Summary

From Settlement to Statewide: Scoping resources spanning the entwined cultural histories of Food & Beverages and Books & Libraries, intersecting across Melbourne & Victoria; incorporating: Public, Special and Academic Libraries and Texts, Biographies, Events and Futures.

During the research process I expected to develop further queries adjunct to those I’ve already identified regarding this subject, and as envisaged some queries have remained unable to be thoroughly satisfied within the limitations of this project. Whilst I posited that the progression of the project would illuminate the larger story, ie, how to approach, research and structure themes in the history of books and libraries, there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer here yet beyond the obvious determinant of what sources are available and how they organise information, which is still quite broad and complex. This is perhaps reflective of my topic choice.

Having intended to encompass as extensive an historical survey as possible, whilst confined to statewide content and national resources, the majority of the information I sourced and preferenced was pertaining to Melbourne. Most of the resources I referenced were about Australian or Melbourne history as I did not find many publications and other information particular to my topic organised according to Victorian history. A notable exception is the designation of Clunes as an International Booktown in 2010. This photograph on the Museum Victoria (MV) website shows that the Clunes district has been a tourism destination for at least 120 years.

Negative - Group of Men & Women at a Picnic, Clunes District (?), Victoria, circa 1890 (MV) via estate of Miss O. Eberhard)

The material with a national overview that I used often did not further delineate on a state-by-state basis. So for instance, the Hoyle bibliography does not have any state-based analyses, nor cross-referenced indexing to enable this, thus although comprising 3 indexes: Subject, Chronological and Short-title, each entry must be found and viewed to find which of the 1418 books representing 783 titles, were Melbourne and/or Victorian publications, eg, in order to consider how prevalent was Melbourne/Victorian publishing concerning food and/or beverages historically, with limited access to this book I only had time to establish that  11 of the first 20 titles (1876-1892) of the chronological index were from Melbourne.

Similarly, Nielsen BookScan, which tracks the sale of books within retail stores nationally, does not release data at a state level and does not track the book purchases of libraries. The yearly snapshot of Australian Retail Book Trade in 2011 (which I received as a PDF by email  in response to my query about what was the most current publicly available information)  demonstrates the general split of the three major subject categories in the Australian Retail Book market (as a percentage of all book sales) as follows: non-fiction 48%, fiction 27%, childrens’ books 25%, with no further breakdown of sub- categories publicly available to non-subscribers (The Nielsen Company 2012, BookScan Australia Yearly Snapshot 2011, Nielsen BookScan, email, 9 May 2012, Louise.Goodwin@nielsen.com)    

Websites such as Printnet The Internet Resource of the Printing Industry Association of Australia, and others such as the Australian Publishers Association may well yield some relevant currency, context and links regarding information about modern and even historical publishing, so this would be a tangent worth consideration for more thorough research.

Being the capital city, there is a concentration of history well documented and accessible in and about Melbourne which is more than quantitively adequate for this project; this is also reflective of the importance of Melbourne as a cultural capital both historically (eg: the era of Marvellous Melbourne during the Gold Rush, 1956 Olympics and currently, eg: Slow Food + UNESCO status’) While further research would uncover more information about Victoria overall, as anticipated this is a much broader undertaking than is possible within this project, but being a scoping exercise, it seemed prudent not to exclude what may be readily apparent. 

Therefore the level of statewide scoping I’ve achieved is little beyond identifying the significant institutions which are holding relevant and accessible resources, including: 

Public:  National Library of Australia (NLA), State Library of Victoria (SLV), Museum Victoria (MV), Culture Victoria (CV), the Victorian History Library at Prahran Mechanics’ Institute (PMI) and Melbourne Museum of Printing (MMOP), prioritising statewide organisations for efficiency, relevance and authority. The Trade Literature collection (Working Life and Trades collection) at Museum Victoria is the largest and most diverse collection of its type in any Australian public institution. Culture Victoria proved to be a valuable portal for multiple channel searching of 8 collections, including Metro-Regional organisation websites. This portal links over 700 organisations with cultural collections and this site allows 3 options for views and searches: website/ organisations/ collections, as well as offering a blog. 

Other relevant public and government organisations that I’ve not so far surveyed, include the library and the archive (separate collections) of Melbourne Athenaeum, Melbourne’s first Mechanics Institute (1839), Public Record office of Victoria (PROV) the Royal Historical Society of Victoria (RHSV), CSIRO and National Museum of Australia.  More thorough research would make better use of multi-subject-databases than I found feasible, particularly academic papers, journals and other institutional information, statewide and nationally.

Academic:  the Emily McPherson Collection at RMIT; Cookbooks : the Sandy Michell Collection : an exhibition of material from the Monash University Rare Books Collection;  Special Collections at William Angliss Institute  (WAI). Thorough scoping of academic collections would need to survey other rare and special as well as other history references at La Trobe University and University of Melbourne, eg, “The Dookie Campus Historical Collection is a small collection of documents, photographs and artefacts which relates to the history of the Dookie Campus of the University's Faculty of Land and Food Resources, Victoria's oldest agricultural college.” University of Melbourne Rare Books - Land and Food Resources, Burnley.  This online entry at the Culture Victoria website demonstrates the overlap in institutional information between academic cultural collections and other organisations, and indicates the value of searching multiple channels. Given that Melbourne University houses 19 libraries of its own, a comprehensive survey of academic libraries statewide including would be a huge undertaking.

