People, A catalogue of a travelling exhibition celebrating the books of Australia, 1788-1988 print& paper Title page from Song of the Wheat (165). People, A catalogue of a travelling exhibition celebrating the books of Australia, 1788-1988 Michael Richards print & National Library of Australia paper Canberra First published 1988 by National Library of Australia, Canberra This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the Library. Typeset by Ruskin Press, Melbourne Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, Adelaide. Designed by Adrian Young, MCSD Exhibition Design: Ingrid Slamer, B.A. Vis. Com. Exhibition Sound: Sound Design Studio, Melbourne. The publication of this catalogue has been supported by Angus &. Robertson Publishers; Griffin Press; and Associated Pulp and Paper Mills. National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication entry Richards, Michael, 1952-. People, print & paper. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 642 10451 4. 1. Book industries and trade — Australia — Exhibitions. 2. Booksellers and bookselling — Australia — Exhibitions. 3. Authors, Australian — Exhibitions. 4. Australian literature — Bibliography — Exhibitions. 5. Australia in literature — Exhibitions. 6. Australia — Bibliography — Exhibitions. I. National Library of Australia. II. Title. PREFACE A book is at once the most fragile and the most Books are life's best business: vocation to these durable of man's artifacts. I can think of no better hath more emolument coming in, than all the way of introducing this exhibition than by remind­ other busy terms of life. They are .... of easy ing you of the words of men greater than I; words access and kind expedition, never sending away preserved and transmitted to you by institutions empty any client or petitioner, nor by delay mak­ such as this one, the National Library of Australia. ing their Courtesies injurious.' Richard Whitlock, Zootomia. So let the book men speak for themselves: The sum and purpose of this exhibition is to dem­ Books are not absolutely dead things, but do onstrate how, over two centuries, the "soul of Past contain a potency of life in them to be as active Time" has been preserved and how its growth has as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, been charted, by writers, printers, booksellers, pub­ they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy lishers and librarians. and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. In this place we work that the book may live, that John Milton, Areopagitica. it may be preserved, that it may be made available, in the shortest possible time, to the greatest number In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; of people. We are not simply conservators, not the articulate audible voice of the Past, when simply jealous guardians of old treasures. We are the body and material substance of it has alto- gether vanished like a dream .... All that Man- engaged in the traffic of information, so that the kind has done, thought, gained or been: it is past may enrich the present and the dark places lying as in magic preservation in the pages of of our ignorance may be illuminated by a sudden books. They are the chosen possession of men. glimpse of light from the future. Thomas Carlyle, On heroes and hero-worship. The hero as man of letters. Morris West Chairman of Council 16 February 1988 CONTENTS IX Acknowledgements Introduction 21 The Aborigines 27 The Explorers 49 Private Presses 53 Children's Books 87 Further Reading 90 Index V Preface 7 The First Fleet and its Successors 13 The Convict Era 33 Living in the New Country 40 The Arts Press 63 Colonial Australia 72 Australia in the Twentieth Century ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The National Library of Australia gratefully Many people have given time, support and expert acknowledges the generous support of the corpo- assistance, for which we thank them: Marion Amies, rate sponsors who have materially contributed to John Arnold, Elizabeth Bray, Paul Brunton, Merryn the mounting of People, Print & Paper: Callum, Iris Clayton, Dick Curlewis, Jane Gilmour, Robert Holden, John Holroyd, Shirley Humphreys, Angus & Robertson Publishers Joe Incigneri, Neville Jarvis, Kirstie McRobert, Associated Pulp and Paper Mills John McPhee, Tony Marshall, Eric Meadows, Ruth The Book Printer Morse, Alice Moyle, Jock Murphy, Helen Neville, Cole Publications John Oldmeadow, Richard Overell, Nicholas Poun­ Griffin Press der, Jeff Prentice, Henry Reynolds, Colin Steele, Penguin Books Australia Richard Tipping, Tom Thompson, Geraldine Trif- Philips Australia fet, Paul Turnbull, Ted Turnley, Alan Walker, Jur- Space-Time Research gen Wegner and Jean Whyte. Many National Library staff members