AustLit
Denis Cryle is a Senior Lecturer at Central Queensland University. His publications include The Press in Colonial Queensland: 1845-1875 (UQP, 1989) and, with Dimity Dornan, The Petrie Family: Building Colonial Brisbane (UQP, 1992). He is currently working on a history of Queensland Literature.
Biography from The Writer's Press, 1998.
Since 1998, Denis Cryle has become Professor in Communication and Media Studies at Central Queensland University. His recent publications in the field of publishing studies include Behind the Legend: The Many Worlds of Charles Todd (2017), Murdoch's Flagship: Twenty-five Years of the Australian Newspaper (2008), and contributions to A Companion to the Australian Media (2014).
Image courtesy of Melbourne University Press
THE PUBLICATION OF scholarly work and the distribution of textbooks were dual incentives in the development of university presses in Australia. The history of the University of Queensland Press, during its protracted genesis, was that of an in-house unit, serving the institution rather than Queensland as a whole. Although UQP was officially established after World War II, the Press’s low public profile continued until 1961, when the first full-time manager was appointed. For most of the period under consideration, the University of Queensland was the entity responsible for overseeing the publication of academic work by its staff.
As early as 1916 when the Faculty of Science raised the issue of publishing papers, the university was supporting original work by its staff. On its 1916 publications list were such titles as H. G. Richards’ Volcanic Rocks of South-Eastern Queensland and J. H. Johnson's Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Queensland.1 A year later the Senate resolved that original publications be included in the University Calendar and that one hundred copies of each publication be purchased by the university. Despite the healthy output of Science and other faculties, attempts to centralise publication met with resistance during the 1920s and 1930s, slowing the early establishment of a press.
By 1922 commercial incentives associated with textbook supply began to play a part. The potential advantages enjoyed by the newly founded Melbourne University Press in obtaining wholesale reductions of 10-15 per cent from London book suppliers complemented the ongoing need for regular university-based publications. The Senate and its various committees entered into detailed correspondence with the fledging MUP, which after receiving a university loan of £300 had returned an early profit of £200.2 Local prospects appeared sufficiently encouraging in March 1927 for J. D. Cramb, the University of Queensland Accountant, to recommend the establishment of a local press because of the ‘very considerable savings’ to be had on textbook purchases. From the beginning, the Student Union lobbied on the issue. In his detailed draft constitution, Cramb recommended that the press be funded with a £200 university loan and that its profits be retained for future expansion.3
It was a serious proposal, responsive to student requests for improved textbook supplies, and had it been implemented it would have seen the university follow its Melbourne counterpart promptly into the field. However, during the Depression years the mood of the university like that of the nation itself remained cautious. The Board of Faculties considered that the time was not opportune, while the Registrar, in referring the matter to the Senate, noted a significant difference in scale between the two universities:
The difference in number in this University (annual enrolment about 500 including a large percentage of External Students) as compared with Melbourne’s Annual Enrolment 2600 and the smaller annual expenditure on material and equipment, are of fundamental importance, as the operations of the Press and the profits of the annual turnover would necessarily be on a proportionately smaller and less profitable scale, in comparison with Melbourne operations.4
Still the matter of a press was not entirely laid to rest during this period. At the 1932 Universities Conference, Professor Henry Alcock, in the spirit of the Senate's 1916 resolution, employed more elevated and nationalistic arguments. Alcock, the first McCaughey Professor of History and Economics, was a distinguished Oxford graduate with an interest in local history. He was at this time President of the Professorial Board (1932-1937) and Chair of the Queensland Educational Broadcasting Committee.5 Alcock recommended the establishment of a press to publish secondary and tertiary books ‘written with a due knowledge of Australian conditions’ and ‘to afford an outlet for Australian scholarship’.6 He envisaged a Combined Universities Press in Australia working in conjunction with a leading British publisher like Oxford. There seems to have been little formal canvassing of his proposal within the university. Nor was MUP enthusiastic about a joint venture. After some conference discussion, the resolution was dropped. But the success of MUP remained a guiding light in renewed calls for local establishment.
More sustained examination of a possible textbook outlet took place within the university during 1935. The Senate established a Special Committee to investigate claims that the establishment of a press would provide reductions of 10-20 per cent on textbook prices.7 The Committee, comprising most of the interested parties — Archbishop Wand, Professors Alcock and Richards, Athol Perkins and a Student Union representative — undertook a survey of tertiary textbook selling in other capital cities and institutions. Advice from Western Australia against operating a bookshop solely for the purposes of price reduction was upheld by a Melbourne source who pointed out the sensitivities of local booksellers and the need for the university to join the Australian Booksellers Association. Caution again prevailed; for despite the potential profits to be had from a bookshop, the prospect of short-term outlays and losses did not sit well with the university’s system of annual financial allocations.
