Between the Covers, into the World: Reading Edmond de Montalk’s Reading Diary

Edmond de Montalk’s (1836-1901) reading diary captures a range of Francophone books and periodicals flowing out through cultural and social networks in nineteenth-century colonial New Zealand, revealing a part of the country’s multicultural history. A rare and valuable reading legacy, his diary illuminates what was actually read by an individual and documents his reading practices – titles, authors, dates of publication and publishers, brief comments, copied quotes and from whom texts were borrowed. Although a singular object, the diary sheds light on larger systems and forces: the connected and relational nature of reading across local and global networks, and how these reading practices reflect colonial power structures, as well as the rising and interconnected forces of globalism, contemporaneity, consumerism and capitalism. Through the connective properties of French text, shared cultural and intellectual aspirations were serviced and the societal order, with its ensuing cultural asymmetries, echoed. I refer to this nexus of power, material culture, knowledge and connectivity as the “complex of circulation”. The cultural traffic, as recorded in de Montalk’s diary, reveals a continued French presence and influence in the British colony.