have We thank the following institutions and individ- worked on People, Print & Paper. They include uals, who have lent items for display in the Sylvia Carr, Sylvia Redman, Esther Robinson, Cor- exhibition: inne Collins and Barbara Perry in Pictorial; Valerie Helsen and Glenn Schwinghamer in Manuscripts; Australian Government Printing Office Pam Ray, Louise Beaumont, Dawn Melhuish, Julie Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne Sheppard, Jean James, Margaret Heins, Lynette Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales Foley and Merle Monck in Australian Reference; Friends of the Australian National University Jan Lyall, Lydia Preiss, Jill Sterrett, Brian Hawke Library and Beryl Free in Preservation Services; Hank James Hardie Library of Australian Fine Arts, State Brusse, Justin Dumpleton, Willi Kempermann, Kate Library of Queensland Agyemang and Loui Seselja in Photographies; La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria Harry McCarthy, Kathy Jakupec, Vic Duncan, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Peter Casserly and Noel Lamb in Exhibitions; Prue Printing and Kindred Industries Union, Victorian Neidorf in Music; Richard Stone and Rosemary Branch Turner in Australian Selection; Merril Thompson, Thyne Reid Australian Childrens Collection. Graeme Barrow, Kathy Moignard and David Brown in Publications; Malcolm Bodley in Public Infor­ L. E Fitzhardinge, John Holroyd, Joanna Hughes, mation; Glenys McIver and Maura O'Connor in Anthony Ketley, Marcie Muir, Helen Neville, Phi- Maps; Ian Aston, Ron Gill, Bill King and Frank lippa Poole, John Thompson and Jurgen Wegner. Feliu in the stacks. Melissa Butler, Megan Curlewis and Alanna Hallahan also worked on the project. Judith Baskin, John Thompson, Bill Thorn and Bryan Yates were the senior officers responsible for People, Print & Paper. INTRODUCTION The Australian book trade Although printing presses travelled as essential tools of government with the men and women who established the British colonies in Australia, the high cost of printing in Australia and the smallness of the population, scattered across the vast distances of the new continent, long hampered the emergence of an Australian publishing industry. In contrast, once the earliest years were over, the hunger of Australians for books created a prosperous bookselling trade which in time laid the foundations for pub­ lishing. At the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when the connection between bookselling and publishing was becoming more and more tenuous in Britain, Australian booksellers such as the two George Robertsons were able to offer Australian writers local access to print on a scale that had been impossible for most of the nineteenth century. Their success, and that of such bookselling pragmatists as E.W. Cole and A.C. Rowlandson, was due in no small part to their vast experience of what it was that Australians wanted to read. The catalogue which follows charts the publishing history that is hinted at above. The method, which is one of annotation of each item rather than continuous narrative, runs the risk of being too episodic, but it has the merit of empiricism, and of conveying something of the variety of publishing with which we are concerned. On the other hand, the history of bookselling can be succinctly summarized at this point, along lines indicated by the pioneering work of Elizabeth Webby and Wallace Kirsop, and at the same time something of the inter­ connection of publishing and bookselling in Australia can be indi­ cated. There was hardly an organized book trade in Australia until the second decade of the nineteenth century. People took books with them when they left for Australia, and added to them by individual correspond­ ence with booksellers, friends or family. When their owners died, or returned to Europe, these books were frequently sold. Although there were no fulltime booksellers in Sydney until the 1830s, many people took advan­ tage of the high prices books fetched by importing them as a speculation. These speculative consignments began in 1821, and continued until at least the 1850s. Elizabeth Webby has estimated that over 73,000 volumes were advertized for sale in Australia in the 1830s, in contrast to 12,000 in the 1820s. By the 1840s over 200,000 volumes were advertized in Sydney alone. At the same time the first generation of Australian booksellers had begun to establish themselves, often running circulating libraries as well as selling other goods. John Fawkner of Melbourne, for example, sold beer, pigs and cattle as well as second-hand books after 1838. The first Sydney bookseller was possibly Robert Howe, who succeeded his printer father George Howe and also combined bookselling and