It must be considered that few collections are static or closed, as more material comes to light over time. Even published resources such as bibliographies are, by the same token, not finite and therefore only current until the date of publication. Hoyle, the most recent authority for content regarding Australian cookery books,  in  An annotated bibliography of Australian domestic cookery books, 1860s to 1950, used “…the NLA Canberra, the State Libraries of NSW, Victoria and South Australia and books for the Emily McPherson Library in Melbourne and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.” (Hoyle 2010, p.4) as well as including books held by nine private collectors, but specifies that at the time of publication 90% of the books included were in public collections. Hoyle references an earlier bibliography (Austin, BR 1987, Bibliography of Australian cookery books published prior to 1941, RMIT, Melbourne) although I haven’t accessed this title myself as I only learnt of it in the later stages of research, but I also noted it referenced elsewhere.  To this end I’ve included a Further Reading list in the blog (independent of the Bibliography, Blog Roll and Link List) to demonstrate some of the range of other published references relevant to the entwined cultural histories of my blog topic. These are limited to local references for relevance and brevity.

Interestingly, the Hoyle is currently stocked in retail as a new book and yet held as a rare book at SLV. The differing reasons given by the various SLV issuing staff with whom I queried this status, included: due to being a reference for that collection and/or the impending exhibition Gusto! A culinary history of Victoria opening August 2011; and/or, due to being considered fragile or vulnerable as a paperback and therefore susceptible to damage by photocopying and handling. 

Apart from bibliography and biographies, four other books proved to be the most useful, authoritative and interesting history references and these were prioritised for their relevance of scope and currency. The Arts Victoria UNESCO city of literature submission (2008) summarises the literary history of Melbourne and was complemented by the follow-up anthology of Literary Melbourne (Grimwade, 2009) but the limitations of these were due mainly to them being mostly Melbourne–centric. Two titles on culinary history were preferenced, the most pertinent being Charmaine O’Brien’s Flavours of Melbourne, as the most comprehensive reference. Dining On Turtles, edited by Melbourne academics Dr Kirkby & Dr Luckins, contained two chapters of local significance among an international sweep encapsulated by the sub-title of Food feasts and drinking in history. Those two chapters are Dr Luckins’ Competing for cultural honours: cosmopolitanism, food, drink and the Olympic games, Melbourne, 1956 and Black’s Community cookbooks, women and the 'Building of the Civil Society' in Australia, 1900-38.

In formulating the blog topic  I qualified it within the period From Settlement... as I was uncertain about what resources would be available, especially regarding pre-settlement history of the traditional landholders of the Koori nation.  Among the resources I accessed, indigenous cultural history is authoritatively addressed by both Grimwade and O’Brien, and institutionally through Culture Victoria (CV), Museum Victoria (MV), State Library of Victoria (SLV). Further research interests should prioritise The Koorie Heritage Trust Inc. Melbourne.

The Grimwade and O’Brien publications provide complementary history central to my blog topic, best demonstrated by the references to books and libraries in hotels and hospitality venues in early Melbourne. The literary life of the city is said have begun in 1835 with “the town’s first library” housed in the hotel of Melbourne’s founder John Pascoe Fawkner, also credited with "issued the fledgling town’s first newspaper, written by hand whilst he was waiting for his printing press to arrive.” (Grimwade 2009, p. 242) The press is now at Melbourne Museum (MV) and a timeline of the press and photographs of Fawkner can be viewed in the online collections.  Fawker is commemorated with a bronze statue (1978 by Melbourne sculptor, Michael Mezaros) at the corner of Collins & Market streets. 

Melbourne statue of John Pascoe Fawkner, 2006 image via Wikimedia Commons.

Fifty years and a couple of blocks down on the corner of Collins and King streets in 1886, saw the opening of the ornate Federal Coffee Palace. O’Brien describes the amenities in detail, including reading rooms and lending libraries (note, plurals!) and comments that as it was one of 3 coffee palaces owned by temperance-minded businessman James Munro, “The Federal had everything any patron could want. Except alcohol.”  (O’Brien 2008, p. 103) This business is also featured among Museum Victoria collections where it is possible to view postcard images of various coffee palaces. This building which later became known as the Federal Hotel was demolished by Whelan the Wrecker in 1972, events which also contributed to some artefacts being now held at MV. These entries exemplify where apparently unrelated collections may yield results and not all material relative to a subject is cross-referenced.

Another junction of hospitality, libraries and books can be seen in the history of the Prahran Mechanics Institute (PMI), operating in 1854, firstly at the schoolroom of Prahran’s first church (it’s original chapel naming Chapel Street), then a room in Chapel Street offered by a shopkeeper. The PMI history details that “Local publican James Mason donates a portion of land adjacent to his hotel (the Royal George, on the north corner of Greville and Chapel Streets) ‘provided there would be a respectable building put on it’.” Photographs and further history are online in the 150 Years Gallery  on the PMI website. The Prahran Free Library (now Stonnington Library Service) originally hosted at the PMI premises, was one of the first municipal libraries in Victoria and Australia. (Barber S, 2010, pp.10-11).

There is undoubtedly further proof to be found at other sources, of the genesis of the modern book clubs and library and bookstore cafes in earlier Melbourne culture. Literary events and venues are now so popular across Victoria, that they warrant their own entries in the most recent forms of online publishing such as Smartphone Applications, eg, Melbourne Literary.  More detailed and extensive research of other convergent events, such as conventions, exhibitions and festivals, would be a greater undertaking than has been possible to this point with this blog project.

In gathering information during the process of compiling the six posts previously published here, I was unsure as to how much material I would uncover that directly addressed my topic. There obviously remains an indeterminable amount unexamined. However it has become apparent that there are not as yet any definitive and authoritative, mainstream published resources, which detail my selected topic from this perspective of convergence. This was my major curiosity in structuring the topic, which is now justified by the breadth of relative information that I have evaluated.