Howe?s weekly commercial express. Number 2. May 9th, 1825.

[Further issues have title: Howe's weekly commercial express and miscellaneous intelligencer. Sydney : Printed by the Proprietor, by R. Howe, 1825. Folio newspaper, [4] pp, engraved masthead with Advance Australia and the motto "Industry is the mother, the nurse, and the guardian of all virtues"; text in four columns; horizontal and vertical repairs to each side, with small loss of text in a number of places; lower outer corner of [3-4] with more substantial loss; each side with some re-margining; scattered staining and spotting; housed in a handsome archival portfolio of half calf over patterned cloth boards with gilt lettered leather title label to front. Ferguson, 1026. Howe's weekly commercial expresswas Australia's first commercial newspaper. It was an extremely shortlived publication, in circulation in Sydney for only six months between May 2 and September 26 1825. The second issue contains shipping intelligence; public notices; advertisements for Sydney businesses, ranging from wine and spirits merchants to livestock dealers, jewellers, stationers and importers of musical instruments; employment notices; sales by auction; court and law reports; a literary column; letters to the editor; local news, and an article on the explorer Mungo Park. A member of Australia's most important early publishing dynasty, Robert Howe was the son of George Howe, who had printed the first book in Australia in 1802 (The New South Wales General Standing Orders) and Australia's first newspaper in 1803 (theSydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser). Following his father's death,Robert became editor of the Gazette, which he had formerly helped his father to publish. Aside from the Commercial Express, whose motto reflects Howe's strong Methodist beliefs, Howe was also responsible for a small number of religious publications in the 1820s, as well as the landmark first book of poems written by a colonial-born poet, Charles Tompson'sWild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel(1826). Even individual issues of the elusiveHowe's weekly commercial expressare seldom offered for sale and are considered extremely rare. Complete runs are held in the collections of the State Library of New South Wales and the State Library of Victoria; the National Library of Australia holds a substanially complete run, lacking only no. 3. Ferguson 1026 "An excessively rare periodical".…