Mullens circulating library

 Up at the Athenaeum, the guerilla cataloguing approach continues to work well, and I think we have a methodology that works.

And it continues to throw up items of interest, yesterday's discovery being a book with a Mullen's circulating library label on the cover.

Unfortunately, the label is so badly worn it's difficult to read - at first I mistook it for a Mudie's label due to the similarity of design, but playing about with the image improved matters a little

and one can make out the words Mullen's, Collins Street, Melbourne - the rest is illegible. I am of course hoping to find a better example.

Samuel Mullen was an Irish bookseller who migrated to Australia and set up a high class circulating library in Melbourne in conscious imitation of Mudie's in London in 1859 at the end of the gold rush era when the city was awash with money.

The circulating library, combined with a bookshop, was very successful, and served as centre for intellectual life in the city. There's a rather nice woodblock engraving of the inside of Mullen's in 1889 - unfortunately it's not public domain, but it can be found online, including via this link.

So, how did a book from Mullen's library end up at the Athenaeum?

Well, I was looking at the State Library of Victoria catalogue for material related to Mullen's and I stumbled across this

Evidently Mullen's periodically sold off withdrawn stock from the circulating library, and the Athenaeum, or more likely via an intermediary, bought second hand books from Mullen's and elsewhere to add to the collection.

This can also possibly explain why books from Mudie's have turned up at the Athenaeum - that there was someone who imported second hand and remaindered books from the UK for sale in Australia.

Unfortunately the Athenaeum accession registers and minute books from the 1860s and 70s are missing so it's not possible to check to see who the Athenaeum was buying books from.

It may, or may not, be significant that both the Mudie's and the Mullen's stickers are on copies of less well known Mary Elizabeth Braddon novels dating from the 1860's - having identified a demand for Mary Elizabeth Braddon's novels perhaps the Athenaeum was trying to buy as many copies as they could and stretching their budget by buying second hand ...