This project is my current doctoral research at Western Sydney University, commenced in February 2020.

It draws on the review ledgers in the vast Angus & Robertson Archive, housed in the Mitchell collection at the State Library of NSW.

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Access

As part of the project, I am using Heurist to construct a relational database of print book reviews. Once completed, the open-access database will available via this website.

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Project Summary

This interdisciplinary thesis will explore the ways in which book publishers used print reviews in early twentieth-century Australia and will consider what that suggests about the operation of broader print cultures. The project specifically focuses on Angus & Robertson, the largest Australian publishing house at the time, combining close qualitative and distant quantitative analysis of historical records.

 

The project draws on review ledgers and scrapbooks of press cuttings contained in the Angus & Robertson Archive. These materials are extraordinarily detailed, but they have been neglected within Angus & Robertson scholarship and have not been utilised in studies of the press. This is indicative of an absence of concerted research into historical book reviewing and its position within print cultures, particularly in the Australian context. Seeking to address those gaps, this thesis will explore Angus & Robertson’s extensive and shrewd use of reviews as a promotional strategy, and the nature and function of book reviewing in early twentieth-century Australia.

 

A preliminary exploration of the archive indicates the scrapbooks contain approximately 60,000 individual reviews for the period 1888-1949, relating to 1,800 books and appearing in thousands of different newspapers and periodicals across at least twenty-five countries. A database of the collections will be created, enabling the aggregation and subsequent quantitative analysis of the reviews.  Key themes arising from the data will then be addressed in a series of case studies, where statistical analysis will be complemented by traditional discursive readings of the archival materials.