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An historically significant bound volume containing the first eight issues-May to December 1821- of Australia’s first periodical, The Australian Magazine, at $45,000 , is one of the many items of note in the latest acquisitions from Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne.
Edited by Reverend Ralph Mansfield and printed by Robert Howe , it went out of circulation in September 22, 1822 after 14 issues.
Robert Howe (1795-1829) was a member of Australia’s most important early publishing dynasty.
His father, George Howe (1759-l821) , printed the first book in Australia in l802 , the New South Wales General Standing Order , and Australia's first newspaper , the l803 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser .
The first issue of The Australian Magazine – printed by Robert Howe – was published on May 1. 1821, 10 days before George Howe’s death . Having already succeeded his father as Government Printer, Robert also became editor, printer and publisher of the Gazette, which he had formerly helped his father to publish .
According to the bookshop, ‘Robert Howe was dissipated as a young man and in 1819 fathered an illegitimate son. Next year, however, he experienced a spiritual awakening and, in his own words, was “wonderfully and mercifully visited by God and snatched from infamy in this world and Hell in the next”.
He joined the group of Methodists who were working in Sydney ,and their influence, particularly that of Reverend Ralph Mansfield, was apparent when he published The Australian Magazine; or, Compendium of Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Intelligence, the first periodical to appear in Australia.
Reverend Mansfield (1799-1880), was a recently ordained and zealous Methodist minister who had arrived in Sydney from Liverpool, England, in September 1820.
Mansfield’s editorial Preface, dated December 1, 1821, bound in at the front of the above volume stated:
‘Our design, from the first, has avowedly been, “to disseminate useful knowledge, religious principles, and moral habits.” And though some, we are aware, object to our Magazine, that it wears too grave and religious an aspect, candour must compel them to acknowledge, that we have not swerved from the intentions we distinctly proposed.
Political discussion, and party spirit, and personal allusion, we have scrupulously avoided. Literature and science, while we have devoted to them a portion of attention, have been kept subordinate and subservient to our primary design.
Of Colonial occurrences we have endeavoured to select the most interesting; though this department is, in a great measure, superseded by the weekly Journal [i.e. the Sydney Gazette].’
(Publications.Colonial. Books.)
