Wallacc Kirsop, "From Curry's to Co11ins Street, or How aDubliner Became the "Melbourne in Peter Isaac & Barry McKay, eds, The MovingMar/ut: Continuity and Change in the Book Trade, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2001, pp.83-92.13. See Keast BurI<., Gold and Silvtr: Photograph' ofA"'tralian Goldfields from the HolttrmannColk,tion, Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1973, no 134: Donald's Circulating Library in Gulgong.14. 'A Checklist ofEarlyAustralian Booksellers' and Auctioneers' Catalogues and Advertisements:1800-1849', BSANZ Bulletin, 3, 1978,123-148; 4,1979, 33-61 and 95-150.15. See Wallacc Kirsop, 'Baker's Juvenile Circulating Libtal)' in Sydney in the 1840s' in BarryMcKay, Maureen Bell &John Hinks, eds, Light on the Book Trade: Papers presented to Peter !saac,New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, forthcoming in 2003.16. Photocopy provided byJohn Arnold.

Commercial Circulating Libraries in the 19th Century 75

of commercial lending and bookselling, so often hand in hand, and scatteredright across the colonies. For incipient public libraries and for the innumerablemechanics' institutes we are beginning to be well served, especially through thework in Victoria of Pam Baragwanath.17

It is not improper or a confusion to mention mechanics' institutes at thesame time as commercial circulating libraries. Apart from a shared clientele,verifiable where lists of subscribers have been preserved, there was a measure ofcollaboration and interaction. The September 1884 number of S. Mullen'sMonthly Circular ofLiterature, &c. carries - incidentally to its main purpose ofpromoting the bookselling side of the business - the announcement:

MULLEN'S LIBRARY

NEW& CHOICE BOOKS

VERY many copies of all NewWorks of acknowledged merir or general inter-est are in circulation at MULLEN'S LIBRARY, and an ample supply is providedof the principal forthcoming Books as they appear.Subscription, One Guinea per Annum, and upwards, according to the number ofVolumes required.BOOK SOCIETIES AND MECHANICS' INSTITlITES SUPPLIED ON LIBERAL

TERMS.

Prospectus on application and post free.

In Preparation, to be published on October 1st, a Catalogue of Bookswithdrawn from Circulation, and offered at very reduced Prices.

Mullen in Melbourne was, of course, conducting his business in much the sameway as Mudie in London. Books were lent out to small institutions like athe-naeums, schools of arts and so forth, or they were sold to them at discountedrates. In this way circulating libraries' stock, appropriately labelled, can some-times be identified in the holdings of other bodies." Apart from regular cullinglike Mullen's, it was not unknown for the stock of defunct libraries to be dis-

17. If the Walls Could Speak..: a Social History ofthe Mechanics' Institutes ofVictoria, Windsor; Vie.:Mechanics' Institute Inc., 2000.18. As Keith Maslen pointed out after this paper was delivered on 10 September 2002, volumesfrom Mullen's library stock sometimes went to the Naseby Athenaeum in New Zealand. See hisconference report in BSANZ Broadshett, no 67, November 2002, p. [1].

76 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

persed at auction or by private treaty. Elizabeth Webby lists a number of suchsales between 1826 - '10 November Circulating Library 70 George St [Sydney]1300 [volumes]' - and the 1840s, for example, in Melbourne, '26 July [1841]Barrett Stock ofa circulating library 500 [volumes],.

The last resort of the investigator - but it is one that poses even more prob-lems for systematic work - is to pursue surviving copies of books from commer-ciallibraries. Labels - of the kind that the late John Holroyd collected and gaveto the State Library of Victoria - and inscriptions of various sorts help to iden-tifY institutions as well as to suggest the ways in which books were read andused. If one views collecting provenances as more than chasing great names, onecan contribute a good deal to the necessary mapping of the trade by paying at-tention to sad and battered copies of negligible books in op-shops and suchplaces.

Having listed, however. imperfecdy, the libraries that existed in the nine-teenth centuty, one then comes to the question of what they contained. Al-though the resource of listing identifiable volumes is not to be neglected - itallows us, amongst other things, to know that Mullen supplied books in theFrench language"- it is natural to turn to the evidence of catalogues themselves,the basis of much Northern Hemisphere research on the whole phenomenon.However, it is here that we face quite acute disappointments in our part of theworld.

