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In the Launceston Library

The article reproduced below was discovered through the agency of those two most valuable Australian resources, Austlit which indexed it and TROVE which digitised the source publication.

In the Launceston Library

A TALK ON AUSTRALIAN BOOKS AND AUSTRALIAN READERS.

Monday’s Mercury contained a letter by a member of the anonymous staff, who signed himself J.B. It contained an extract from what is vulgarly called a "slating" critique of the poems of Essex Evans, a critique which appeared in an English paper. Of the extract, the two or three lines snipped and appended give a fair idea.

A full third of the “ Secret Key ” is mere thundering rant, with no particular meaning, no sense of poetic style, only a delight in rapid movement, as though the writer were gotten upon a pegasus, and galloped full tilt, devil take the hindmost.

The reader will note that this is merely the abusive outpouring of a literary back who expresses his contempt - real or affected - without literary art of any sort. Iago was nothing if not critical, this man is nothing if not dogmatic. And his dogmatism lacks distinction, it is the dogmatism of the nobody. The somebody does very indifferently what the SATURDAY REVIEW in its palmy days used to do very skilfully.

But why does J.B. quote this poor stuff, and thrust it on the notice of Mercury readers, not one in a hundred of whom could tell you who Evans is or what he has written? That is the question I asked myself as I lay back in the Launceston express on Monday (1). Is it malice? Is J.B. a disappointed poet, one whose still born verse no bilious writer in another hemisphere has cared to scarify. For, after all, it is something to be abused 12,000 miles from home : it signifies at least that one’s voice has been distinctly audible at that distance. Perhaps so, for he opens his letter thus:

I have elsewhere called attention to the widely-exaggerated estimate of our local verse on the part of a Sydney coterie, and their fierce resentment of English criticism.

What is the Sydney coterie to J.B. unless it has flung his epic or his lyric into the waste paper basket?

But the initials suggest Joe Bagstock, the famous Major of Dombey and Son, who was wont to inform his friends “J.B is tough, Sir, tough and devilish sly.” Is this J.B. sly: is his seeming attack on Mr Essex Evans a mere puff in disguise. Anyway, it reminded me that recently, incited thereto by favorable notices in the English press, I bought the “ Secret Key,” read it, liked much of it, and proposed to review it. It reminded me also that a number of us, shocked by the scant regard for Australian authors shown by the book committee of our Public Library, had resolved to fill the blank on shelves where seven volumes represent Australia’s poets and essayists of the 19th century. And the next idea that occurred was that possibly the people of Launceston were a little kinder to our poets from Harpur to Hebblethwaite, than are our Hobart literary censors.

The Launceston Library is a big one. It has five and twenty thousand volumes, whereas Hobart has but thirteen. The books make a formidable array, completely lining the available wall space, and towering high above the head of the would be reader. Of course, many of them are literary ephemera—novels which had their day, and that a brief but not particularly merry one—but with these there are a great many valuable books, and of those latter not a few are up to date. Somebody displays considerable judgment in selection: for example, to take the author who concerned me last, Charles Dickens; the recent criticisms of the great novelist, works by Chesterton and Gissing were there, and these in Hobart, one had to purchase.

But this is a digression and our main concern is with Australian authors. Mr----- admitted that his committee has not impoverished itself by spending excessive sums on local works. But, for all that, they are better represented than in the Hobart library. There are some very curious gaps in both collections, for example, of the three poets whom Sutherland and Turner selected as our foremost, two — Kendall and Brunton Stephens—are missing. This seems to me unpardonable, and to betray a lack of the literary sense. Poetry is very largely a description and an interpretation of Nature, and in Australia such description, if at all accurate, must create a language of its own. Fifty years ago a shrewd observer noted this, and pointed out that right down to the leaves of the gum trees, and to the whisper of the wind as it swept them, the sights and sounds of the new world were unlike those of the old. But that does not trouble your “superior” person of the merely booky sort. He is nothing if not conventional. If the words which fall on his ear are euphonious, and are sanctioned by long usage, such a trifle as that they have become wholly inappropriate does not vex him.

We want an Australian literature, because neither nature nor human nature at the antipodes are what they are — still less just what they were — in London.

We enthuse a little insanely concerning our cricketers and prize-fighters, we grow wholly mad in deification of our footballers, and we atone for this by undervaluing our writers. Launceston is kinder to these last than is Hobart, it has several volumes by Lawson, several by Paterson, several by Steel Rudd. And Steel Rudd, the librarian tells me, is the favorite of the subscribers to the Mechanics’ Institute. His books circulate constantly, and are endorsed by those imprints so highly valued by all authors fortunate enough to secure them—the thumb marks of the many. Then there are Gordon, Boake, Dyson, Ogilvy, Green, Slade, and of course, Ada Cambridge aud Rolph Boldrewood, whose novels find their way through Mudie’s into all the ordinary libraries. There are two or three others. It is a rather larger and better selection than we in Hobart have, but that is all it is possible to say.

