The School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin currently has three generously funded Ad Astra PhD studentships available that include an annual stipend, full fee waivers, and an annual research allowance. The deadline for applications is 10 April 2020. Full details can be found online here:
I will be supervising one of the PhD studentships. I am interested in supervising projects in the following research areas:
literary and economic criticism (especially of the long nineteenth century);
Romantic women writers (especially Jane Austen);
settler colonial literature (especially Australia and South Africa);
emigration/travel literature;
book history and history of reading in the nineteenth century;
postcolonial literature (especially Anglophone literature of the Global South)
If you’re interested in applying for the scholarship under my supervision, please get in touch with me. You can find my research profile here: https://people.ucd.ie/sarah.comyn.
During his inaugural lecture as president of the Beechworth Athenaeum in 1864, J. B. Castieau identified one of the key functions and priorities of the mechanics’ institutes, arguing that the ‘Library was the main stay and sheet anchor of the Institution’. The selection of books, Castieau believed was ‘[a]lmost the only really, important duty of [the] Committee’ and ‘require[d] their most careful consideration’ (Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 16 July 1864). Referring to the debates about ‘light literature’ that dominated the selection of books, Castieau concluded that ‘however ably and honestly performed,’ the decisions of the library committee ‘will certainly not give general satisfaction’ with the wants of subscribers and the educational aspirations of the institutes frequently in tension (see Atkin et al., pp. 77-102, for a history of these debates in colonial Australia).
The report of the annual meeting of the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute committee in 1862 similarly emphasised both the significance of the library to the success of the institute and the need to satisfy subscriber demands. While acknowledging the hard work of the committee in ‘nearly doubl[ing]’ their library collection ‘during the year’, with ‘upwards of 900 volumes’ added, the report nonetheless warned that the ‘numbers of readers had also increased in a more than a corresponding ratio’ and that is was vital the institute ‘keep a pace with the requirements’ of their members (Star, 12 May 1862). By the 1864 annual meeting, the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute committee characterised the library as the ‘most important branch of the institution’ and that it was now ‘assuming a position somewhat commensurate with the requirements of the district’ (Star, 14 May 1864).
How did the mechanics’ institutes meet the demands of its subscribers, where did the books come from, and how did they ensure their selections would form the ‘nucleus of a really good library’? (Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 16 July 1864).
A number of the institutes ordered books and periodicals from the London supplier G. F. Fowler, including the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute, the Geelong Mechanics’ Institute and the Sandhurst Mechanics’ Institute. While the Ballaarat and Sandhurst institutes appeared to be content with their orders from Fowler, the Geelong institute registered concern in 1866 and chose to suspend their agency ‘owing to many unsuitable books being forwarded’ (Geelong Advertiser, 13 January 1866). The Geelong institute eventually reinstated Fowler with the stipulation that they provide a list of books rather than allowing Fowler to select the books himself. Letters from the Ballaarat institute to Fowler suggest that they provided him with a regular list of requests and one letter demonstrates the constant attention paid to the cost effectiveness of books purchased with the Secretary, W. H. Batten, indicating that books marked with an ‘x’ need to be ‘picked up cheap’ and those marked ‘xx’ should be ‘secondhand’ (Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute Letterbook).
Extract of letter to G. F. Fowler from BMI Secretary W. H. Batten specifying costs of books to be purchased
Records from the Beechworth Athenaeum show a similar concern for both the cost and the speed with which books could be obtained. The main supplier of the Beechworth institute’s books was Mudie’s Circulating Library in London, but they diligently carried out price comparisons between Mudie’s and the Melbourne-based bookseller Samuel Mullen. At the 1871 annual meeting the committee debated whether ‘it would be better to procure their books in the colony at one of the Melbourne booksellers’, but the President argued that ‘they had tried all the Melbourne booksellers, and had come to the conclusion that sending to London was the best plan. They could not get what they wanted in the colony’ (Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 29 July 1871).
While the institutes may have relied on London booksellers to provide them with monthly packages they also seized the opportunity of committee members travelling to Melbourne to purchase books from sellers based in the city. In June 1866, for example, a Mr Rogers writes to the Beechworth library sub-committee from Melbourne offering his services in purchasing books from a list should they wish to provide it, while a note from December 1866 shows that an eclectic list of books—including John Gould’s Birds of Australia (1848) John Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1843-1860), Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Only a Clod (1865) and Henry Dunbar (1864), and George Whyte-Melville’s Cerise (1866)—was purchased in Melbourne by Mr Forman (Records 1865-1868).
Sensing a marketing opportunity in the libraries of mechanics’ institutes, Melbourne-based bookseller H. T. Dwight used his catalogues to advertise that ‘Gentlemen forming Libraries and Mechanics’ Institutes liberally treated with’.
