WELCOME TO HOBA 98

Unsuccessful in his plan, Thitchener moved to Sydney where he joined forces with John Davies to form the Australian Type Foundry (1884/5-1900). One of Thitchener's type casting machines was built to order for the Victorian Government Printer during the life of the Australian Type Foundry, and from time to time he supplied moulds for the machine in Melbourne.

A complete list of the machines and equipment owned by Thitchener was submitted to the Victorian Government at the time of the projected sale and a report (Webster and Robert Ellis) valued the plant at £3146/1/6. Thitchener also issued a type specimen book in Melbourne containing samples of borders and corners in addition to a range of types. Regrettably, so far no complete example of this specimen book has been found, but there is one surviving book of the type cast by Thitchener and Davies at the Australian Type Foundry, Sydney.

The brands fount cast for the South Australian Government by Thitchener in Melbourne was also cast independently in a different size and to a different pattern by Davies in Sydney and it may be that they became acquainted with one another as a result of this competitive tender.

I will show examples of type specimen sheets made from type cast by Thomson, Davies, Thitchener and Wimble, together with examples of metal types showing pin marks, feet and shoulders of type.

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Pat Buckridge: The Reading of 'Great Works' in Australia, 1900-60.

'The Reading of "Great Works"', will be published in the Bulletin of the Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand, no further details at the moment.

Much of the 'serious reading' done by Australians of all classes in (roughly) the first half of this century was by way of multi-volume compilations and collections of Great Works. These extended across a range from illustrated encyclopaedia (primarily for children) through annotated collections of excerpts from the Great Writers, collections of 'World's Greatest' short stories, to uniformly bound de luxe sets of classic novels. Also important were the subscription courses designed for adult self-education, usually with bound sets of readings included, published by the International University Society, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago; and collections of great speeches designed as models for emulation by aspiring after-dinner speakers.

This paper will be something of a work-in-progress report, but I hope to be able to offer both a descriptive survey of the materials and some arguments as to the significance of these various 'polygraphic' forms of access and use for the history of reading in Australia, ca. 1900-1960.

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Laurel Clark: The French Connection in 19th Century Australian Publishing: F.F. Baillière and his activities.

The name Baillière is usually associated in Australian publishing with nineteenth-century gazetteers and directories. So useful were they that the State Library of Victoria reproduced them on microfiche in the 1980s. Yet F.F.Baillière's publishing enterprises were far more wide ranging.

Born in England, he was the nephew of the founder of the firm established in France in 1825. The company was active in New York, Paris, Madrid and Melbourne in the latter part of the nineteenth century, as the imprints of F.F.Baillière's publications reveal. Like the Teggs in Australia, they were multinationals before their time. Baillière arrived in Melbourne in 1860 and rapidly acquired government 'patronage'. His early publications claimed that he was Publisher in Ordinary, although the legality of this claim has not been proved.

Like his parent house in France, he established links with the medical profession and his subsequent involvement with the flamboyant Doctor Beaney nearly lead to his downfall. His relationship with Beaney resulted in a court case which was celebrated at the time, being followed by the Melbourne dailies, the Argus and the Age.

Baillière published a number of Beaney's medical works as well as other medical books and also established a medical journal in Melbourne when, surprisingly, there were three other such journals already available. Baillière's publications were not limited to gazetteers, directories and medical works, for in keeping with his ability to acquire government 'patronage', he also published works of several notable Melbourne colonists, including Marcus Clarke.

Baillière also ran a bookshop, about which only a small amount is known; however it is through his publishing that he made a significant and hitherto unknown contribution to the Australian booktrade.

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David Dunstan: Words on Wine: the Appearance of a Publishing Subculture.

Wine, winemaking and grape growing would seem to have attracted a greater share of obsessional types than other beverages, manufacturing or agricultural activities. Not surprisingly, this interest is reflected in publishing and in books. Since the earliest times, when the Australian colonies suggested themselves as a new home for the European vine, and for wine production, there has been no shortage of infatuated pundits ready to rush into print on the subject. In the post-1945 era especially this trickle became a torrent. In these years it may be said that Australia became a wine consuming (as well as producing) nation. Words accompanied the wine. It seemed that we could not drink it without also reading about it.