Auckland Public Library holds E. Wayte's New Circulating Library Cata-logue of the 1860s, an apparendy unique example of the genre in New Zealand.'oBut things are not spectacularly better in Australia. It is a curious paradox thatmore printed catalogues appear to have come down to us from the first half ofthe nineteenth centuty than from the second. Consequendy they are mosdy tobe found listed in Ferguson, who in theory ignores ephemeral productions ofthis kind after 1850. Before the 1840s we have three Sydney catalogues, includ-ing two versions - 1829 and 1833 - of the library William McGarvie ran in as-sociation with the Australian Stationery Warehouse." Not unrypically he aban-doned the business after a few years. The 1800 volumes were listed for sale by

19. See Wallace Kirsop, 'Classrooms, Connoisseurs and Canons: Nineteenth-Century FrenchLiterature in Australia', AustralianJournalofFrench Studies, 3D, 1993, 145-153, esp. 150.20. I am grateful to Donald Kerr for providing me with a photocopy. The New BrightonCirculating Libnuy, whose 1885 catalogue (originally printed at the 'Caxton' Office inChristchurch) was reissued in facsimile by Kiwi Publishers in 1995, does not appear to have been acommercial concern.21. F1280 and F1670.

Commercial Circulating Libraries in the 19th Century 77

the proprietor himself at the beginning ofJanuary 1835.22 The Mitchell Libraryholds a catalogue of the Australian Circulating Library for 1832." In the 1840sthe survivors are in various ways incomplete. William Baker opened a generalCirculating Library and a Juvenile Circulating Library in Sydney at the begin-ning of 1843. The bulk of the stock was sold at auction in February 1847 afterthe owner had suffered various setbacks in the fIrst part of his interesting careerin the Australian trade. The list originally done at the end of 1842 for the juve-nile collection was re-used by John Moore for the sale, and it is a copy of thisthat was eventually acquired by Sir William Dixson.24 The State Library ofTasmania has an imperfect copy of A Catalogue of Books contained in j. w.H.Walch's (late SA. Tegg's) Derwent Circulating Library, Wellington Bridge of1846,25 while the State Library of South Australia has an even less satisfactorycopy of Catalogue ofBooks in Platts's Circulating Library, Hindley-Street (Corner ofKing William-street), Adelaide of 1848.26 It is a meagre enough harvest from atime when we know ofmany other libraries, for instance those that John PascoeFawkner conducted in both Launceston and Melbourne.

All the early libraries were relatively small by European standards, and theyseem in most cases to have had limited lives. As we shall be reminded againlater, success in a commercial library depends on constant renewal of stock andinjections of capital, something that still applied to the businesses studied byJohn Arnold for the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.21 What we now have from thepost-Gold Rush decades belongs to larger and more durable concerns. JamesEdward Neild's personal copy of Catalogue ofthe Melbourne Circulating Library,181 Bourke Street East, Opposite the Eastern Market. Proprietor: T.M. Buzzard,Bookseller and Stationer of the 1860s also found its way to Sir William Dixson."The State Library of New South Wales possesses A Catalogue ofBooks containedin W. Westcott's Circulating Library, 63 & 65, Collim-street, Hobart Town of

22. See E. Webby in BSANZ Bulletin, 13, 1978, 136.23. A Catalogue of the most popular novels, romances csc., comprising a general assortment ofamusingand instructive literature, to which the new works will be added, as received by every favourableopportunity, London: prinred by J. Darling, 31, Leadenhall Streer. 1832. 47pp.{with manuscriptadditions indicating that the business was conducted in Sydney). 'Australian Circulating Library' isthe running title. The connection with John Darling and the :M.inerva Press raises all sorts ofinteresting questions to be pursued separately later. There is no Ferguson entry.24. See the article me1J.tioned in note 15 above. The Dixson Library shelf mark is 84/505.25. Hobart Town: printed byWilliam Gore ElliSlon. T.C./P/018/WAL.26. Adelaide: published by Charles Plalts. U020A/9A2.27. 'Cultivating the Armchair Reader: The Circulating Library Movement in Melbourne. 1930-60', AustraHan Cultural H£story, no 11, 1992, 67-79.28. Melbourne: Mason and Firth. printers. [no date]. The Dixson Library shelfmark is 85/653.

