AustLit

'Like a one-man local Bodleian or Library of Congress, Scots-descended John Kinmount (“Jack”) Moir was a book collector who set himself the goal of acquiring a copy of every book published by an Australian author in the fields of fiction, poetry and drama. Australian writing didn’t get much of a look-in in the cultural world before the Second World War, and Moir devoted huge efforts to its promotion. He succeeded, and by the time of his death in 1958 had put together “one of the finest private libraries of Australian literature ever assembled”, in the words of the State Library of Victoria, to which it was presented and where its 10,000 volumes are still housed.' (Introduction)