Wednesday 19 June 2013

Meston Collection



The Meston Collection


Under the same owner/custodian arrangement as the Launceston Mechanics Institute Legacy Collection, there is the Meston Collection of Printed Australiana,  also owned by the Launceston City Council and housed in the Launceston Library.


Tasmanian Items are held in what is now known as the Launceston Local Studies Collection. The LMI items, together with the Meston Collection form the basis of the Library's strong local and Tasmanian history research collection


This description of the Meston Collection is by Ian Wilson, a notable collector of Tasmaniana;

"[Archibald] Meston formed a substantial reference library to support his research in anthropology and history. Following his death, his wife agreed to sell the collection to the Launceston Public Library on the condition that the books remained in the library and were to be known as the 'Meston Collection'. The Meston Memorial Library fund was opened for public subscription on 27 March 1953 with a view to raising £500 to buy 407 titles from the collection. By April 1954 only £276 had been collected so the Launceston City Council made up the shortfall.
Some highlights of the collection are the early voyage accounts, including the Frederik Muller facsimile of Tasman's Journal, the general reader's set of Peron and Freycinet's account of the Baudin voyage, Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australia (1814) with atlas, and Delano's Narrative (1817). There are the First Fleet journals of Phillip (1789), Hunter (1793) and Collins (1798, 1804); Wentworth's New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (1820); and inland exploration accounts by Sturt (1834), Mitchell (1838), Grey (1841), Eyre (1845), Strzelecki (1845), Leichhardt (1847), Landsborough (1862) and Stuart (1863).
Early Tasmanian books include Jeffreys (1820); Evans' Van Diemen's Land in first, second and French editions; Godwin's Emigrant's Guide (1823) and Widowson (1829). There are almanacs published by Ross, Melville, Elliston, and Wood, including the very rare Wood's Tasmanian Almanack for 1857. Other choice books include Henderson's Observations (1832), Goodridge's Narrative (1838), the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science (1842-9), Rowcroft's Tales of the Colonies (1843), Syme's Nine Years in Van Diemen's Land (1848), Stoney's A Year in Tasmania (1854), and Brownrigg's The Cruise of the Freak (1872). There are also a number of rarities including Proclamations, Government Orders and Notices for 1824-5 and 1827, Murray's Austral-Asiatic Review (1828), the Hobart Town Magazine (1833), Browning's Address to the Prisoners (1836), and the Launceston Mechanics' Institute Literary Chatelaine (1858).
The Meston Collection was enlarged with the addition of other material relating to Australia and Tasmania already in the library's holdings, and by subsequent acquisitions. When the Launceston Public Library became part of the State Library of Tasmania in 1971 there were some 6000 volumes in this special collection. Today it is an important resource for Tasmanian and local studies in the north of Tasmania."[1] 




[1] Ian Wilson, Collecting Old Tasmanian Books (2010)







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