78 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

1863.29 Whereas Buzzard organised his catalogue by broad subject divisions -'Novels (Classified Authors)', that is major, popular or much-held writers, 'Mis-cellaneous Novels', 'History, Biography, Voyages, and Travels', and 'Essays,Miscellanies, & Poetry' - and then alphabetically within them, William West-cort followed a strict numerical order from 1 to 2976 that has a number of al-phabetical sequences in succession. At the head is the notice 'It is particularlyrequested, to ensure the Book required, that Subscribers will order by the cata-logued number.' The injunction tells us something about the arrangement onthe shelves and seems to suggest that access was reserved to the staff of the es-tablishment.

To date I have not discovered copies of comprehensive catalogues ofwhatwere without doubt the major circulating libraries of the later nineteenth cen-tury, those ofWilliam Maddock in Sydney (subsequently acquired by WilliamDyrnock) and of Samuel Mullen in Melbourne. Mullen's Monthly Circular, be-gun in January 1884, and continued by his successors Melville, Mullen & Sladein the 1890s (with patchy holdings in Melbourne and Canberra), gives someuseful information and allows us to regret amongst other things the disappear-ance of the List of Surplus Copies withdrawn from Mullen's Library that was'nearly ready' in May 1885. For Maddock's Select Library too there are two mi-nor publications: a list ofNew BooksAdded in October 1878, described as 'scarce'when I bought it in 1976 for $6.50,30 and Surplus Books withdrawn from Mad-dock's Select Library, 383 George Street, Sydney, and now offered at the ftllowingreduced prices of July 1882.31 This is a slim basis on which to categorise whatwere undoubtedly - and despite Maurice Macmillan - sophisticated metropoli-tan enterprises. By a strange coincidence Mullen opened his office at 48 Pater-noster Row, London in the Northern autumn of 1884 ...

29. Hobart Town: printed by H. & C. Best. Call number: 018.4/W.30. It was no 8714 in the Ingleton Collection.31. Facsimile reprint: Sydney: Brandywine Press & Archive, 1986. Neither this list of eight pagesnor the previous one of four pages could be claimed to be models of bibliographical precision, butat least it is clear what works ate in two or three volumes. The discounted price of three-deckerspublished at aguinea and ahalfwas four or five shillings.

Commercial Circulating Libraries ,n the 19th Century 79

OCTOBER, 1878.

NEW" :BOOKSADDED TO

383 GEORGE STREET,S':X)XUI:.

F.

=THIS t..Lbnry is SGpplMd regularly by every Hail Stl,.o:ull.<:r with th_ latest PIlI,liC1-tiortl iD. Histol1, T,avel, Biopphy. Philosophy, PopallU' Theology, ;1,00 the higherclass oC FictioD j: &!so. all the Leadil1g M:lpzil1" and BeYiew..

To Parties residiog near Railway 01" Ste:un"boat cummuuie:uion with S}-ducy.en:ry Cadlity is ofrcred.

-...

II I 3 6 t;zMonth. Mondu. Monl!u. Months.

OD.work ..... timelUld .. Magutne •• a S a 013 6 I 5 0 I:) :) 0I

o 9 0 I :z 6 I 17 6 t 3 J 0

alto 1100 2:100!440

Two woru at .. time ao.d .. .•.Three worn at A time ..iui two» .=

IJJI,,3tI

,3I,IIII3,,,33

"nu.A4am (w. H. D.) EnilWa Party Le:uIcn, :uu1 Ell&li..h POU1il::'. fron\

Walpole to Poel, 8.0. •.. .., •••Aim:worth (W. H.) Du.trice Tyldct1cy ", ,•.Albert (M.) Holbnd nnd her Heroes, to W: Vcr '$8sAlIot'd. (Eo M.) Fair MlUd ..All ,he \'t!U Roand. Vel. %0, 8¥O. ..Andrcw (W. F.) IndiA:md Her Neighbours. 8.0.ArRoIJ. Vol. liS. Svo. .•• ".Aslitoil. U.) Sopma. A NO'f'e1 '"Banks (0. L) CJ.H,b Booth's Clerk '"Balkin fM.) into Smooth Wlltertl ...

(P.) Cbief ActotS in the Revolution.Be vu.. Vol 34. 35. 8vo. ... '"Bc (T.) A YOGng Flower', ...Bewicke (A. Eo N.) MareaJ .•. ... .•.Bishop (H. N.) Vc-y. of the Paper Canoe. A Gqrapbiw Journey of

:zoo:) miles (rom Quebec" to the Gulf of Mexico, 1514'S- s...o. .••Black 1R.) Loft! and Lucre •• '"Braddon (M. E.) An Verdict .•• ••• •• •••

-Bnl$MJ (Mn.l.V0J'1IR' In the 'Sunbeam.' 8,,0. ,.. •• .,.BQCball (Ho· ) for Fortune. A Namtlvco(Tlanllloo Adventun:. Svo.BllrtOn (R. P.) Gold Mines cCMidian. Svo. .•. .•• ,.•Cameron (R. L.) Deceivcn EverCulyle (G.) Rattle of Unbdid'... .-CaatacaMM (0.) In Spring ofMr Life

......-...• .._...._...- ..

