Joseph Wladislas Edmond Potocki de Montalk arrived in Wellington on the SS Mataura in 1868 and quickly put his European origins and education to use. Born in Paris in 1836 to a Polish émigré of noble background and a woman thought to be an illegitimate daughter of King George IV of England, de Montalk had studied literature at the Université de Paris. After teaching in Wellington, Nelson, Dunedin and Christchurch, he made his final move to Auckland where he taught French at the Auckland College of the University of New Zealand, before founding the first New Zealand branch of the Alliance Française.
His reading diary, held in the Special Collections at the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services, and kept between 1891 and 1896, provides a singular window in French reading cultures in Auckland in the 1890s. Dated entries record titles, authors, dates of publication and publishers, brief comments and whom texts were borrowed from, all evidence of a range of travelling texts, far from their places of production, now flowing out into part of the British empire through cultural and social networks.
You can view the list of titles for an overview of what was available in Auckland in the 1890s at the links below:
