Prayer and hymn books

 Today I started work creating stub catalogue entries for those prayer books and hymn books we decided to record and save.

Needless to say they are all very similar. Most were printed by James Nisbet,  a major publisher of hymn books and prayer books in the nineteenth century.

Interestingly, as well as the short hand annotation on the fly leaf, it's worth noting that this particular book was printed by the Australian publisher George Robertson, who also published Australian editions of yellow backs and other English novels.

Bible, hymn books and prayer books were in steady demand in the nineteenth century and it was probably well worth George Robertson's time to enter into agreement to produce Australian reprints of the standard editions.

James Nisbet, was one of these irritating Victorian publishers who didn't put publication dates or other identifying information on their books. Perhaps they thought that the word of the Lord was immutable and you didn't need to distinguish between printings and editions.

It's particularly annoying in the case of some of the early books, however some of the early books have dates

as in the case of this bible printed by Eyre and Spotiswood for the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1856.

Gratifyingly, someone has added 'Stanley Sunday School 1863' to the fly leaf. 

1863 is quite an important date in the history of Stanley as it's when the Athenaeum was founded and Stanley was changing from a rough and ready goldminers' camp to a more permanent settlement.

We know that the Sunday School used the Athenaeum building in the early days of the settlement. It's got to be remembered that even though the state school (No 550) dates from 1858 as part of the early national School system, education was not compulsory until 1872, and Sunday Schools, besides religious education, often provided basic education in reading, writing, and arithmetic for children who did not attend school full time as they were needed on the farm or were employed as 'picky boys' helping to sort ore from general spoil and tailings.