Much of the research done on European, and especially German, lendinglibraries has concentrated on elaborate statistical analysis of the titles listed inthe catalogues. As far as trying to understand readers and their tastes is con-cerned, there is a certain counsel of despair in this. Just as examining publishing

80 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

figures merely quantifies the calculations and miscalculations the trade makesabout demand, so too studying the contents of catalogues and supplements pro-duces fictitious consumers, 'readers of the mind', to adapt a famous phrase fromDon McKenzie. The reason for this I propose to recapitulate now. However, itis seemly to note that the Australian catalogues emphasise fiction and what theFrench call nouveautis. Why should they not, given that the colonies were de-veloping from the 1820s onwasds a system of libraries designed for differentneeds and requirements of a professional, reference and educative character? M-ter all in Europe the more 'serious' libraries were often hopelessly inaccessible toall but a few privileged scholars, and there was a need for commercial establish-ments open long homs to a population of undergraduates and modest privatescholars. The particular slant of the Australian circulating libraries means thatthey held some of the marginal novels that have almost entirely been absentfrom mainstream, legal-deposit institutions. Elizabeth Helme's Penitent ofGodstow, which was issued and reissued three times up to the 1840s, is now avery rare book indeed." Yet it was available to the subscribers of McGarvie,Walch and Platts! How often it was read is, natusally, another matter.

Priya Joshi's In Another Country reviews some - but not all - of the researchdone in various places on records of borrowing from libraries. Faced with theabsence ofloan registers ofIndian institutions, she takes refuge in some series ofstatistics, arguing that isolated itemised documents are not necesarily representa-tive." While one can concede this - each case is inevitably sui generis and needsto be set carefully in its own context - there is much to be said none the less forobserving the precise patterns followed by a substantial number of borrowers.The subscribers to the Derwent Circulating Library between 1846 and the early1850s - more than 500 of them - are not totally irrelevant. Indeed, if one re-members the dearth of similar documentation elsewhere before the twentiethcentury, the Walch manuscript register, in itself a better picture of the move-ment of tides in and out of the collection than a printed catalogue frozen in theyear 1846, needs to be particularly treasw:ed.34 Since Fran90ise Parent-Lardeur'sinitial research more than twenty years ago, the French have come up with onerecord of individual loans from a circulating library in Ava1Ion in 1822-1823.35

32. My copy of the 'Third Edition' (London: A.K. Newman and Company, 1843) was boughtfrom a Melbourne bookshop in 1981. The title-pages of the three volumes are cancels. The sheetsare those of the first edition of 1812. Given the inadequacy of existing bibliographical accounts ofthis book, a short corrective article is called for.33. In Another Country, pp.50-53.34. For an indication of work already done on the Walch register, see Joan & Wallace Kirsop.'Vice-Regal Reading in Van Diemen's Land', forthcoming in 2005 in The La TrobeJournal.35. See Franf):oise Parent, 'Les cabinets de lecture' in Histoire des bibiiothequesfran;aises, Ill: 1789-1914, Paris: Promodis, 1992, pp,490-511, esp. pp.s04-510.

Commercial Circulating Libraries in the 19th Century 81

Before that there are the materials published by Henri-Jean Martin and his col-laborators about the booksellers Nicolas in mid-seventeenth-century Grenoble,where lending was a minor aspect of the business.36 Throw in Paul Kaufman onthe Bristol Library between 1773 and 178437 - a different type of library in anycase - and the articles published in the 1980s and 1990s by Jan Fergus on theClays in eighteenth-century Warwickshire" and we are close to the end of aninventory of the available models.

