Books have always been a big part of my life. My mother is a librarian, my grandmother was a primary school teacher, my father worked at a university. So it is safe to say my family celebrates learning and literature. And growing up on a farm without the internet means there is a lot of quiet time for reading.
At age 4 I taught myself to read with Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham. For some unknown reason I had looked at my older sister and decided I needed to be able to read to get into Kindy. After that I was always in the middle of reading something. At any one time I had a book stashed in each family car, one at school, and a few more on the go at home. My Nana always says I was like Lewis Carroll's Alice: dreamy, thoughtful, introspective, and endlessly curious.
With the exception of my (stereotypical) love of Austen, my favourite books are still the children and young adult titles I discovered growing up. Many of them are ‘old-fashioned’ ones published in the early twentieth-century, titles like Little Women, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, the Billabong series, Alice in Wonderland, and Winnie the Pooh. I love the familiarity of these books, especially as uni means I now spend less time reading for leisure. They are like old friends: no matter how long you've been away from them you can pick up the conversation at any point, happily spend 5minutes or all day with them (preferably with a cup of tea), and skip forwards or backwards at will because you know the story intimately.
My love of history only really emerged in the final years of high school. I was intrigued by the capacity to 'uncover' and then tell stories about past people, events, and societies otherwise forgotten. But it was in the first semester of my BA as we started to conduct primary research that I was truly sold on the approach, writing style, ethos and processes of history.
In the final year of my undergraduate degree, in a history unit about the long eighteenth century, I designed and conducted a research project about the reception of Jane Austen’s novels. My current status as a doctoral candidate and, in particular, my research area hinges on that serendipitous moment. It was then that I discovered the field of book history, realising my enduring love of old books, my interest in historical research, and my growing preference for incorporating quantitative methodologies had a natural intersection. The professor who oversaw that undergraduate unit - who responded enthusiastically to my work, and encouraged me to continue my studies - remains my principal supervisor on the doctoral project.
I then had the opportunity to complete an internship at the State Library of NSW where I worked with the Angus & Robertson Archive for the first time. That experience increased my enjoyment of archival research and my captivation with cultural institutions. I also became fascinated by the endless possibilities of that particular archive.
The following year I enrolled in a Master of Research at Western Sydney University, exploring Angus & Robertson’s publication of early Australian children’s literature. Unintentionally, so many of my favourite books appeared in that list. My project combined close qualitative readings of archival materials and distant quantitative analysis of the books, aiming to reveal the important contributions the firm made to development of a national children’s literature.
At the end of the MRes the vastness and inherent possibilities of the Angus & Robertson Archive continued to intrigue me. Having enjoyed the methodical, data-driven approach of my research, I was also eager to attempt a larger scale project. And I had loved my experience at Western Sydney. In particular, I felt confident and comfortable in the people I had around me: my immediate supervisory panel; other academics I had met throughout my BA and MRes; State Library staff; professional staff in the Graduate School, DHRG and SHCA; and other postgraduates (particularly the Humanities students I had gone through the MRes with). So when I was offered a position in WSU's doctoral program, it seemed like the logical progression.
Now I am about to embark on another three years of postgraduate research, this time exploring Angus & Robertson's widespread use of book reviews.