FICTION

Victorian and Edwardian Popular Fiction

This collection came into being after a visit from Dr Stephen Murray-Smith in the early 1960's. Dr Murray-Smith was enthusiastic about the preservation of the remaining LMI book collection and in particular the popular fiction.

The research value of this collection was also recognised by other academics and in 1979 Mr. Mike McCausland, then a lecturer in literature at the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education, first suggested cataloguing the collection.

As the result of a submission from Mr. McCausland and Mr Stefan Petrow, who was researching the history of the Mechanics' Institute, a grant was made from the Sir John Morris Trust Fund for the cataloguing of the popular fiction part of the collection.

There are 6347 catalogued titles (and a further 1500 which are uncatalogued) in the collection, which are the surviving part of a lending collection which flourished between 1842 and 1929.

The collection is strong in the fields of English and Australian Literature. Among the best represented authors are James Payn (43 titles), W Clark Russell (38), F Marion Crawford (44), and the Scottish trio, S. R. Crockett (44), James Grant (46), and Mrs. Oliphant (39). The most represented author in the collection is Annie S. Swan with 39 titles under her own name, and 14 writing as David Lyall.

Australian writers who are well-represented include Louis Becke (27 titles), Mrs Campbell Praed (26), Rolf Boldrewood (16) and Ada Cambridge (13).

A listing of items in this collection may be accessed at; 

http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/tasmaniasheritage/search/heritage/vande

or through the TALIS catalogue.

General literature

The "serious literature" component of the Mechanics' Institute Collection was catalogued in its Dewey 800's sequence.

The surviving items have not been added to the State Library's TALIS catalogue.

The collection is strongly Anglo-centric, with a smaller representation of French and German authors.

Novels, poetry and essays are included and authors like Dickens, Trollope and Thackeray are well-represented.

There are many examples of the three-decker novel, the standard format for publication of longer novels prior to 1894. First editions, and collected, uniform and standard editions, are all well-represented.

 

Children's Literature

A small collection of books for children have survived from the Mechanics' Institute Library.

These have been incorporated into an uncatalogued collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century children's literature held in the Library's stack area.