Update for July–August 2008

I am told that Script & Print 31:4 has returned from the printers and will be stuffed into envelopes in the next few days. Those of you who make it to Nathan's lecture at the State Library of Victoria (details here and here) will get to see copies before anyone else.

Script & Print 32:1 (2008) will be another mixed issue (details below), with lots of reviews which have been squeezed out of recent issues. It will probably be followed by a special, manuscript issue, which is being co-edited by myself, Margaret Manion and James Lowry. If the planets align there might be one last mixed issue in 2008, leaving only five issues for 2009 (three of which will be the Harold Love Memorial Issue).

Contents of S&P 31:4

Article 1: Susann Liebich, “ 'The Books Are The Same As You See In London Shops': Booksellers in Colonial Wellington and Their Imperial Ties, ca. 1840–1890"

Article 2: Sue Reynolds, "Bookbuying at the Victorian Supreme Court Library, 1853–1863: A Tale of Duplicity and Intrigue"

Article 3: John Burrows and Anthony Hassall, "Sarah and Henry Fielding and the Authorship of The History of Ophelia: A Reply"

Article 4: B. J. McMullin, "Shared Printing: James Flesher’s part in Matthew Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum, vol. 1 (1669)"

Article 5: Patrick Spedding, "To (Not) Promote Breeding: Censoring Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife”

Obituary: Marcie Muir 1919–2007 (by Rory Muir)

Reviews: Be Merry and Wise (reviewed byRebecca-Anne Do Rozario); Amassing Treasures for All Times (reviewed by Rachel Salmond); The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore, vol. 2 (reviewed by Patrick Buckridge).

Contents of S&P 32:1 [now 32:2]

Article 1: Alison Rukavina, “This is a Wonderfully Comprehensive Business”: The Development of the British-Australian and International Book Trades, 1870–1887

Article 2: Ian Morrison, "The Writings of Theresa Tasmania: Notes on an Investigation into a Nineteenth-Century Literary Pseudonym"

Reviews: Marketing the Bard (reviewed by Edmund G. C. King); From Australia with Love (reviewed by Ian Morrison); Henry Handel Richardson, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (reviewed by Roger Osborne); A Companion to the History of the Book (reviewed by Roger Osborne); The Commonwealth of Books (reviewed by James Raven); Print Culture and the Medieval Author (reviewed by Lawrence Warner); Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator (reviewed by Shef Rogers); Books on the Move (reviewed by Patrick Spedding)

Contents of Script & Print, vol. 31 (2007)

Here is a complete contents-list for Script & Print, vol. 31 (2007 [issued 2007–8])

Articles and Bibliographical Notes:
• Craig Brittain, "Steinbeck’s Use of Ledgers in the Writing of East of Eden and Journal of a Novel" [S&P 31:3: 172–79]
• John Burrows and Anthony Hassall, "Sarah and Henry Fielding and the Authorship of The History of Ophelia: A Reply" [S&P 31:4: 220–29]
• Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario, "Don’t Steal a Book by its Cover: The Book Thief and Who Reads It" [S&P 31:2: 104–16]
• Paul Eggert, "Textual Criticism and Folklore: The Ned Kelly Story and Robbery Under Arms" [S&P 31:2: 69–80]
• Nathan Garvey, “Selling a Penal Colony: The Booksellers and Botany Bay” [S&P 31:1: 20–38]
• Elaine Hoag, “The Earliest Extant Australian Imprint With Distinguish Provenance: Playbill Discovered at Library and Archives Canada” [S&P 31:1: 5–19]
• Robert Jordan, “The Barrington Prologue” [S&P 31:1: 39–57]
• Wallace Kirsop, “Searching for George Hughes: A First Report on a New Investigation” [S&P 31:1: 58–62]
• Susann Liebich, “ 'The Books Are The Same As You See In London Shops': Booksellers in Colonial Wellington and Their Imperial Ties, ca. 1840–1890" [S&P 31:4: 197–209]
• B. J. McMullin, "An Unrecorded Title-page Border: The Castle of Knowledge (1556)" [S&P 31:3: 164–71]
• B. J. McMullin, "Shared Printing: James Flesher’s part in Matthew Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum, vol. 1 (1669)" [S&P 31:4: 230–32]
• Sue Reynolds, "Bookbuying at the Victorian Supreme Court Library, 1853–1863: A Tale of Duplicity and Intrigue" [S&P 31:4: 210–19]
• Joseph Rudman, "Sarah and Henry Fielding and the Authorship of The History of Ophelia: A Riposte" [S&P 31:3: 147–63]
• Patrick Spedding, "To (Not) Promote Breeding: Censoring Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife” [S&P 31:4: 233–42]
• Dirk H. R. Spennemann & Jon O’Neill, "A Library in Paradise: The deBrum Library on Likiep (Micronesia)" [S&P 31:3: 135–46]
• Paul Watt, "The Catalogue of Ernest Newman’s Library: Revelations about his Intellectual Life in the 1890s" [S&P 31:2: 81–103]

Obituaries:
• Marcie Muir 1919–2007 (by Rory Muir) [S&P 31:4: 243–45]

Reviews:
• Amassing Treasures for All Times (Rachel Salmond) [S&P 31:4: 249–51]
• Be Merry and Wise (Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario) [S&P 31:4: 446–49]
• Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Shef Rogers) [S&P 31:2: 117–18]
• Engines of Influence (Ross Harvey) [S&P 31:3: 182–84]
• Literary Cultures and the Material Book (Jason D. Ensor) [S&P 31:3: 185–89]
• Manon Lescaut de l’abbé Prévost, 1731–1759 (Angus Martin) [S&P 31:3: 184–85]
• Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms (reviewed by Peter L. Shillingsburg) [S&P 31:2: 118–22]
• The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore, vol. 2 (Patrick Buckridge) [S&P 31:4: 251–53]
• Ada Cambridge, A Black Sheep (Mary Jane Edwards) [S&P 31:3: 180–82]

BSANZ Occasional Publication for 2008

The Occasional Publication Series of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand will soon include a study of Angus and Robertson by Jennifer Alison. I have been informed by Roger Osborne, 2007–8 editor of the Occasional Publications series, that full publication details and pricing will be available later in the year.

