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This study analyzes the fiction holdings of thirty library catalogues from twenty-three discrete circulating libraries in colonial Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Singapore from 1820 to 1870. It examines first, the frequency of book title listings; second, gender patterns and trends; and third, the prevalence of local and/or regionally-specific publications in the colonial libraries under investigation. By comparing the fiction holdings of sample libraries both against each other and against sources of information relating to wider trends in the circulation and consumption of nineteenth-century fiction, the study demonstrates, first, that early colonial libraries in the southern hemisphere evince a bias towards male-authored titles in their fiction holdings; and second, that these libraries pursued holdings of available publications written by local authors and/or containing regionally-specific content. The study thereby complicates tidy conclusions about the derivate or belated nature of early colonial libraries, as well as nuancing simple diffusionist models of book circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading has always been part of travel, whether by rail, road or ship. This article focusses on the interrelationship between libraries and sea travel, the dominant form of global transport for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While travel diaries and fictional accounts of sea travel are replete with references to shipboard reading, they reveal little about what texts passengers consumed or how they accessed reading material. Drawing on a number of extant catalogues and records of ships' libraries on passenger steamers operating in the Pacific as well as on travellers' accounts, this article considers the provisions and usage of ships' libraries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The catalogues reveal that these libraries on the move provided predominantly topical, bestselling and entertaining fiction, catering to (perceived) demands for distraction and short-term reading pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many movie dramas begin with a statement that they are a true story, based on a true story, or inspired by a true story. These catchphrases can be confusing for [...]