The issue was kept alive by the Student Association. On the eve of the war, the dental students’ president outlined to the Registrar the ongoing disadvantages to fellow students:
At present dental students have to buy all books from the retail booksellers and under existing conditions we find we are paying top price for all books purchased ... As the minimum expenditure on books by each student during the four years of the course is somewhere in the vicinity of £5 per annum you will see that this is quite a big item in the expense of the course ... There are many others which students feel they would like to have but owing to the high prices they cannot afford.8
To which the Registrar replied in confidence a year later that the Senate considered a bookshop ‘undesirable’. The preferred model among administrators was the University of Sydney, where a second-hand book exchange supplemented the practice of advance book orders through the Union.
At the same period as the Senate rejected the bookshop option, the university, at the prompting of Professor Alcock, moved to centralise its publishing activities. A new Publications Board comprising the Vice-Chancellor, the President of the Academic Board, the Librarian, Archbishop Wand and Professor Goddard was created to oversee the allocation of £100 for publications in 1936.9 The University of Queensland Papers, published in series from 1937 were not a profit-making activity. In the early years of the war, when the Board’s expenditure exceeded income by more than two to one, the main benefits lay in the receipt and exchange of research papers from other universities and scholars. The Board’s policy of centralising distribution and exchange met with ongoing resistance from departments like Geology which maintained its own ‘very large exchange solely by the reprint system’.10 In 1941, Professor Richards, still an active and influential researcher, wrote to Archbishop Wand complaining about ‘the system of publication and distribution of reprints being taken out of this department's hands’.11 Dorothy Hill recalled being equally horrified at the Board’s willingness to duplicate exchanges with institutions already in correspondence with the Royal Society of Queensland.12
Not only did the Board’s preference for original work over reprints remain contentious with individual departments, it was experiencing difficulty in maintaining output in the wartime conditions. Most of the wartime research in need of publication was exchange papers with limited capacity for local sales. A decision to support the publication of longer original works compounded the situation. Consequently, the Publications Board took the step of requesting that Senate funding be held over to enable the backlog to be met. After consideration by the Senate’s Finance Committee, the request was referred to the Queensland Auditor-General who advised that all revenue associated with publishing be vested in the Senate alone.13 It was in the wake of this advice that the Publications Board took the view that the establishment of a Press was ‘the only way to continue its work’.14 The concept of a trust fund and a capital reserve was gaining ground and, with it, the need to inaugurate a university press.
While the principle of establishment dates from the war years, the Senate took longer to act. In 1945 the Vice-Chancellor, J. D. Story, and the Auditor-General continued to correspond on the issue. In seeking to publish its backlog of work, the Board was making heavier demands on Senate support. In the case of an approved request to publish Bryan and Jones’ ‘Geological History of Queensland’ at a cost of £150, the Board noted that ‘although this paper will be valuable for reference and exchange purposes, it is very doubtful whether the amount received for sales will exceed £20’.15 In 1945 the Senate agreed to provide £529 in the 1947 estimates for ‘miscellaneous publications’. With establishment in 1948, the Senate’s willingness to make up publication losses was confined to special circumstances. In retrospect Frank Thompson, the first full-time manager, considered that the need to renegotiate postwar financial support had led to the formation of the Press.16 Certainly wartime publication delays and the ‘need to be able to carry forward profits in any one year to offset any possible debits in another’17 appear decisive for establishment. This necessity was recognised in the appropriate establishment statute to the effect that:
The accounts of the Press shall be kept separate from other University accounts, and all funds acquired through the operation of the Press shall remain at its disposal, and shall not become a part of general University funds.18
Gazetted on 13 March 1948 as a university department, the Press began humbly with the occupation of a demountable at the back of the George Street complex. A Senate loan of £1000 proved inadequate because of the expenses the Press incurred in opening its Bookshop. Although the university already had a publication program prior to the Press’s establishment, the Bookshop was an altogether new development. Strong wartime demand from the Student Union and the Medical School had developed for a facility to provide on-site textbooks, stationery, instruments and apparatus. The Bookshop, funded by a Senate loan of £4000 to be refunded from its profits, opened its doors in January 1949 and offered discounts of 10 per cent to students. It reserved part of its first-year profits (£3080) for the construction of additional premises at the St Lucia site.19 This branch was constructed ten years later at a cost of £8250. However, staffing levels and space continued to lag behind as enrolments and demand spiralled upwards in the 1960s.
