History

If, in 1863, a curious passerby had peered through a window of the newly opened Maldon Athenaeum in High St, she would have seen a single, sparsely furnished room lit by a kerosene lamp and candles. She may have seen the newly purchased chess and drafts sets on the table specially made by John Hornsby, who also provided a ‘cheap trestle table’, which probably displayed the newspapers and magazines available for reading within the room by the Athenaeum’s 60 (exclusively) male members.

The newspapers and magazines were purchased using members’ subscription fees of 2/6 per quarter, and, later, with funds raised through events. The newspapers purchased in 1863 (from Thomas Hannay’s newsagency in Main St) included The Age, The Argus, The Bendigo Advertiser, Bell’s Life in Victoria, and The Yeoman. The magazines (which could be borrowed after they had been in the room for one month) included the weekly satirical publication Punch (also known as the London Charivari); All the Year Round, a weekly publication of fiction, poetry, and essays founded by Charles Dickens; Once a Week, an illustrated magazine set up to rival the Dicken’s magazine; and The Art Journal, a notable British 19^th century magazine on art. The collection also contained three bound volumes of Harper’s Magazine (a New York monthly publication of short stories and essays on politics, society, the environment and culture) which were donated by John Pascoe Fawkner. 

This reading matter was highly sought after – so much so that often issues ‘disappeared mysteriously immediately on arrival and generally reappeared after the lapse of a few days’. Disappearance and ‘serious and willful damage’ proved to be a recurring problem: on one occasion the local newspaper referred to ‘the predatory instincts of the individual who daily takes away the paper’ and another time wrote of the ‘mutilation and theft’ of the Melbourne Punch; and even when Hornsby, in frustration, fastened a magazine to the table it was ‘forcibly removed’ by a ‘delinquent’!

But the first Reading Room was only ever intended to be temporary, and the following year the Athenaeum moved into a small, newly built structure on Crown Land behind the Post and Telegraph Office. New furnishings were commissioned with the committee paying Hornsby £2/19/- to build a book shelf and an intriguing-sounding ‘cupboard be made to form a desk with a lock’.

Within a couple of years, however, the committee was contemplating yet another move after hearing that the Post and Telegraph Office would be moving to new premises. They began lobbying the government to allow them to move into this far more spacious building when it became vacant.

In anticipation, the Athenaeum began to build a book collection. Members were asked to donate books and also to suggest books and periodicals for purchase. There is no record of these first book purchases but we know that in 1868, the Rev Stretch, minister of the Anglican Church, donated eight issues of Australian Journal, which has been described as ‘the colony’s first truly literary periodical’ promoting the work of Australian authors and poets. One example is Marcus Clarke’s For the term of his natural life which was published as a novel in 1874 but appeared first as a serial in the Australian Journal. 

By February 1872, six months after the old Post and Telegraph Office had been officially reserved for the Athenaeum’s use, the ‘circulating library’ had a collection of 350 books. There was also a ‘news room’ for the newspapers, and a reference library that included donations from the Registrar General, the Mining Department and the Melbourne Public Library (now the State Library Victoria).

At the same time as the Athenaeum was building its book collection, it was also building a collection of minerals, as were many other mechanics’ institutes on the central goldfields. Having received samples from numerous donors and numerous locations, the officially renamed ‘Athenaeum and Mining Museum’ now featured (for example) ‘samples of copper, chlorite, kaolin clays, lignite and other Clunes products together with various samples of cinnabar from new South Wales and New Zealand’. As the purpose of the collection was ‘to assist the miner in determining the character of the various products of our mining district’, there was also a ‘loan collection’ available when required.

Over the next few years, both the book collection and the mineral collection continued to increase. Books, both new and second-hand, were bought. A few were donated including Marcus Clarke’s Old Tales of a Young Country. Government publications such as New Rural Industries and Patents and Patentees were received. The Museum’s collection continued to grow with donations such as ‘a stalagmite from New Caledonia’, and ‘handsome pieces of coral’, as well as silver ore from St Arnaud and quartz from Long Tunnel in Gippsland.

Sadly, nothing remains of these collections, all presumably having perished in the fire of 1934 or lost in the rubble of its aftermath. But we know that twenty years after first opening, the Athenaeum’s library collection contained 446 volumes, the ‘serials department’ had grown to nine monthly magazines and thirteen weekly and daily publications; while the museum collection is recorded to have included the fossilised leg bone of a moa!

Lynda Achren, 2026

References:

Library minutes held in the Maldon Athenaeum Archive Collection. For use within the library only.

National Library of Australia Digitised Newspapers − trove.nla.gov.au

The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, January 12, 1864.

The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, September 11, 1866.

The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, February 12, 1870.

The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, February 2, 1872.

The Tarrangower Times and Maldon and Newstead Advertiser, February 14, 1874.

The Tarrangower Times, Maldon, Newstead, Baringhup, Laancoorie and Muckleford  Advertiser, June 12, 1878.

About Harper’s Magazine available at History | Harper’s Magazine

Johnson-Woods, Toni, (n.d.) Popular Periodicals —The “Australian Journal” available on the Postcolonial and Postimperial web at Popular Periodicals — The “Australian Journal”