Doing Something for Australia: George Robertson and the Early Years of Angus and Robertson, Publishers 1888-1900

Angus and Robertson holds a significant position in the history of Australian publishing, bookselling and literary culture. Alison's study draws on the extensive company records held at Sydney’s Mitchell Library to show how George Robertson managed Angus and Robertson as a business and as a cultural institution. Robertson’s relationship with authors such as Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson are described in detail in conjunction with the authors of a variety of literary and non-fiction titles, providing a unique view of the pressures faced by a colonial publisher and bookseller.

This important, foundational study will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of literary studies and book history. It provides a comprehensive account of Australia’s early publishing history through an exploration of one of Australia’s most significant publishers and the authors and readers it attempted to serve.

Alison gave a preview of her work on Angus and Robertson at the first History of the Book in Australia (HOBA) Conference in 1996 (details here).

NB: recent publications in the OP series include Stephen J. Herrin's The Development of Printing in Nineteenth-Century Ballarat (2000) and The Culture of the Book: Essays from Two Hemispheres in Honour of Wallace Kirsop, edited by David Garrioch et al (1999).

Nathan Garvey on The Book Show

Nathan Garvey (above), who will be presenting a Bibliographical Circle paper about celebrity convict George Barrington at the State Library of Victoria later this month (details here), was interviewed this morning by Ramona Koval for Radio National's Book Show.

You can download past Book Show programs from the ABC website (here): full details of the segment are as follows:

Spurious and Bogus Botany Bay Literature

Bogus stories about imaginary voyages to the Antipodes were popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. And the most popular story from this time was A Voyage to New South Wales—later just Voyage—and its author was celebrity convict George Barrington, an elegantly dressed pickpocket who moved in exalted circles and who was sentenced to transportation to Australia in 1790.

Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and Edgar Allan Poe had heard of him, but he didn't actually write a word of these popular accounts of coming to Australia.

Nathan Garvey has been following the trail of where these bogus stories came from.

Subscribe to Script & Print

A would-be subscriber pointed out to me this morning that it is not immediately clear to anyone visiting this site how to join the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand and, therefore, receive Script & Print. So, here it is what you need to know.

If you join the BSANZ you get [1] Script and Print quarterly, [2] a Broadsheet periodically, [3] discounts on books published in the Occasional Publications series, [4] discounted fees at the annual BSANZ conference, and [5] a warm, inner glow. (More details under BSANZ publications here.)

Membership fees for 2008 are:

A$45 full-time students

A$75 for individuals

A$90 for institutions (in Australia and New Zealand)

A$105 for institutions (outside Australia and New Zealand)

To join the Society you can either download the Membership Application form (here), print it out and post it to Pam Pryde (the Secretary/Treasurer of the Society), or you can email her and she will send you the form and answer any questions you might have about the BSANZ. Pam's email address is:


Pam Pryde, Curator,
Special Collections,
Baillieu Library,
University of Melbourne,
Parkville, Victoria, 3010,
AUSTRALIA

Anyone with any questions about Script and Print can send me an email at the following address:

Melbourne Bibliographical Circle Event, July 2008

I am pleased to announce that on Thursday 31 July 2008 at 5.45pm Nathan Garvey will present, in the McArthur Gallery (Rare Books), off the Redmond Barry Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria, a paper on the books spuriously attributed to celebrity convict George Barrington (1755?–1804).

This is the second Melbourne Bibliographical Circle event for 2008, jointly organised by The Centre for the Book and the Melbourne branch of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Barrington’s Voyage was probably the most widely read work on the early years of European settlement in Australia. First published as A Voyage to New South Wales (London, 1795), the text’s combination of plagiarised material and exciting fictional adventures revolving around its supposed author was tremendously popular, and was quickly appropriated and reprinted by numerous publishers of chapbook-style works.

But the publishing history of Barrington’s Voyage was to take more unusual directions. An elaborate expanded edition was published in London in 1802–3, by which time it had been gentrified through scholarly translations into French and Russian. From 1806, an adapted version of the text was included in a canonical French collection of voyage narratives for young readers, which was to provide a model for subsequent translations.

Throughout its convoluted publishing history, the Voyage was particularly open to transformations, since various publishers adapted the work—and the text itself—to suit different markets and readerships. The narrative that had originally been, in some senses, a “translation” of the material of a semi-official travel narrative for a popular readership, was modified over time to reflect its changing audiences.

This paper, illustrated with slides, will explore how and why Barrington’s Voyage was transformed over the course of its publishing history. We hope to see many of you there.

Nathan Garvey is the C. H. Currey Memorial Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales for 2008. He recently completed his PhD, on the publication of the George Barrington books, in the English Department at the University of Sydney. His book, A Deceptious Mask: A Publishing History of the George Barrington Books, is due for publication later this year.

Testimonials for S&P

In 2002 the eminent scholar Prof. Trevor Howard-Hill wrote, in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 96:1 (2002),142:

"every library of any intellectual pretension whatever should subscribe to the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin”

Having only discovered this quote in the last week I thought I would post it here. In future, I might add to it any other testimonials that I encounter, or which are pointed out to me.