From: H. T. Dwight, A selection from H.T. Dwight’s collection of books, consisting of 80,000 volumes of, new and secondhand. Full catalogue available at: http://www.ucd.ie/southhem/record.html#228
Mechanics’ institutes within a ten-mile radius of the Melbourne Public Library could also avail of the Library’s ‘travelling library’ scheme from 1860, with the whole colony able to participate in the scheme from 1867 (Hubber; Atkin et al, p. 87). The Beechworth Athenaeum saw the travelling library scheme as a means of ‘popularising the institute’, but reported at the annual meeting in 1875 that they deemed the ‘experiment’ a failure:
‘a hope was expressed that by obtaining a supply of books every six months from the Public Library, Melbourne, it would thereby tend to make the institution more attractive, in consequence your committee applied for, and obtained a loan of 300 volumes of such books. They were received in December last, and remained in the library for six months, after which they were returned, and your committee did not think it advisable to ask for a further loan.’
(Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 29 July 1875)
While the Athenaeum does not specify why they believed the scheme was unsuccessful for their purposes, we can perhaps speculate that the genres of the books the Melbourne Public Library deemed suitable to loan did not necessarily satisfy the tastes of their subscribers.
Travelling Library book box held in the Narracan Mechanics’ Institute Library, Old Gippstown (photograph taken by author)
This surviving travelling library box (pictured above and below) that is held in the Narracan Mechanics’ Institute Library now located in the Old Gippstown heritage park illustrates how the books would have been safely stored and transported to those libraries participating in the scheme, offering a means for mechanics’ institute libraries to expand their collection without the expense associated with importing books from London.
Travelling Library book box (photograph taken by author)
Travelling Library book box (photograph taken by author)
Cover image: ‘Reading-room, Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute’, Alfred May and Alfred Martin Ebsworth 1881. Courtesy of State Library of Victoria.
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute Letterbook, BMI Archives.
Geelong Advertiser.
Ovens and Murray Advertiser.
Records 1865-1868, Beechworth Athenaeum Archives.
Star.
Secondary Sources
Atkin, L., Comyn, S., Fermanis P., and N. Garvey, Early Public Libraries and Colonial Citizenship in the British Colonial Southern Hemisphere (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Hubber, Brian. ‘Leading by Example: Barry in the Library’, LaTrobe Journal 73 (Autumn 2004): 67–74.
Mechanics’ institutes and their libraries faced a high risk of being destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century. The Sandhurst Mechanics’ Institute caught alight on 25 December 1865 and while it is not clear whether they lost any of their library collection, parts of the building were damaged and unfortunately the building was not insured. Given that the building of the Institute was only completed in 1864, the devastation felt by the committee was great.
A couple of years later on Sunday 8 September 1867, the Kyneton Mechanics’ Institute was destroyed by a serious fire. The Bendigo Advertiser reported:
the total destruction, by fire, on Sunday morning about one o’clock, of the valuable library, and also the whole of the records, of the Kyneton Mechanics’ Institute, besides the Reading; Room and all the periodicals it contained. About twelve o’clock on Saturday night, loud cries were heard of “Fire! Fire!” and, on inquiry, we learnt it was at the Mechanics’ Institute. On proceeding there, we found the whole of the wooden portion in one immense blaze, and without the slightest hopes of that portion being saved … The whole of the library, consisting of some 1,000 volumes, was completely destroyed, the books having taken years to select, and having been carefully looked after, were most valuable, as they abounded in literature of every class.
(Bendigo Advertiser, 11 September 1867)
Fortunately, unlike the Sandhurst Institute, the Kyneton Institute was insured and received £590 in compensation. Other institutes also came to Kyneton’s aid, with the committees of both the Sandhurst and the Ballaarat mechanics’ institutes agreeing to donate books to the institute to support the restocking of the library. An 1866 catalogue of the Kyneton library survived and you can view a copy of the catalogue and a gloss of its contents before the fire here.
‘Views of Kyneton’ by L. U. K. (1893). Courtesy of State Library of Victoria
Ten years later, in January 1877, the Kyneton Institute is again reported as being ‘completely gutted’ by a fire, and with ‘no fire brigade in the town, and no water for putting out fires’ (Herald, 2 January 1877). A poem published in the local newspaper in September 1877 lamented the destruction caused by the fire and pleaded with the public for their ongoing support:
The cry of “Fire!” through silent streets arose,
While lurid flames lit up the night like day.
Alas that on the morrow should be seen.
Our township’s home of culture and of mirth,
No longer smiling in the summer sheen,
Now nought but roofless walls and ruined
hearth.
Ranged on these shelves were many a tome
With rich instruction to the student’s ken,
Here could he through the fields of learning
roam,
Hold sweet communion with the wisest men.
(Kyneton Guardian, 12 September 1877).
The Stanley Athenaeum’s surviving library collection shows evidence of the fire they faced in 1901, with books inscribed: ‘saved from the flames 1901’:
These fires show the risk of destruction faced by mechanics’ institutes and libraries on the goldfields and the financial and emotional cost to committee members and subscribers of the institutes. They also highlight the significance of the collections that did survive to the analysis of nineteenth-century reading culture.
Born in Ireland in 1820, David Blair emigrated to Australia in 1851. Ordained as a minister in Sydney, he pursued a varied career, including working as a journalist and a politician. Blair was a frequent lecturer at mechanics’ institutes, including the Ballaarat Mechanics’ Institute (one of the case studies of the project).
Below is a selection from a StoryMap I created depicting a part of Blair’s journey as a lecturer, including lectures he delivered in England before emigrating. You can view the full StoryMap here.
Goldfields Reading 
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