Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference
‘The European Book in the Antipodes’
The 2008 conference of the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) was held on 1–3 October at The University of Sydney. This year’s theme was ‘The European Book in the Antipodes’, and the conference was attended by around 30 members and others from around Australia and New Zealand.
The conference began formally on the Wednesday evening with a reception kindly sponsored by the State Library of New South Wales in the Friends Room of the Mitchell Library. Senior Curator Paul Brunton gave a very welcoming speech to the delegates, setting the tone for the rest of the conference.
The work got under way on Thursday morning, with Edmund King of Victoria University, Wellington, talking about Alexander Turnbull, New Zealand’s most famous rare books collector, and his Shakespearean collection. While not as significant as the collection of John Milton material for which Turnbull is perhaps best known, this collection, including a copy of the Second Folio of 1632, nevertheless provides scholars with a fascinating insight into his collecting methods and sources. Turnbull’s surviving correspondence with booksellers and his acquisition records show the effects of distance on the activities of a serious book collector at the other end of the western world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when there was no such thing as buying over the Internet!
The final paper of the conference was delivered by Helen Hewson of The University of Sydney, on the London publisher Richard Bentley and his foray into the Australasian travel writing market in 1852, with the publication of Godfrey Charles Mundy’s Our Antipodes, or, Residence and Rambles in the Australasian Colonies: With a Glimpse of the Goldfields. Bentley was a latecomer to this corner of the publishing market but his gamble paid off, with his book becoming the most successful of the genre, running into a number of English and foreign-language editions right up to today.
Other Papers Presented
A fascinating range of topics was covered by the following speakers:
- Elizabeth Webby, The University of Sydney, on reading Ibsen in Australia
- Donald Kerr, University of Otago, on his institution’s collection of pre-1501 books (incunabula)
- Matthew Stevens, NSW Historic Houses Trust, on the scientific libraries of Alexander Macleay and William Swainson
- Sue Reynolds, Supreme Court of Victoria Library, on the more unusual items in the Supreme Court Library’s collection
- Wallace Kirsop, Centre for the Book, Monash University, on the papers of a French army officer (now in private hands in Melbourne), including dealings with booksellers and publishers and a catalogue of his personal library
- Kevin Molloy, State Library of Victoria, on the Sydney Irish book trade of the mid-19th century
- Patrick Buckridge, Griffith University, on publisher George Harrap’s ‘books beautiful’ philosophy, aimed at producing educational books that were both beautiful and affordable
- Dennis Bryans, Golden Point Press, on the marketing of British books in Australia after World War II
- Catriona Menzies-Pike, The University of Sydney, on Robert McAlmon’s 1925 Modernist anthology, The Contact Collection of Contemporary Writers
- Suzanne Bellamy, The University of Sydney, on the first academic study of Virginia Woolfe’s entire works, produced in 1942 shortly after her death, by a University of Sydney Master of Arts student, Nuri Mass
- Matthew Fishburn, Hordern House, on the mystery of the anonymous author of the so-called ‘officer’s account’ of James Cook’s second voyage
- Tim Dolin, Curtin University, on what the diaries of two colonial readers, Annie Baxter Dawbin and William Bunn, reveal about 19th century reading habits and what this can contribute to literary history
- Adrian Mitchell, University of Sydney, on George Collingridge, artist and self-taught historian, and his 1895 book The Discovery of Australia, which argued controversially for Portuguese and Spanish priority in the European discovery of Australia
- Pauline Farley, The University of Western Australia, on English children’s annuals in Australia and their idealised depiction of ‘ England-as-home’ for non-English readers
- Victor Crittenden, Mulini Press, on the first Australian-born novelist, John Lang, and the three variant versions of one of his novels, The Secret Police, with consideration of the political implications for the differences in the texts of these versions.
Overall, the diversity and high standard of the papers demonstrated the wide range of interests that could be covered within the theme of the conference. Any papers that presenters decide to publish will appear in a future issue of the BSANZ’s journal, Script and Print.
About the Society
The BSANZ was founded in 1969 and includes in its province the studies of physical bibliography, such as the history of printing, publishing, bookselling, typefounding, papermaking, bookbinding, palaeography and codicology, textual bibliography and the general field of reference bibliography. Members come from a diverse range of backgrounds and include academics, librarians, book collectors, booksellers, printers, publishers and those with a general interest in book history and study.
The society welcomes new members and has membership categories for individuals, students and institutions. Its website is at www.csu.edu.au/community/BSANZ. A quarterly journal, Script and Print, and an occasional newsletter are produced and distributed free to members. The journal’s current editor, Patrick Spedding, has an associated blogsite at http://scriptandprint.blogspot.com that contains information on how to join the BSANZ, indexes to the society’s publications, links to other similar societies around the world, items on books and bibliography and information of interest to all students and lovers of books and book history.
Andrew Sergeant
Reference Librarian, Information Services, and
Council Member (ACT), BSANZ