And so it was that wine writers came to assume a special role, not just guides pointing the punters to the best bottles, but framers of a new middle-class consumerist lifestyle and the vinous knowledge that was supposed to go with it. Newspapers, specialist magazines and book publishers all ran with the new enthusiasm. A generation of writers (of varying personaes and talents) from Walter James through to Len Evans, James Halliday and Mark Shield came to public prominence. Although the tide has subsided somewhat, most major papers still boast a wine columnist and wine books remain a lucrative, if minor, dimension of Australian publishing.

This paper proposes, through a case study approach, to explore the careers and involvement of key individuals, to revive memories of some familiar publications, to scrutinise forays into the cellar undertaken by more than a few well-known Australian publishing houses, and to assess the contribution of contributors to the genre.

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Victoria Emery: The Culture of Catholicity: Melbourne's Catholic Periodicals, 1986-1900.

The establishment of the first stable Catholic weekly in Melbourne, the Advocate in 1868, was the beginning of a long rhetorical and practical struggle to achieve a Catholic press for Victoria. For almost twenty years this weekly was the sole occupant of the field, then the period 1887 to 1900 saw a sudden and remarkable eruption of Catholic writings into print, with the monthly Australasian Messenger, the quarterly Catholic Magazine (precursor to the monthly Austral Light), The Magazine of the League of the Cross, Madonna and the Tribune following each other into print. These journals defined themselves and their activities in a number of not always harmonious ways. Convinced of the importance of the press both for good and for ill, they fostered the involvement of Catholics in a variety of educational and cultural initiatives, promoting Irish and Catholic values and fostering Catholic writing and publishing. They also displayed a distinctively Catholic spin on the cultural fear of 'promiscuous' reading and anxieties over Catholic exposure to a mainstream press regarded as anti-Catholic.

This paper will explore the rhetorical and practical background to these developments, examining both the definition and functioning of the 'Apostolate of the Press' and the communal and financial underpinnings which allowed the creation of these journals.

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Paul Genoni: Writing the Continent: Diaries of Exploration and Representations of a New World.

This paper will consider the explorers' diaries which were published during the nineteenth century, and their unique place in the history of print culture in Australia. It will briefly examine the role played by the explorers' published diaries in representing the Australian interior to both those who were living in the colonies and to an eager European audience. Of the mythical nineteenth-century types who have their roots in rural and outback Australia-the explorer, the shearer, the drover, the miner, the squatter-only the explorers left a detailed account of themselves, the new land, and the various life forms it supported.

A case study will be made of the publishing history of the first major Australian exploration diary, John Oxley's Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales (1821). It will include an account of the reception given to Oxley's diaries in Europe.

The paper will conclude with a brief examination of the continued relevance of, and demand for, modern reprints of the explorers' diaries.

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Ross Harvey: A Historical Dictionary of Australian Newspapers.

The initial planning for the History of the Book in Australia project envisaged that the first phase of the project would be a multi-volume chronological history. Further phases would include a historical dictionary of Australian newspapers.

This paper briefly places newspapers in the context of wider Australian book history and emphasises their importance. It indicates that there is still much research to be carried out on the printing, publishing and economic aspects of Australian newspapers, as distinct from journalistic aspects, despite the recently increasing quantity of such research.

The scope and structure of a historical dictionary of Australian newspapers is explored and possible structures for a project to develop it are examined. Potential deliverables, ranging from the traditional book product to a database which is able to be updated via the Web, are noted. Some models for an Australian dictionary, such as the various published annotated bibliographies and directories of newspapers for states of Canada or regions of the U.K. are described. Some sample entries for Western Australian newspapers are presented.

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Wallace Kirsop: Publishing in Foreign Languages in 19th Century Australia: The French and German Cases.

Immigration to Australia from German- and French-speaking countries in the nineteenth century was markedly different both in extent and character. The contrast shows up in the sorts of publications produced locally for these groups across the various colonies.

