Rare Books 1: Ursuline Donations

Rare book cataloguing is being done behind closed doors at the Library in this new world of isolation, also at home online. Here are three works from the library of the Ursuline Order, a vast donation received by the Carmelites when the sisters closed their house in Armidale, New England. A history of the order by Georg Adam Mayer (Würzburg, 1692) Notes: The book lacks a title page and colophon, so the way I ultimately found the author’s name was by locating an identical scanned record in the Bavarian State Library catalogue online. Georg Adam Mayer is probably the yet to be authorised ‘Mayer, Georg, active 16^th century’ listed in Library of Congress Name Headings, i.e. no one quite knows who he is. The scan confirms that this is the one and only edition, most happily via the frontispiece depicting their patron Saint Ursula, active 4^th century. A life of Bernard Overberg, by Caspar Franz Krabbe (Münster, 1846) Notes: Overberg was a German Catholic educationalist whose work would have had a large influence on the Ursulines who came to Australia. The Order is dedicated to the teaching of girls, so the nuns brought with them teacher training that they could put into effect, unlike other Australian women outside the walls of convent schools. Stories of Christoph von Schmid (1768-1854), another educator but also writer of children’s books of a pietistic and edifying nature (Augsburg, 1861). Notes: Well-worn, with cover fallen off, in need of repair. The German Ursulines who helped set up in Armidale were refugees from the Kulturkampf. They transferred to their house in Greenwich, England, where decisions were made to send them to Australia. We try to imagine these German women arriving in a far foreign land, bashing through the bush to establish schools and homes, armed with breviaries, missals, Mayer, Krabbe, and Schmid.