Angus & Robertson

One of Australia's earliest and most important bookselling and book-publishing firms, came into existence in January 1886 as a partnership between David Mackenzie Angus and George Robertson (²). Angus and Robertson had both arrived in Australia from Scotland in 1882 and worked in the Sydney branch of the Melbourne bookseller and publisher, also named George Robertson (1). In 1884 Angus set up his own bookshop at 110 Market Street, Sydney, later taking George Robertson (2) as partner. The rapid success of its retail bookselling saw the firm expand into the adjoining Market Street premises; in 1890 it moved to 89 Castlereagh Street, where for more than sixty years it was Sydney's best-known bookshop. Angus's chief concern was with the sale of educational books, while Robertson developed a particular interest in the collection and sale of Australiana; one of his main customers was David Scott Mitchell, whose collection of Australiana became a major factor in the later establishment of Sydney's Mitchell Library. The partnership ended in 1900, Angus returning to England where he died soon after from tuberculosis. The business was converted in 1907 into a public company with George Robertson (2) as its managing director. After his death in 1933, Walter Cousins became its head; he was succeeded by Robertson's grandson, George Ferguson. In 1970 A & R became a subsidiary of Ipec Insurance and the business was relocated in Pitt Street, Sydney. In 1978 the bookshop division was sold to Gordon and Gotch.

Angus & Robertson's illustrious Australian publishing history, largely inspired by George Robertson (2), began in 1888 with the appearance of two books of verse, A Crown of Wattle by H. Peden Steel and Sun and Cloud on River and Sea by 'Ishmael Dare' (Arthur Jose), and a reprint of an important piece of Australiana, Facsimile of a Proposal for a Settlement on the Coast of New South Wales, by Sir George Young (1785). Its halcyon period began in 1895 when it published A.B. Paterson's The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, followed in 1896 by Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils and In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses. The first catalogue of publications of A & R was circulated in 1895, the first separate catalogue of purely Australian publications ever issued. The long list of Australian writers later published by A & R includes Victor Daley, Will Ogilvie, James Brunton Stephens, Louise Mack, C.J. Dennis, Norman Lindsay, Mary Gilmore, Ion Idriess and Frank Clune. During the First World War Dennis's The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915) was one of A & R's major successes. The 1920s saw the publication of The Australian Encyclopaedia while the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 was distributed by and bore the imprint of A & R. Notable children's books from A & R include Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918), Dorothy Walls's Blinky Bill series, and May Gibbs's Gumnut Tales. The firm's natural science list of publications began with Neville Cayley's What Bird Is That? in 1931. In 1923 George Robertson (2) took over a small printing house, Eagle Press, which became Halstead Press, the chief printing arm of the firm. After the takeover of A & R in 1970 Halstead Press was sold and the publishing division (now separated from the bookshop), under Richard Walsh, who was managing director 1972-86, was relocated at Cremorne, Sydney. Thereafter, although it maintained some publishing of quality fiction, non-fiction and poetry, it concentrated on the mass market. In 1981 it became part of the News Limited group. In 1985 it purchased the US book distributor Salem House. In 1989, as one of the period's many mergers, takeovers and conglomerations, producing large publishing bureaucracies, A & R merged with William Collins, thus becoming the Australian trade publishing imprint of the giant multinational conglomeration, HarperCollins. A & R has, however, continued to play a conspicuous role as publisher of quality Australian writing, e.g. the A & R Modern Poets Series and the Imprint Series, which specialises in reviving previously published works. It continues to provide incentives also for promising Australian writers, e.g. in 1993 it awarded the first A & R Book world Prize ($10 000) for a first book of fiction by an unpublished writer.

Much of the earlier history of Angus & Robertson and the men associated with it, such as F.V. Wymark, is included in James Tyrrell's Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney (1952) and Postscript: Further Bookselling Reminiscences (1957), and George Ferguson's Some Early Australian Bookmen (1978). In 1910 Henry Lawson (who is alleged to have interpreted A & R as 'Anguish and Robbery') wrote a verse tribute to George Robertson (2) and A & R, The Auld Shop and the New (1923).

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