The paper aims to illustrate the distinctive features of what were on the one hand large, coherent and religiously separate communities and on the other smaller and rather amorphous collections of individuals who were none the less more closely integrated into the mainstream culture of Anglo-Celtic Australasia.

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Kate Lavender: Lesbian Community Publications, 1980s to Present.

This paper will discuss aspects of the publication of newsletters and magazines emanating from various lesbian communities across Australia between the early 1980s and the present. It will cover the origins of some of these publications, their organisation, and the kinds of topics and issues they contained. The publications were unique in themselves and yet have often been overlooked in reviews and social histories of lesbian lives, which not only suppressed the voices of lesbians and their personal and political concerns but gave a distorted history. In comparison to the silences and invisibility, mainstream and commercial publications have frequently sensationalised or objectified lesbians. The newsletters trace the emergence of lesbians from the private world to the public arena of participation in a multicultural, multifaceted society.

In Australia lesbian groups became more public and accessible from the late 1960s, paralleling the emergence of the 'second wave' feminist movement and gay liberation. Newsletters, either of existing groups or specifically produced as an end in themselves, became part of the lives of many lesbians.

Despite the publicity surrounding the activities of the earlier years of 'second wave' feminism, open lesbians were not always welcome or comfortable in feminist circles. Also there were lesbians whose interest differed substantially from those of gay men. These newsletters, then, were uniquely valued by many lesbians, especially those in rural areas. Even today some lesbians' main contact with others is through lesbian newsletters.

Organisation of these publications involved contacting a diverse and largely hidden population, financial burdens, the influence of prevailing ideologies including working collectively, radical editing policies and the reliance on unpaid work. This type of history is best told by an insider and my claim is as a founding mother and key worker on the national Lesbian Network magazine for over seven years.

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Rosemary Montgomery: 'We read what there was': School Library Books and Wartime Reading for the Adolescent Girl in Australia, 1939-1945.

A primary purpose of school reading is the creation of particular roles and values. However, weaknesses in the construction of the library reading situation and shifting social values meant that adolescent girl readers were not necessarily receiving or accepting the images of roles and assignation of values intended by the educational hierocracy.

The stated aims of libraries in secondary and elementary strands of education were similar: to develop an enjoyment of good reading. However, the strands offered different ideas of 'good reading', and different ideas of the purposes of a school library.

Funds were limited. Secondary libraries recognised the importance of public examinations and developed collections emphasising the prescribed authors. Modern respondents who were the readers recalled secondary school collections as 'fusty' and 'unreal'; a response borne out by Second World War surveys of reading.

Elementary libraries had to develop a collection for clients between infants and those who would leave before the junior public examination. Departmental booklists were almost unusable in such circumstances. Respondents recalled 'favourites' from these libraries as 'boarding school books' and 'Anne' books.

Library reading was voluntary but conditions for undertaking it varied according to the educational strand. Secondary schools struggled to maintain a separate library room. However the collections' attachment to the 'classics' and the idea of examination success, and the difficulties of creating and maintaining the collections, reflected in the rules and proscriptions, meant that girls perceived school libraries as places for the elite.

Elementary libraries were seen to have attractive books but their collections were so small enthusiastic readers could not habitually read from them.

An examination of the collections in, and the responses to, school libraries clearly demonstrates that girls were far from being a passive group reading 'what was there'. There was a division between educational hierocracy's expectations of what girls would read and the reading girls themselves were undertaking voluntarily at this time.

Major Primary Sources:

• Two Second World War reading surveys
• Second World War Australian school library accession registers
• 1996-1997 survey in all states of women who were adolescent readers during the Second World War.

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Sonia Mycak: One group of Australian Writers, One aspect of Australian Literary History: the so-called 'displaced persons' make their Mark.

Immediately following the Second World War, the Australian government instituted a revolutionary immigration policy which would forevermore change the nature of Australian society. In the years from 1947 to 1954 some 170 000 refugees-so-called 'displaced persons-arrived in Australia from war-torn Europe under the auspices of International Refugee Organisation resettlement. The Displaced Persons Scheme was a bold initiative on the part of Australia's first Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell. Breaking with the previous policies of British-dominated immigration, the Scheme was in effect the first substantial break in the so-called 'White Australia' policy: and the arrival of these 'new Australians' paved the way for the multiculturalism which marks Australian society today.

