From Convict Printers to Book Arcades

A History of the Book in Australia Volume I: 1788-1890

Judy Donnelly, Elizabeth Webby, Wallace Kirsop

• Publisher: Monash University Publishing
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780648738558
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

European printing technology came in the 1790s to a continent where there were - and still are - age-old modes of communication developed by Indigenous Australians. The present volume, while recognising this essential prehistory, is devoted to the print civilisation imported by the newcomers. Throughout the nineteenth century books, magazines and newspapers arrived in great quantities from elsewhere, notably the British Isles. Appropriate means of distribution - bookshops and libraries - were created in the various colonies, but, as the population grew after the gold rushes, local manufacturing became ever more necessary. From the efforts of convict and ex-convict printers before 1820 to the achievements of numerous professionals after 1850, one can follow the expansion of production, dissemination and reading. Alongside the Bush, there were urban centres like Melbourne and Sydney, ranking in size with many major European cities by 1890. Thus, it was possible to find in Victoria's capital what was plausibly claimed to be the biggest bookshop in the world: Cole's Book Arcade.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Series: A History of the Book in Australia
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Pre-Decimal Currency
• General Introduction
• Preface
• 1. A Book by Any Other Name? Towards a Social History of the Book in Aboriginal Australia
• 2. Printing Technology
• 3. Australian Print Workers to 1890
• 4. Illustrations
• 5. Australian Colonial Binding
• 6. Paper in Nineteenth-Century Australian Publications
• 7. Colonial Type: Imported and Australian Made
• 8. ‘The laurels in the pit were won’: Authorship in Colonial Australia
• 9. The Beginnings of Australian Publishing
• 10. The Significance of Colonial and Imperial Copyright Law for Australian Authors, Publishers and the Book Trade to 1890
• 11. ‘The Land of Newspapers’
• 12. Magazines
• 13. Bookselling
• 14. Australia’s Public Libraries in Their Infancy
• 15. Mechanics’ Institutes
• 16. Commercial Circulating Libraries
• 17. Private Libraries
• 18. The Print Culture of Colonial Music from its Beginnings
• 19. Textbooks
• 20. Australian Directories to 1890
• 21. Australian Almanacs 1806–1890
• 22. Australian Printing and Publishing in Pacific Islands and Indigenous Australian Languages 1814–1900
• 23. Official Printing
• 24. After the ‘toil of a long day’: Reading in Colonial Australia
• Conclusion: Coming of Age
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Select Bibliography
• Index
• About this Book
• Back Cover