The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (facsimile edition limited to 100 copies, 1899)

Reproduced by authority of the Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales, 1899. Angus & Robertson, 1899. Folio, half-crushed morocco over cloth (a few marks), lettered in gilt to the spine, bookplate from the W. R. Griffiths collection to front pastedown, unpaginated, foxing to edges, photo-lithographed by Vincent Brooks, Day & Sons of London. Limited to 100 numbered copies. Scarce.

The Sydney Gazette was first printed by George Howe on a small wooden printing press which had been brought to the colony by Arthur Phillip in the First Fleet.  George Howe had used the same press to print the colony’s first book, The New South Wales General Standing Orders, in 1802, probably confirming him as the colony’s second printer (after George Hughes).  The establishment of a weekly newspaper in the colony had been an initiative of Governor King, and the publication originally acted as a medium for broadcasting official information about such matters as government proclamations, new civil regulations and court news. The content of the newspaper was under strict government censorship. The newspaper also recorded on a weekly basis all the recent maritime activity at Port Jackson, including shipping arrivals and departures and cargo information. Auctions of goods, sales of land, personal and business notices, and lists of newly pardoned or emancipated convicts were also features of each issue. ‘The importance of the Sydney Gazette as a source of Australian history cannot be over-stated’ (Ferguson, ibid.). As primary documents of early colonial history the issues of the Gazette are unrivalled as a record of important events and daily life.

As original examples of The Sydney Gazette were very rare, even in the nineteenth century, this high quality photo-lithographed facsimile was commissioned by the Public Library of New South Wales. Even this is now scarce today, and the Library issued another facsimile in the 1960s.

Ferguson 16543 (with a long note concerning its production).