Although the immigrants were destitute on arrival, they quickly arranged themselves into communities and organised a social infrastructure for themselves. Working within their own communities, the immigrants established cultural organisations, dance troops, choirs, newspapers, presses, churches, meeting halls, and schools. With this a lively and distinct literary culture emerged, a culture that included writers' clubs and associations, recitals and festivals, competitions, and the production of books.

Despite the seminal role the Displaced Persons Scheme played in the history of Australia, this wave of immigration has remained relatively hidden from the public and scholarly view. Whilst a small number of publications have described the socio-historical aspects of the period, and some work on the cultural life has been undertaken within the communities themselves, no research across the communities has been undertaken to chronicle the literary culture of the immigrants who arrived as 'displaced persons' after the war.

Over the last two years, I have undertaken to research the literature and literary culture of this particular group of Australians: that is, to research writers who arrived in Australia as so-called 'displaced persons' immediately after the war. My research project has involved significant 'archaeological' work: corresponding with hundreds of community organisations and dozens of ethnic communities, finding the authors and interviewing them, locating their texts in private holdings and community archives. In this paper I would like to present some of my findings, those to do with: bilingualism, the role and position of the author, audience and market-place, infrastructure and the role of the community, funding and means of publication, and relations to mainstream Australian literary culture. Whilst my findings will present one particular group of Australian writers and describe one specific phase or aspect of Australia's literary history, I would hope the issues raised will explore some of the realities of literary production in a culturally diverse society such as the one to be found in Australia today.

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Prue Neidorf & Graham Pont: Composer Compositor: Isaac Nathan's music published in Australia.

The evolution of various printing technologies during the nineteenth century affected the printing of music as much as it did other materials. Music printing also had some processes which resisted these changes and which can still be found today. This paper outlines one participant's involvement in several of these processes, one who anticipated the isolation from his English publishers by bringing his own printing equipment with him, one who explored some possibilities open to him and seemingly ignored others. This was Isaac Nathan, Australia's most versatile and prolific composer of music in the nineteenth century. He had an established output and reputation as a composer in England before migrating in 1840, arriving in Sydney in 1841. From 1841 to 1864, when Nathan died, over forty of his works were published in Sydney. This paper is a preliminary one, exploring this Australian oevre and Nathan's own music typesetting and publishing practices. It also provides a glimpse of some of the printers and publishers with whom he worked, most of whom are probably well known but not generally associated with music. There is also an outline of the performances and reception of his works in Australia, and an exploration of the genres of music which were used by Nathan in his compositional output during his life in Sydney.

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Ken Orchard: The Lindt Portfolio: Australian Aboriginals.

'The Lindt Porfolio' will be published in History of Photography (Special Australian Edition, Guest Ed. Michael Galimany), Spring 1999.

Portfolios of a dozen studio tableaux photographs entitled Australian Aboriginals taken by J.W. Lindt (1845-1926) in Grafton, NSW between 1873-74 were probably the most widely distributed images of Aboriginal subjects in the second half of the nineteenth century. They have subsequently become some of the most discussed images of Aborigines in the history of Australian photography, attracting more than twenty major citations since 1972.

There has been no systematic assessment of the worldwide distribution of these images, nor has a survey been undertaken into the range of Lindt's Aboriginal portraits. This year research conducted under the auspices of the National Gallery of Australia has revealed the previously overlooked dimension of Lindt's ambitious project. Although at the beginning of his career, Lindt made at least 70 different Aboriginal portraits while in Grafton, many of them now lodged in dozens of museums and art gallery collections around the world.

The portfolio, Australian Aboriginals, and an earlier suite of outdoor photographs of Gumbaingirr Aboriginals by Lindt, commissioned by the Italian naturalist Luigi D'Albertis in 1873, will form the basis for both a reappraisal of Lindt's early photographic enterprise and a critique of the genre of the primitivist tableaux within which these Aboriginal subjects are framed.

