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The Rev'd Ralph Mansfield announces plans to establish a Reading Room in Sydney. He notes that those 'who have left the British shores' regret the presence of a space where they may spend 'a spare hour in the course of the day', quietly looking '"through the loop-holes of retreat," at passing events'.
Mansfield proposes setting up the Reading Room in his 'commodious premises' in Hart's Building, Pitt St, Sydney, and to have 'regular supplies of the most recent Newspapers, Magazines, Price-Currents, and other periodical publications, from London, Edinburgh, Durban, South America, the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, China, Ceylon, Singapore, and Van Diemen's Land, together with all the Newspapers published in Sydney'.
The Reading Room would open every day, except Sunday from 7.00am to 9.00pm and a subscription would cost one guinea per annum for those in Sydney and half a guinea for country residents.
(p. 2)
Note: This advertisement was placed in the Sydney Monitor on a regular basis through December 1832 and into January 1833.
