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]
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