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Louise Poland: Aboriginal Publishing in Australia, 1988-1989.

In 1998 in Australia, three specialist publishing houses exclusively devote themselves to publishing Aboriginal texts, including texts by Indigenous authors. These three publishing houses, together with one mainstream publisher, can be seen as important sites of difference within the Australia-wide publishing context.

There has been considerable growth and change in the publishing of Aboriginal titles and in the specialist Aboriginal publishing houses over the last decade. Aboriginal Studies Press and IAD Press have expanded and diversified their lists, while making major contributions within their established fields of publishing expertise. Significantly, Magabala Books has established itself, enlisting the support of Indigenous communities and overcoming the logistical problems of a publishing house in a remote location. Also significantly, a mainstream publishing house, UQP, commenced and developed a unique Indigenous creative writing list. Considerable contribution to the expansion of Aboriginal texts has also been made by other mainstream publishing houses during the past decade, those considered in this paper being partly motivated by political considerations.

This paper describes the recent history of Aboriginal book publishing in Australia and focuses on the most recent decade, from 1988 until 1998. A number of distinctive aspects of Aboriginal publishing emerge. While reference to Aboriginal texts and literary genres is integral to a discussion of Aboriginal publishing, this paper highlights developments, rather than critically reviewing the literature.

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Sean Scalmer & Ian Syson: Australian Bibliographies: A Critique of Existing Tendencies and Notes Towards an Alternative.

The field of Australian Studies is currently marked by an explosion of bibliographical activity. It is also marked by an insistent, wide-ranging debate around the existence, construction, and usefulness of the canon. The synchronicity of these activities is not accidental. It is our hypothesis that attempts to construct and reconstruct the national canon are manifest in the production of bibliographies. To put it another way, the bibliography is a tool in the attempt to construct a tradition, to argue for its historical lineage, and to battle for its place in the intellectual field. For this reason, the processes that have provoked the debate around the canon: the decline of the usefulness of 'literature' as cultural capital, the battle for recognition by feminist scholars, and the rise of multicultural, indigenous, postcolonial and cultural studies, are the very forces that have stimulated the proliferation of bibliographies.

Claims for canonicity are made in the language of 'greatness' - Leavis's The Great Tradition functioning as an archetype in this case. For this reason, canon-constructing bibliographies have replicated the ideology of the great tradition. They are individualistic - based around the individual writer in the taxonomic structure of the bibliography. They are ahistorical - based for the most part on a listing of works without an exploration of their relationship or connections. They downplay the relationships between authors, between texts, between tendencies. Most vitally, they overlook the institutions within which intellectual and creative production occurs. Although the bibliographies are created in specific institutional locations, and, indeed, are often attached to the advancement of those institutions, they are strikingly silent on the institutional basis of creative production.

Recent historical and theoretical scholarship organised around the concept of the 'public sphere' has suggested that communication occurs in clusters. This literature is dominated by the figure of Habermas, particularly his work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The concept of the public sphere refers to the development in Europe at the beginning of the modern period of a field of rational communication among equals, a sphere where a 'public' was created to criticise rulers and social arrangements. This was a world of writing and reading, talking and listening 'in public' - and a world of acting politically on the basis of reason. It is precisely this existence of clusters of communication and of power which the format of the existing bibliographies is unable to grasp. The individual - defined either in terms of the text, the author, or the press, is the unit of analysis. The relationship between individual units is not considered. The forces shaping that interaction are not examined. However, these are precisely the issues which must be addressed in any adequate documentation of Australian writing.

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Dianne Speakman: Copyright: Contributing to the Diversity of the Book in the Post-War Era.

Copyright is a means to an end. Despite the romantic ideals of art, literature and academia, books would scarcely exist could authors and publishers not produce a livelihood from their work. Copyright is the mechanism that affords a livelihood, and encourages diversity by providing an incentive for authors and publishers to invest time, effort and capital in the creation and production of books.

