[Directory]

Howell's Directory for the City & Port of Adelaide, and South Australian Almanac for the Year 1858 [Howell's Adelaide City & Port Directory, and South Australian Almanac for 1858 (cover title)]

Adelaide, Printed by David Gall [for John Howell, bookseller and manufacturing stationer], 1858.

220 × 95 mm, [viii], 108, [36] (advertisements) pages plus an advertisement across each endpaper (inner surfaces of the free endpapers blank). The 'Map of Adelaide to face Title' referred to in the list of contents is excised from this copy.

Original plain cream cloth with an orange paper title-label on the front cover; cloth a little stained and a little worn at the extremities, with minor loss to the corners and spine; four small areas of the rear cover a little indented, each with two short parallel cuts to the cloth; two conjugate leaves (pages 85/86 and 107/108), torn out and screwed up at some stage, were later repaired and reinserted with clear tape which stained the paper, and have recently been expertly restored; rear free endpaper torn away, leaving just a small attached fragment; a few other minor signs of age and use; overall a decent copy with the contemporary ownership details of A.L. Young ink-stamped (and as 'A. Lincoln Young', written in ink) on the front cover, front and rear pastedowns, and front free endpaper, and added to the foot of the Adelaide directory (with his address, 25 Royal Exchange, written there and on the front cover).

The Adelaide directory (listing name, occupation and address) runs to 47 pages; the Port Adelaide one is seven pages long. Considering the colony was founded barely two decades earlier, it is an extensive yet unpretentious list. For example, the four entries under MANN in Adelaide are 'Joseph, carpenter, Brown street | J., bonnet maker, Brown street | Elizabeth, mangle woman, Gouger street | (His Honour Judge), Sturt street'. At the foot of the calendar page for each month, there are notes under the headings 'Garden', 'Flower Garden', Fruit Trees', and 'Field' (on average, about 12 lines each month). Ferguson 10603 (not noting the preliminaries or the map; not recording any details of the binding). The State Library of NSW has a copy on Trove, not recording the presence of the preliminaries or the 36 pages of advertisements, but noting the dimensions of the map as 220 × 100 mm.

Item #118485

Price (AUD): $550.00
other currencies