It is artificial to separate commercial circulating libraries from the othersorts of institutions - book clubs, reading societies, mechanics' institutes, evenpublic libraries - that had similar or overlapping bodies of readers. It is true thatthere are special cases like the borrowing records - manuscript and unpublished_ of the Royal Library in Paris (now the BNF) that do fall outside our scope. Onthe other hand it is useful to look at lists of subscribers. The authors ofAutourd'un cabinet de lecture have succeeded in finding two provincial examples, fromMuIhouse in 1829 and the British Seamen's Reading Rooms in Bordeaux in1869-1870." There are others elsewhere: Kaufman's work on Bath in the lateeighteenth century,'" Schlup on literary and reading societies in Neuchiitel, in-cluding members of the Montmollin family related to Mrs La T robe," the ex-tensive lists published by Waiter Struve and Tom Darragh of subscribers to theGerman club libraries in Ballarat, Bendigo and Talbot in the 1880s,'2 the peoplewho acquired the various catalogues of the Leeds Foreign Circulating Library as

36. Martin & M. Lecocq, with the assistance of H. Carrier & A. Sauvy, Livres et lecteurs aGrrooble: I" registm du libraire Nitolas (1645-1668), Geneva: Droz, 1977, 2 volumes: readingsubscriptions to the Gazette (po 502), loans of volumes of Madeleine de Scudery's Artamme ou leGrand Cyrus (p. 797).37. Paul Kaufman, Borrowings from the Bristol Library 1773-1784. A Unique Record ofReadingVogues, Chaslottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University ofVirginia, 1960.38. See, for example, 'Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers ofSamuel Clay's Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick, 1770-72', Papers of theBibliographical Society ofAmmca, 78, 1984, 155-213, and 'Provincial servants' reading in the lateeighteenth century' in lames Raven, Helen Small & Naomi Tadmor. eds, The Practiu andRepresentation ofRtading in England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp.202-225.39. Noe Richter & Graham Falconer, 'Et les clients des cabinets de lecture? Deux documentsinedits', Autourd'un cabinet de lecture, pp.125-151.40. See 'In Defence of Fair Readers' in Libraries and their Vsm. Collected Papm in Library History,London: The Library Association, 1969, pp.223-228.41. See Sod/Us de lecture et cabinets litttraires, pp.25-27.42. See State Library of Victoria microfiche Germans in Victoria 1853-1912.1 am grateful to TomDasragh for a printed version of the library subscriber lists. See also Thomas A. Darragh & WalterStnIVe, comps. Germans in Victoria: The Franco-Prussian War Bmtfit Subscription Lists.Melbourne:Council of the State Library of Victoria, 1995.

82 Expanding Horizons - Print Cultures across the South Pacific

detailed in Alice Hamilton's study issued in 2001.43 In Australia, apart from re-search already published by Brian Hubber44 and Keith Manley45 on book clubs,we are waiting for the results of Keith Adkins' investigations into the EvandaleSubscription Library, not to mention what can still be done in relation to thearchives ofmechanics' institutes.

It is good to have the names and to be able to situate them in a social, eco-nomic and cultural context. However, one needs to be able to go further in wayspermitted by the Walch register. Observing who borrows what and when, onediscovers quickly that newness and fashionableness are especially important forcommercial-library subscribers. Old titles sit on the shelfunused, and in librariesthat are not moribund or underfunded they are replaced. Borrowers rush to takeout new titles - Eugene Sue and Dickens rather than Jane Austen, ElizabethHelme and Walter Scott in the late 1840s. Real readers or borrowers - let usmaintain the distinction! - behave very much as one would expect. Perhapsscholars interested in these things should pay a visit to the local video store.Analyses that do not take account of obsolescence, of the brittleness of a con-sumer cultuse, risk running after the imagined and the imaginary. The mono-graph I am preparing on the Walch material and its implications for the study ofHobart life in the 1840s will, I hope, make some of these things clearer.

For the rest I end, as I have done so often in the past, with an invitation: goout and find new documents, settle down to the laborious task of indexing whatis still hidden in nineteenth-century newspapers, give us in short a solid and en-during account of what remains an important part of our cultusal history. Theflurry around the unavoidably provisional History ofthe Book in Australia will beworthwhile if it produces the stimulus needed by the next generation of scholars.

43. 'The Leeds Foreign Cireulating-Library c1779-1814' in Geoffrey Fomer, Allce Hamilton,Peter Hoare & Elaine Robinson, 'A Very Good Public Library': Early YeaTJ of the Leeds Library,WyIam: Allenholme Press for the History of the BookTrade in the North, 2001, pp.111-171.44. ""Entertainment for many Solitary Hours": an 1840s Book Club on the Australian Frontier',BSANZBullttin, 22, 1998, 81-92.45. 'Early Australian Book Clubs: Bathurst, Parramatra, Perth', LibraryHistory, 10, 1994, 76-87.