During the post-war period, the ways in which Australians have utilised copyright material has changed, especially books and copying. Copying practices in post-war Australia can be divided into three distinct periods: copying by hand and gestetner; the era of the photocopier; and the digital age.

Each of these periods has been defined by a technological breakthrough, has had a profound impact on the book, and has resulted in a change in the way that people use books and read.

With copying by hand, users had stringent physical restraints on how much they could copy. That remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, posing no serious threat to the book or to authors and publishers.

The release of the first photocopier in 1959 brought a new way to copy books, and with it, a new attitude toward books. People no longer saw access to books via copying as a privilege, but rather, as a right. It suddenly became an expectation that users be allowed complete and accurate copies of books, in an instant, and at very little cost.

This broad attitude of 'free use' was exacerbated as society entered the digital age. The previous restrictions of photocopying, such as the limited nature of paper-based copying, suddenly became irrelevant. Now perfect copies, in unlimited numbers, can be made, manipulated, and sent anywhere in the world-at very little cost and with very little effort.

When Australia entered the photocopying era, and later the digital era, many predicted the death of the book - but it has survived. Not only has it survived, it has flourished, seemingly against all odds. Despite the enormous changes in technology and attitudes, the book has grown - both in numbers, and more importantly, in diversity.

This paper will illustrate the changing uses of the book in post-war Australia, across the three different periods explained above, and will examine how and why copyright has played such a crucial role in ensuring both the survival and success of the book. It will be shown how copyright has adapted to these changes, and how it must continue adapting to deal with the challenges that lie ahead.

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Lydia Wevers: Captain Ceroni's Watch: Landscape and Print Culture in Early New Zealand.

In 1809 the ship Boyd was 'cut off' in Whangaroa harbour and most of the crew and passengers killed. This event, widely reported in pamphlets, dispatches and the press, became a defining episode in the reception and production of 'New Zealand' in print media for thirty years, both as a point of reference and in the negotiation of New Zealand as a landscape, a market, and colony. Cannibalism and the treatment of Maori by Europeans provided opposing discourses between which a dark landscape was both constructed and recuperated.

This paper discusses the overlapping and varying accounts of the massacre of the Boyd to suggest how a complex field of relations are mediated in print culture and build a shifting textual landscape known as 'New Zealand'.

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Nancy Wright & Andrew Buck: 'The Romance of the Blue Books': The Distribution and Readership of Publications by William Hanson, Government Printer in Colonial New South Wales.

This paper traces the distribution and reception of a particular 'Blue Book' printed in 1857 by the government printer, William Hanson. 'Blue Books' were published in accordance with the requirements of the Colonial Office. They reported accounts of government expenditure, legislation and proceedings. The Second Progress Report from the Select Committee on Administration of Justice and Conduct of Official Business in County Districts, printed by Hanson in 1857, is a typical 'Blue Book' in format and content. It reports proceedings of several select committees including one appointed to hear the petition of Joseph Wilkes. It is the subsequent distribution and reception of the content of this 'Blue Book' that reveals an unexpected relation between the publication of government documents and the production of popular literature in colonial Australia. The story of Joseph Wilkes, who was subsequently convicted as a murderer, became the basis of two different works of fiction by Charles De Boos. The historical novel Fifty Years Ago: An Australian Tale by De Boos included a plot and characters that adapted the circumstances of Wilkes's murders. Gordon & Gotch printed that novel, first, in a series of fourteen pamphlets and, then, as one volume in 1867. De Boos 'revisited' the scenes of Wilkes's crimes in a true crime serial, title 'The Romance of the Blue Books', printed in The Sydney Mail from 30 May to 4 July 1868. Subsequently, in 1906 a posthumously revised and abridged edition of Fifty Years Ago, titled Savages and Settlers, was printed by the NSW Bookstall Company. The history of the distribution of the Wilkes case, first as a book produced by the government printer, and subsequently as different genres of historical writing, by private colonial printers and colonial newspapers, provides a means to evaluate the conditions of book production in colonial New South Wales.

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Notes on Speakers

KEITH ADKINS is a self-employed Book Conservator and is currently a doctoral student in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania.