A copy of Canberra's First Hundred Years, published in 1924, and other books from the private library of author Dr Frederick Robinson was recently donated to the Fryer Library. The donation included other publications about Canberra and correspondence relating to them.
The author, 'Doc Robbie', was also the founder of Fryer Library.
A sketch becomes a history
Dr Frederick Robinson’s Canberra’s First Hundred Years is believed to be the first book published in the nation’s capital.
It rolled off the press one hundred years ago in April 1924.
While the book was printed at W.C. Penfold & Co. Ltd at 88 Pitt Street in Sydney, it was ‘published’ in Canberra, in that publication was initiated, paid for, and disseminated by the clergy of St John’s in Reid.
Starting as a sketch of St. John the Baptist’s Church it grew into a wider study of the history of Canberra and surrounds.
Dr Frederick Robinson
In 1913, Dr Frederick Robinson (1888-1971) – affectionately known as 'Doc Robbie' – was appointed Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, Canberra.
Two years later he enlisted to serve in the First World War, joining the 8th Field Ambulance, Australian Imperial Force. He was commissioned and promoted Honorary Captain, and from January 1917 served as Intelligence Officer with the 5th Division.
He was wounded and mentioned in dispatches.
In 1923 Robinson was later appointed Lecturer in English and German at the University of Queensland, where he would go on to found the Fryer Memorial Library of Australian Literature named after John Denis Fryer who died in the same year Doc Robbie arrived in Brisbane.
Brisbane, 1968
In her Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Robinson, former Fryer Librarian Nancy Bonnin writes, 'His enthusiasm for the national capital—he had, as the writer David Malouf said of him, a devotion to place—led to his small book, Canberra's First Hundred Years (1924). It introduces his lifelong study and preservation of Australiana'.
Fryer Library holdings
The Fryer Library holds three copies of Canberra’s First Hundred Years and two copies of the second revised and enlarged edition of Canberra’s First Hundred Years And After published in 1927, the year of the Fryer Library’s founding.