NSW Bookstall Co. Ltd. (1920)

The thing is the more curious in Launceston, as Mr Pritchard, the editor of the Examiner, is occasionally guilty of verse, and is not without a fellow feeling for more hardened rhymsters. On Monday he showed me some fine verses for which he paid Mr Evans five pounds—a high price for a very short poem “made in Australia.” He and Mr Balfe, of the Courier, have done what they could to encourage the muses, and are fairly versed in Tasmanian verse. Neither of them is to be reckoned amongst those whose literature, like the wine of the connoisseur who affects the French vintage concocted in London, must be imported.

And it is the more curious again, because the Launceston Library is a business concern, and the book committees of such concerns usually support the author whose books circulate merrily. There is, the librarian tells me, a growing interest in Australian periodical literature. Some of that literature is very poor stuff, as most of the stuff which appears in the STRAND, the WINDSOR, and the rest is. But it is increasing in quantity and improving in quality, and will increase the faster if Australian magazines are decently supported. Even the poet and the novelist must keep the pot boiling, and whether they send copy to London, to Sydney, or to Melbourne is, in the main, a matter of money.

That there are a number of reading people in Launceston is clear. The Library has over six hundred subscribers, and has paid so well that £2000 is available for reconstruction, which will put all the books within reach of the readers. The librarian and his assistant cater for the six hundred subscribers to the circulating library, look after the two reading rooms - one free, the other for members only, and they see to the letting of the hall. In the annual report salaries are down for only £260, and the £260 is well-earned. But to return to our text a little, Tasmania's coterie must do for Australian literature what J.B.’s terrible “coterie in Sydney” is doing for it in N.S.W.

(The Critic, 2 Nov 1907, p4) 

(1) Although this article appeared without a by-line, it is surely no coincidence that a review of "The Secret Key" appeared in the next issue of The Critic, contributed by Milner Macmaster, editor of The Critic at that time. 

The Institute and Anthony Trollope

With the literary world about to celebrate Anthony Trollope's 200th anniversary (he was born on 24 April 1815) it is timely to recall his extended stay in Australia in 1871-72, and the colonial response to the man described by Nigel Starck as Australia’s "first visiting celebrity in popular culture."(1)

A selection of Trollope's works from the Institute collection

Trollope visited all of the colonies during his year and two days sojourn, and spent time in Tasmania in January and February 1872. Coverage of the visit in the local press is a curious mixture of adulation tempered by a fear that he might take away with him an unfavourable impression.

To illustrate, here is a report from The Mercury (Monday 29 Jan 1872, p3) of a short speech Trollope made in Hobart;

Mr. Trollope accepted an invitation to be present at a banquet given to the Hon. Mr. Dunn at the Town Hall, and in his response to the toast of his health, Mr. Trollope gave, in a few words, the impressions he had received of us from a few days' sojourn in the South. He said:-"Perhaps, as a stranger, you will expect that I should say something about the things I have met in this and the other colonies, (Yes, yes.) I did not come among you to teach you, but rather to learn something from you. (Cheers.) I did not come to tell you what I thought but to learn what you think; but on such an occasion as this, and after the speeches we have heard, I cannot refrain from making a few remarks. I think your position here is a happy one. You are placed in a colony having everything around you to make life happy. Your genial climate and fertile soil produce everything tending to promote good spirits, and you are surrounded by everything God can give to please man. (Cheers.) I find, however, you have one terrible drawback-a drawback sufficient to destroy all your happiness. You all think you have been ruined. I find that is the common expression of every gentleman who speaks to me of Tasmania. Every gentleman speaks to me of the loveliness of the climate, the beauty of the scenery, all that promotes happiness, but still he considers the colony has been ruined. The army has been removed, and with it some £350,000 of British expenditure has been withdrawn, and the colony ruined. I speak tenderly on this point, knowing I may tread on some one's corns, but I believe that the colony has been blessed by the withdrawal of the army. In my opinion the withdrawal of the army was one of the greatest blessings that ever occurred to the colony. You have chosen to take upon you like men the work of independent self-government. You have chosen to say you won't be servants or bondmen, even of the mother country (cheers); and yet you complain that the mother country has withdrawn the army, and ruined the colony by so doing. Being independent you carry on a government of your own, have Ministers of your own; being beholden to the mother country for nothing but allegiance, surely you do not want a body of 200 men of the mother country's army merely to show you the beauties of a red coat. Gentlemen, I find you live in happiness and plenty, with every prospect of success..."

The Mercury spends the balance of its report mounting a counter-argument and attempting to justify the colonists' position.

One wonders how often since that speech have these two contradictory positions been simultaneously held in Tasmania – that we live in the best place on earth and that we are totally ruined?

