City’s literary story continues to flourish

Hobart’s City of Literature designation celebrates hidden gems and opens the door to exciting possibilities

Since Edinburgh was named the world’s first City of Literature, the historic Scottish city has revelled in its status. Prior to the designation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2004, it already had a wealth of literary history, an active literary community and a gorgeous Writer’s Museum, at Lady Stair’s House in Lawnmarket on the Royal Mile, where Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott each have a floor devoted to their lives and works.

Twenty years later the city has become a veritable hub for the word arts, with a suite of festivals and prizes, a thriving literary tourism industry, more than 50 bookshops, and some 28 libraries – including a world-first dedicated poetry library – and more than 100 publishing houses. Even the paving stones are in on the action. Look down as you walk and you’ll see engraved quotations, such as this one from Stevenson: “There are no stars so lovely as Edinburgh street lamps.”.

One of Edinburgh’s most enjoyable libraries, the Library Bar (yes, you can drink there), has a Hobart connection. Located at Teviot Row House, part of the local university, it was the brainchild of US-born poet Young Dawkins and Scottish-born writer Ruth Dawkins, who now live and write and enrich the writing community right here in one of the world’s newest Cities of Literature.

It remains to be seen exactly what Hobart will do with its City of Literature designation, gained last November*. The organisations currently shepherding the initiative (City of Hobart, Libraries Tasmania, UTAS, Fullers Bookshop, the Tasmanian Writers Centre) may choose to focus their efforts on building literary activity and tourism, or they might plough their energy into addressing the literacy crisis that bedevils the entire state. Or, indeed, they may try to do it all!

The designation represents an exciting opportunity, something of a blank slate. Should the right kind of momentum begin to circulate around it, we could see some very interesting developments.

Recently, a small City of Literature seed was planted in the Town Hall, and Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds hopes to watch it grow. That seed is the transformation of the Henry Hunter Reading Room (go in through the front door of the Town Hall in Macquarie St, immediately turn hard left) into the ‘Town Hall Library’, a collection of books about Hobart and by Hobart writers.

Formerly the Lord Mayor’s Reception Room, the space was transformed into a reading room after Reynolds donned the chains in 2018, as part of her push to encourage people to recognise the Town Hall as a public building, open for regular public use.

Few Hobartians probably know this space exists, or that they’re welcome to go there, settle into one of the plush, red velvet chairs, or take a seat at one of the tables, and read a book or do a bit of work, but the Lord Mayor hopes to see more people availing themselves of the space as the new library’s book collection grows.

The new library is a low-budget

Few Hobartians probably know this space exists, or that they’re welcome to go there, settle into one of the plush, red velvet chairs … and read a book or do a bit of work

proposition. At this stage, a few bookcases repurposed from the Maritime Museum hold a modest collection of about 200 volumes, many of which came from the Hobart City Council’s packed-away corporate library.

The collection is organised into sections including Urban Design, Tasmanian Women, Transport, Indigenous History, Buildings and Places, and Council Reports. A quick squiz at its offerings reveals gems such as Amy Sherwin: the Tasmanian Nightingale, by Judith Bowler, about the Tasmanian songstress who performed across America and Europe in the 19th century, and Peter Macfie’s Underground Hobart: The World Beneath the City about

Hobart’s tunnels and buried waterways.

Reynolds is calling for donations of relevant books and hopes in due course to develop a curated wish list of titles so the library can grow strategically.

Libraries are something we’ve historically done well here in Hobart. While the State Library of Victoria, established in 1854, claims to be the oldest public library in Australia, Reynolds says Hobart beat Melbourne to the punch three times over, with the Wesleyan Library opening as early as 1825, the Mechanics Institute Library following in 1827 and another public library opening in Hobart in 1849 with a £1000 grant from the Legislative