This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and ‘new imperial history’ paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan ‘intercultures’, it looks at the neglected role of public libraries in shaping a programme of Anglophone civic education, scientific knowledge creation, and modernisation in the British southern hemisphere. The book’s six chapters analyse institutional models and precedents, reading publics and types, book holdings and catalogues, and regional scientific networks in order to demonstrate the significance of these libraries for the construction of colonial identity, citizenship, and national self-government as well as charting their influence in shaping perceptions of social class, gender, and race. Using primary source material from the recently completed ‘Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere’ digital archive, the book argues that public libraries played a formative role in colonial public discourse, contributing to broader debates on imperial citizenship and nation-statehood across different geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders.

This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and 'new imperial history' paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan 'intercultures', it looks at the neglected role of public libraries in shaping a programme of Anglophone civic education, scientific knowledge creation, and modernisation in the British southern hemisphere. The book's six chapters analyse institutional models and precedents, reading publics and types, book holdings and catalogues, and regional scientific networks in order to demonstrate the significance of these libraries for the construction of colonial identity, citizenship, and national self-government as well as charting their influence in shaping perceptions of social class, gender, and race. Using primary source material from the recently completed 'Book Catalogues of the Colonial Southern Hemisphere' digital archive, the book argues that public libraries played a formative role in colonial public discourse, contributing to broader debates on imperial citizenship and nation-statehood across different geographic, cultural, and linguistic borders. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Perfect for book lovers, this is a fascinating exploration of the history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age. Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings—the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world’s great collections, trace the rise and fall of literary tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare manuscripts. In doing so, they reveal that while collections themselves are fragile, often falling into ruin within a few decades, the idea of the library has been remarkably resilient as each generation makes—and remakes—the institution anew. Beautifully written and deeply researched, The Library is essential reading for booklovers, collectors, and anyone who has ever gotten blissfully lost in the stacks.

Reveals the experience of reading in many cultures and across the agesCovers pornography and the origins of the transgender movementExplores everyday reading in Nazi GermanyAnalyses prison readingExamines reading in revolutionary societies and occupied nationsSubversive Readers explores the strategies used by readers to question authority, challenge convention, resist oppression, assert their independence and imagine a better world. This kind of insurgent reading may be found everywhere: in revolutionary France and Nazi Germany, in Eastern Europe under Communism and in Australian and Iranian prisons, among eighteenth-century women reading history and nineteenth-century men reading erotica, among postcolonial Africans, the blind, and pioneering transgender activists.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This collection brings together for the first time literary studies of British colonies in nineteenth-century Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific Islands. Drawing on hemispheric studies, Indigenous studies, and southern theory to decentre British and other European metropoles, the collection offers a groundbreaking challenge to national paradigms and traditional literary periodisations and canons by prioritising southern cultural networks in multiple regional centres from Cape Town to Dunedin. Worlding the south examines the dialectics of literary worldedness in ways that recognise inequalities of power, textual and material violence, and literary and cultural resistance. The collection revises current literary histories of the ‘British world’ by arguing for the distinctiveness of settler colonialism in the southern hemisphere, and by incorporating Indigenous, diasporic, and south-south perspectives.

This book explores the emergence of 'Australasia' as a way of thinking about the culture and geography of this region. Although it is frequently understood to apply only to Australia and New Zealand, the concept has a longer and more complicated history. 'Australasia' emerged in the mid-18th century in both French and British writing as European empires extended their reach into Asia and the Pacific, and initially held strong links to the Asian continent. The book shows that interpretations and understandings of 'Australasia' shifted away from Asia in light of British imperial interests in the 19th century, and the concept was adapted by varying political agendas and cultural visions in order to reach into the Pacific or towards Antarctica. The Making and Remaking of Australasia offers a number of rich case studies which highlight how the idea itself was adapted and moulded by people and texts both in the southern hemisphere and the imperial metropole where a range of competing actors articulated divergent visions of this part of the British Empire. An important contribution to the cultural history of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, this collection shows how 'Australasia' has had multiple, often contrasting, meanings.