Looking over the shelves of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection, it is clear that Trollope was a favoured author, and that his works were well-read. All of his major works are held, including the Palliser novels and the Chronicles of Barsetshire, many in early editions. There are three copies of Orley Farm, all dated 1862 and including a second printing. Trollope's Autobiography (1883) is held, in a hybrid set of first (vol I) and second (vol II) editions. There are first editions of The Claverings (1867) and of North America (1862).

Frontispiece from Orley Farm. Illustration by John Everett Millais

But the Institute had an even closer encounter with the great writer when he visited Launceston in the party of the Governor during Launceston Cup week of 1872. The group arrived late in the evening on 5 February, and their itinerary included a visit to the Chudleigh caves and Corra Linn as well as attendance at the race meeting. The Governor and "his suite" also attended a concert at the Mechanics' Institute given by the Carrandinis.

It would seem that the Board of Management decided to invite Trollope to visit the Institute because among their correspondence is a brief note from the author to William Wathen (Institute Secretary from 1860-1900) regretfully declining. They may not have got their man, but they did at least obtain his autograph.

Anthony Trollope's letter to William Wathen

(1) Dr Starck has retraced Trollope's visit to the colonies in a recently published book The First Celebrity: Anthony Trollope’s Australasian odyssey (Lansdowne Media)

George Eliot's Middlemarch and Mudie's Select Library

Only a well- established novelist could challenge the orthodoxy of the "three-decker" novel at 10/6 per volume in the mid-nineteenth century. A novel was an expensive purchase, and for most Victorians, the alternative was to rent. The great circulating libraries, especially Mudie's, subverted the fiction publishing market. Mudie's business model preferred three volumes and a large order from Mudie made a decent print-run viable; to be ignored by his "Select Library" seriously threatened an author's livelihood.

Charles Dickens' alternative was to publish initially in monthly parts at a shilling an issue, with a special two-part number to conclude. Total cost one pound, instead of a guinea and a half, and an outlay spread over nineteen months. Additionally, there was the opportunity with this mode of publication to pad out the parts with paid advertisements. Then, a bound edition could follow for the patient renters.

George Eliot's Middlemarch was another attempt at beating the tyranny of the libraries. Conceived as a longer form narrative than could be contained in three volumes, it appeared first in eight books, published at two-monthly intervals, at 5/- a book. Initially, Mudie threatened a boycott, but with George Eliot at the height of her powers and popularity, he relented and took 1000 copies of Book I, or 20% of the print-run.

The Institute's collection includes among its treasures a set of Middlemarch in the eight-book first edition (1871-72), and to a bibliophile, the copy is full of interest.

The first thing to be noted is that it carefully retains all of the original green wrappers and advertisements, but has been rebound in green cloth with cream endpapers. On the cover of each book is the applied yellow plate of Mudie's Select Library. On Book I only, this plate is casually overlayed on the plate of The English and Foreign Library Company (Late Hookham's.) Thus this volume marks the exact moment that Mudie finally swallowed up his competitor, Thomas Hookham, whose company had been in the circulating library business since 1784.

Mudie's label on 'Middlemarch'. Book VI.

 On the front free endpapers of each book is the blind stamp of Hudson & Hopwood, Booksellers and Stationers, Launceston. This suggests that Messrs. Hudson and Hopwood had imported this copy of Middlemarch, probably through a purchase of Mudie's excess stock.

From Hudson & Hopwood, the books were transferred to the Launceston Public Library, at some time before 1875 when they appeared in that institution's printed catalogue. Each volume is marked with their oval stamp, and subsequently plated Mechanics' Institute and Public Library, following the transfer of the LPL's stock to its rival around 1890.

Blind stamp of Hudson & Hopwood

This, now rare, first edition of Middlemarch is described in detail from his own copy by M I Parrish in Victorian Lady Novelists (1933). The Institute's copy, which appears to be the only copy held in an Australian library, is as described by Parrish, but with some additional material.

Book I has a different set of advertisements on the back wrapper – an advertisement for Jenner & Knewstub's Patents and Inventions, not The Crown Perfumery Company, inside, and an advertisement for George Eliot, Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, "in the Press", not the advertisement for Works of George Eliot and Lord Lytton's Novels described by Parrish.

Book II contains additional advertisements pasted inside Mudie's covers - at the front for Bontor & Collins and Rowland's Kalydor, and George Roberts' Wedding Trousseau, and at the back Phillips, China and Glass Manufacturers.

The Middlemarch experiment must have been a commercial success because Daniel Deronda was published in a similar form in 1876; and a four volume edition of Middlemarch appeared in 1872 (there is also a copy of this edition in the Institute collection), suggesting the eight book edition had been completely sold in less than a year.

The large number of volumes in the Institute collection bearing Mudie's bright yellow label indicates that his Select Library was a most useful source of books for colonial libraries, and that Mudie was astutely selling off his excess stock as demand for titles waned in his English branches. For the interested reader, Guinevere L. Griest's Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian Novel (1970) is recommended.

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.