Tuesday, Mar 03, 2026

Some years ago I formed a special friendship with an Australian book collector, based purely on our correspondence by email.

As a member of the internationally based Private Libraries Association, I knew of Cyril Wyatt in his role as Australasian Membership Secretary. In 2013 I was asked if I would take over this position, and as a consequence I began to correspond with Cyril. Starting slowly, through our correspondence we developed a deep mutual respect and fondness, despite not having met in person. Cyril was a true bookman and a great book collector, with his interests ranging from Baron Corvo and Robert Tressall, through the Eighteen Nineties, Notable Trials, and books about books. Cyril also had large collections based on the writings of George Orwell, and the forgeries of Thomas J. Wise—but his abiding passion was for the works of the English author George Gissing (1857-1903).

Cyril started collecting George Gissing in 1977, describing his introduction to the author thus:

I came to know of Gissing through reading Orwell's essays where he wrote about reading soup-stained copies of Gissing's works borrowed from public libraries. The first Gissing novel I read was ‘New Grub Street’ . . . and quickly decided he was the author for me. I have read all his novels at least once, most several times, such as, ‘New Grub Street’, ‘Born in Exile’ (my personal favourite), ‘Workers In The Dawn’, ‘The Odd Women’ (a close second) and numerous others. I also am a great admirer of his short stories. I am not a great fan of ‘Veranilda’, which I struggled with, but am of ‘By The Ionian Sea’ which I have read several times. As with Orwell, I never tire of reading G's works.

In 2005, Cyril began a correspondence with French literary scholar, Pierre Coustillas (1930-2018), described in 'The Times' obituary as an  Obsessive French scholar who almost single-handedly revived the reputation of the 19th-century novelist George Gissing. Pierre’s definitive bibliography of George Gissing had just been published, and their mail exchange became the basis for an abiding friendship, lasting until Pierre’s death. They not only shared bibliographical and other information about Gissing editions, but also a friendly rivalry as to who could collect the most variants of his work. The main portion of Pierre Coustillas’s Gissing collection is now held by the Rylands Library in Manchester, England. Cyril’s collection of over 1,000 Gissing items was purchased by me in 2019.

It was my intention to produce a ‘definitive’ catalogue of the works of George Gissing, based on Cyril’s collection. In fact, it was the very size of the library that proved to be my first hurdle (or interruption)—as the detailed collation and description of each work, often including up to twenty variants (and between forty and fifty of the most popular novels), became overwhelming, particularly when fitting this cataloguing in with all the other libraries we were constantly purchasing. Eight years after acquiring Cyril’s Gissing collection I still have more than half to catalogue, including a large archive of correspondence and ephemera.

The final interruption in achieving my goal of finishing ‘Cyril’s catalogue’ has been the untimely death of my husband, Dr Jonathan Burdon AM in November last year. I now face the prospect of cataloguing for sale Jonathan’s very large personal collection of books devoted to Special Forces and Covert Operations.

It is important in life to know when to continue unerringly towards a goal and when to recognise the need to adjust one’s goal posts. So I am now releasing Cyril’s George Gissing collection into our current stock, acknowledging that this will be a lengthy process as I continue, with pleasure, to catalogue the remaining items from his library.