This issue of the Australasian also includes
An advertisement for bookseller Charles Muskett stating that all advertised books are sent post free 'on receipt of stamps'.
An advertisement for Dwight's catalogue containing 4,800 lots 'forming the best miscellaneous collections, new and secondhand, hitherto published in Australia'.
An advertisement for the 'complete colonial edition' of Edgar Allan Poe's poetical works, available from Charles Muskett, 78 Bourke-street east.
An advertisement for parts 4-8 of London Miscellany, available from Charles Muskett, bookseller.
A round-up of international literary news including the copyright entitlements of 'foreign authors' who publish their work 'for the first time in London', and the appearance of a new Parisian journal, the Lantern, 'wholly written by Henri Rochefort (late of Figaro) and extending to fifty-six pages'.
'Actaeon' provides an account of day's hunt in Melbourne's west.
Observations on the lives, incomes and working conditions of young women employed in Melbourne factories.
Q. notes his absence from writing his regular column in the previous two months (with some allusions to a term of imprisonment). He says he will keep 'the harrowing details' of his 'days of suffering for another opportunity'. (The Australian Dictionary of Biography states that Clarke was 'was seriously incapacitated by a fall from a horse' during the middle part of 1868, 'Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop').
Q. then turns his attention to political developments in Melbourne and to the manner of greeting friends and acquaintances in the street.
'Our Letter Home' includes information on a range of political and social matters. The writer for the Australasian comments that 'matters theatrical and musical' are not in a 'flourishing condition', but he still reports in some detail on productions at the Theatre Royal (the Nathan Juvenile Troupe and performances of His Last Legs and Leah) and notes that 'the fortunes of the other two houses [The Duke of Edinburgh Theatre and the Princess's Theatre] are uncertain'.
A review of the performances of Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan's The Rivals and Dion Boucicault's The Corsican Brothers at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, August 1868.
A round-up of theatrical news from England and California, USA (noting connections with Australia).
An advertisement for Charles Haddon Spurgeon's sermons 'in large quantities', available from Buzzard, Melbourne.
An advertisement to printers advising the availability of letterpress, types of all kinds, bookbinders' tools, etc from printer's broker, F. B. Franklyn.
The Melbourne Trade Address Directory lists businesses alphabetically by type. The list, when first published (8 August 1868), included 'Booksellers & Stationers' (T. M. Buzzard, Charlwood & Son, Samuel Mullen, H. T. Dwight and G. Nichols) and 'Printers & Publishers' (Mason, Firth & Co., and Stillwell & Knight). On its subsequent appearances (15 August 1868 onwards), bookseller and stationer A. J. Smith was added to the list.
