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Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere NEW DIRECTIONS IN BOOK HISTORY Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere Lara Atkin · Sarah Comyn Porscha Fermanis · Nathan Garvey New Directions in Book History Series Editors Shafquat Towheed Faculty of Arts Open University Milton Keynes, UK Jonathan Rose Department of History Drew University Madison, NJ, USA As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish mono- graphs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new fron- tiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to the 21st century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will experi- ment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-­ author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple vol- umes; and shorter works produced through Palgrave’s e-book (EPUB2) ‘Pivot’ stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors. Editorial Board Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14749 Lara Atkin • Sarah Comyn Porscha Fermanis • Nathan Garvey Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere Lara Atkin Sarah Comyn University College Dublin University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland Dublin, Ireland Porscha Fermanis Nathan Garvey University College Dublin University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland Dublin, Ireland New Directions in Book History ISBN 978-3-030-20425-9 ISBN 978-3-030-20426-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20426-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: History and Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was funded by the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 679436), and the authors would like to thank the Council for its generos- ity. We must also acknowledge our great debt to the following open access databases containing digital surrogates of important nineteenth-century sources: National Library of Australia’s Trove database; National Library of Singapore’s NewspaperSG database; National Library of New Zealand’s Papers Past database; Internet Archive; and SouthHem’s Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere (BCCSH) digital archive. Detailed acknowledgements of the various individuals and institutions who provided valuable assistance during the preparation of the BCCSH digital archive are available on the SouthHem website: http://www.ucd. ie/southhem/acknowledgments.html. At Palgrave Macmillan, we would like to thank Allie Troyanos, Rachel Jacobe, and Ben Doyle. Our anony- mous peer reviewers provided excellent suggestions and guidance, for which we are grateful. We would also like to thank colleagues at University College Dublin for their support, in particular, John Brannigan, Andrew Carpenter, Danielle Clarke, Lucy Cogan, Nick Daly, Sharae Deckard, Margaret Kelleher, Amanda Nettelbeck, Michelle O’Connell, Eoin O’Mahoney, and Sarah Sharp. Special thanks must go to Kaitlin Picard, our visiting research assistant from the University of Rhode Island, for her assistance with statistics relating to catalogue holdings. Finally, we would like to thank James Raven for his encouragement and inspiration. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ATTRIBUTIONS This book is the result of a collaborative research project, and its ideas and arguments have been jointly conceived. Each chapter was nonetheless written by a lead author or authors and, for the purposes of research assess- ment, the following attribution of authorship is acknowledged: Chap. 1 (Fermanis); Chap. 2 (Fermanis and Garvey); Chap. 3 (Comyn and Fermanis); Chap. 4 (Comyn); Chap. 5 (Atkin); and Chap. 6 (Atkin and Fermanis). Primary and archival research is attributed in the following manner: ASL and TPL (Garvey); MPL (Comyn); SAI (Fermanis); SAPL (Atkin); and SL and RLM (Fermanis). REFERENCING Citations from the Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere (BCCSH) digital archive give both the short title of the catalogue and a URL linking directly to the digital surrogate of the catalogue. Each cata- logue entered into the archive has its own unique record. All records are correct as of 11 March 2019. Praise for Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere “Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Southern Hemisphere is an important contribution to the study of library history, an often over looked aspect of the history of the book [or histoire de livre]. The four co-authors provide a scholarly and readable comparative study of the role major public libraries played in the nineteenth century in community building and the public sphere in British colonies south of the equator.” —John Arnold, Affiliate, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Australia, and co-editor of A History of the Book in Australia 1891–1945, A National Culture in a Colonised Market (2001) vii CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 From Community to Public Libraries: Liberalism, Education, and Self-Government 17 3 Cultivating Public Readers: Citizens, Classes, and Types 45 4 ‘A mob of light readers’: Holdings, Genre Proportions, and Modes of Reading 77 5 Knowing the ‘Native Mind’: Ethnological and Philological Collections 103 6 Conclusion 127 Appendix A: Explanatory Note on Catalogue Sources 139 Appendix B: Volume Numbers of Colonial Public Libraries 143 ix x Contents Appendix C: Genre Proportions of Colonial Public Libraries by Title 145 Select Bibliography 149 Index 153 ABBREVIaTIONS ALSMI Adelaide Literary Society and Mechanics’ Institute ASL Australian Subscription Library BML British Museum Library FPL Free Public Library JIA Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia JSBRAS Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society MPL Melbourne Public Library RLM Raffles Library and Museum SAI South Australian Institute SALMI South Australian Library and Mechanics’ Institute SAM South African Museum SAPL South African Public Library SAQ J South African Quarterly Journal SI South African Institute SL Singapore Library TPL Tasmanian Public Library xi LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2.1 ‘Uses of a Public Library’, Melbourne Punch, August 2, 1855, 153. Courtesy of Trove: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ article/171430414 18 Fig. 2.2 Samuel Calvert, ‘The Reading Room of the Melbourne Public Library’, wood engraving, Illustrated Melbourne Post, June 27, 1866. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria: http://handle. slv.vic.gov.au/10381/295506 32 Fig. 3.1 ‘While There’s Life There’s Soap’, wood engraving, Melbourne Punch, January 13, 1887, 15. Courtesy of Trove: https:// trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/20442557 57 Fig. 3.2 ‘At the Public Library’, wood engraving, Australasian Sketcher, February 23, 1888, Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/258786 60 Fig. 3.3 ‘Synopsis of the Public Library’, Catalogue, MPL, 1861, xvi. Courtesy of BCCSH and the State Library of Victoria: http:// www.ucd.ie/southhem/record.html#112 64 xiii LIST OF TaBLES Table C.1 SL and RLM 145 Table C.2 SAI 145 Table C.3 SAPL 146 Table C.4 ASL 146 Table C.5 TPL 146 Table C.6 MPL 147 xv Fig. 1 Map ‘Location of Case Study Libraries’, based on Walter Crane, ‘Imperial Federation: Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire in 1886’, colour lithograph, The Graphic, July 24, 1886.
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