Loke Wan Tho Collection

Dato Loke Wan Tho (1915–1964) was the son of Loke Yew, one of Malaya’s first millionaires and philanthropists. He was born in Kuala Lumpur and educated at the Victorian Institution, Chillon College at Montreaux, Switzerland, King’s College, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics. In 1946 he became Chairman of the Cathay Company, which at the time owned two cinemas in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Within 15 years the company had built up a chain of 60 cinemas, as well as two studios and four hotels.

Kern Collection

Rudolf Arnaud Kern (1875–1958) was born in Leiden in the Netherlands. His father, Hendrick Kern (1833–1917) was Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Archaeology at Leiden University from 1865 to 1903. Kern attended the Senior High School in Leiden and the Institute of the East Indies in Delft. In 1896 he went to Java where he was employed by the Department of Internal Affairs. He served in the East Indies for 30 years, eventually becoming Assistant Resident at Brebes (Pekalongan) and Modjokerto in East Java.

Jensen Collection

Fritz Liisberg-Jensen (d. 1926) was born in Aarhus, Denmark. He was working as a draftsman in the Department of Lands in Sydney when he met and married Annie Roberts, a music teacher from Bangor, Wales. She had taught music to the children of Lord Carrington, the Governor of New South Wales. In 1894 the Jensens built a house in Exeter, near Moss Vale, and set about clearing several acres of land and establishing an orchard. Fritz imported bulbs from Holland in order to establish his speciality nursery.

Jammes Collection

Acquisition

The Jammes Collection (Livres Condamnés) formed part of a collection of books and printed documents assembled by the antiquarian bookseller Paul Jammes (1890-1983) of Paris, which he entitled Le bûcher bibliographique. The material selected was purchased by the Library in 1968. The full collection comprised 916 lots, most of which consisted of single works but some of which were made up of a number of related documents.

Irish Pamphlet Collection

Acquisition

In 1978 the National Library purchased a large collection of Irish pamphlets from the English antiquarian bookseller Chris Kohler. They included 32 bound volumes of pamphlets with the bookplate of William Ruddell Clarke of Trabolgan in County Cork, Ireland. Clarke (1870-1937) inherited Trabolgan, a large Georgian house, and the surrounding estate of 1500 acres from his father in 1911. After his death the estate was purchased by the Irish Land Commission.

Hone Collection

Sir Brian William Hone (1907–1978) was born in Adelaide and educated at Prince Alfred College, the University of Adelaide, and New College, Oxford. He taught English at Marlborough College from 1933 to 1939. In 1940 he returned to Australia to be Headmaster of Cranbrook School, Sydney. He was appointed Headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School in 1950 and held the post until his retirement in 1970. Hone was Chairman of the Headmasters Conference of Australia in 1954–57. He was knighted in 1970.

Hertz Collection

Cyril Sidney Hertz (d. 1980) was for many years a clerk in the Australian Post Office in Sydney. In his later years he worked as a travel agent, organising tours of China and other Asian countries. He began to collect military books soon after the end of World War II and over 30 years amassed a large collection. He had a particular interest in war aviation and for some time wrote a monthly article, ‘Facts and Figures’, on World War I aviation. He was the publicity officer of the Australian Society of World War I Historians and wrote occasional articles for its newsletter.

German Colonies in the Pacific

Germans first became active as traders in the Pacific in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hamburg firm of J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn established a trading base in Samoa in 1857 and ten years later it laid out its first copra plantation. By 1879 their cotton and copra plantations covered an area of 4337 acres and employed 1210 labourers, mostly Gilbertese and New Hebrideans. In the 1870s Eduard and Franz Hernsheim established trading bases in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.

French Revolutionary Pamphlet Collection

In his book The French Revolution (1837), Thomas Carlyle termed the period 1789–95 ‘the Age of Pamphlets’. In August 1789 the National Assembly declared that ‘all citizens can speak, write and print freely’ and the whole system of state censorship began to break down. A mania to produce and read pamphlets and periodicals swept across France. The number of printing establishments in Paris tripled in the Revolutionary period, with 55 new shops in the years 1789–90 alone.

Sang Ye Collection

Sang Ye (b. 1955), whose original name was Shen Dajun, was born in Beijing and grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution. He was educated at Qinghua University High School and then became an apprentice at an electrical engineering plant. After the Cultural Revolution ended, he missed university entry, but did a short-term course at Peking Normal University in 1978. By 1980 he was a freelance journalist contributing to Hong Kong and overseas Chinese newspapers.