Henry Tolman Dwight migrated to Melbourne in about 1855, 'bringing with him a large stock of second-hand books' and, within months of his arrival, had set up in business in Bourke-street east.
Dwight’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography states: 'Although George Robertson, Samuel Mullen and George Slater had commenced bookselling in Melbourne in 1853, Dwight's knowledge of books and attention to customers' wants attracted Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, Richard Henry 'Orion' Horne, Sir Archibald Michie, and others to his shop. There Dwight presided as "a colonial Quaritch", over a literary coterie of "lawyers, doctors, divines, journalists – a motley crew, but united in the bonds of bookdom."'
Dwight claimed that his 1859 Catalogue of a Collection of Books, Old and New, Theological and Miscellaneous … Books on Architecture & Building, Brewing and Distilling, Geology, Mineralogy, Mathematics & Natural Philosophy was 'the first such catalogue issued in the colony’. By 1862, his catalogue boasted 60,000 volumes, and the 1865 edition contained over 500 books and pamphlets 'printed in, and relating to, the Colonies of Australia'. In addition to his activities as a bookseller, Dwight also published colonial works of non-fiction, fiction and poetry.
Dwight 'died at his bookshop in 13 June 1871'.
Source: Ian F. McLaren, 'Dwight, Henry Tolman (1823–1871)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published in hardcopy 1972.
Sighted: 2 September 2014