Despite a recommendation at the time of establishment that ‘the essential part of the organisation is a really efficient manager, obtained from one of the large city bookstores’,20 the Bookshop, along with the Press, operated under part-time management until 1961. Complaints of poor service and an investigation into its activities prompted an upgrade by the late 1950s. Even then, the Bookshop faced criticism from academic staff as well as from competing publishers and retailers. Despite early advice, the university did not join the Australian Book Publishers Association until 1962. Commercial sensitivities among local traders erupted in a well-publicised incident when the Queensland Retailers Association alleged that the Bookshop had entered the toy-reselling business to undercut Brisbane outlets.21
After closing down its George Street operations in the early 1960s, the Bookshop was forced to canvass substantial finance for extensions at St Lucia. In 1963 it earned a net profit of £17 500 but had to raise £30 924 to fund the St Lucia premises.22 The Press, operating on the profit principle rather than through annual subsidy, continued to face financial uncertainty under full-time management as the Senate charged the Press fully for rates, phone and electricity and relinquished accountancy support. As manager Frank Thompson later reflected:
The financial position of the Press had never been a very attractive one. Indeed the University has consistently followed a policy of making the Press pay for everything that could be conceivably charged to it. The Press paid for the original St Lucia bookshop and the first extension to it out of accumulated funds. This so depleted its accumulated funds that the Press has never since then had sufficient accumulated funds to meet its necessary capital outlays.23
The active involvement in the Press of Athol Perkins, dating from the formation of the early Publications Committee in the 1930s until 1961, provides an essential continuity between university publishing and the early UQP story. A distinguished entomologist and enthusiastic teacher, Perkins divided his time between his students, field work and a variety of administrative tasks. Born and educated in Sydney, Perkins joined the University of Queensland staff in 1922 as a Research Fellow into the fruit-fly problem, spending considerable time in field work at Stanthorpe over the next five years. At the time of his initial involvement on the Publications Committee, he was publishing a series of papers after conducting extensive research into the Queensland fruit-fly. Over the following quarter of a century, he was a member of the Publications Board (from 1936), Secretary of the Publications Committee (from 1944), then part-time manager of the Bookshop and Press (from 1948). Designated a lecturer in Entomology in 1938, Perkins demonstrated skill and industry in dealing with both students and administration. According to Elizabeth Marks:
Perkins readily took on many other tasks for the University. In early days he was a Proctor, later Sub-dean of the Faculty of Science and, during Professor Teakle’s absence, Dean of Agriculture for a year. He edited the Science Handbook, and the comments of grateful students and their parents attested his success as a Student Guidance Officer.24
These interpersonal and administrative skills were put to good use on the Publications Committee. In 1939 Perkins, as Staff Association representative, was appointed to a special committee established to inquire into the feasibility of a university bookshop.25
As the demands on his time increased, Perkins spent more time with tasks such as timetabling than with his research interests. Although as a scientist his involvement with publishing was consistent with the university’s early output and research profile, he mixed with a cross-section of staff in the closer academic environment. According to L. J. H. Teakle:
Athol Perkins was a consistent member of the common room ‘Club’ on the first floor of the old Government House building, then the headquarters of the University. There was a group of select celebrities — Des Herbert, Walter Harrison, Athol Perkins, Henry Alcock, Gilbert Jones to name a few — who would foregather for morning and afternoon tea and the after lunch ‘siesta’. This was the time for the exchange of views and ideas on any subject thrown in the ring.26
It was also Teakle’s recollection that Perkins volunteered to manage the Press and Bookshop at one of these gatherings. At the time of the 1943 Press proposal Perkins had been heavily involved in the war effort as Secretary of the Queensland Government’s Mosquito Control Committee before returning to his university position. Whether he volunteered for his Press assignment or had ‘just been landed with it’,27 as another source implied, his renewed involvement as Press manager was to prove ‘the most demanding of his varied administrative tasks for the University’.28
After the war Perkins visited southern universities to gather information for a commissioned Senate report on university presses and related activities. He was assisted by Louis Livingston, a long-serving member of staff who was appointed Acting Accountant in 1943 and Accountant in 1946.29 They were each requested to pay detailed attention to the commercial aspects of textbook sales. After receiving the scrutiny of the Finance Committee, their report was adopted in July 1948 including the recommendation that the university jointly operate a bookshop, store and publishing department.30 Under the terms of appointment, the press manager was to be the Secretary of the Publications Committee and act under its direction. In this respect, Perkins' duties changed little, but he gained the additional responsibilities of the bookshop with only a clerk/storeman to assist him at George Street and a part-timer at St Lucia. Initially, most of the demand occurred at George Street but activity increased steadily at St Lucia over the next decade. During the first year of Bookshop operations, Elizabeth Exley remembered that ‘he (Perkins) was seldom in the Department’.31 The years immediately after establishment in 1948 proved the most demanding, until a separate Bookshop manager was appointed in the mid-1950s. According to colleagues, Perkins was ‘run ragged’ by the Press and continued to see himself as ‘an interim appointment only’.32
Activity within Perkins’ faculty also increased postwar. In 1948 Entomology became a separate sub-Department in the Faculty of Agriculture. Four years later, it became the first autonomous Department of Entomology with Perkins as Reader-in-charge.33 During this time, the Press was largely run from Perkins’ own office. Staff remembered the heavy responsibilities of their senior colleague and the patience of commercial printers waiting to see him on business. At the time of establishment, the university had hoped in future ‘to be in a position to do its own printing’ and to ‘expand the range of publications and cater for an Australia-wide distribution’.34 However, under the circumstances, the publication activities of the Press continued largely unchanged. One disadvantage of internal part-time management was a lack of publicity or capacity to canvass manuscripts and outside work. A monograph on Aborigines [sic] and the courts was rejected on the grounds that ‘it was just not a work for general readers’.35 In the post-establishment period (1947-61), the Press published some hundred titles, averaging 5-8 per year. Until 1960 its list comprised mostly scientific works and tertiary textbooks — Naylor’s Psychology, Hajek’s Principles of Bankruptcy, Sprent’s Parasitism. Most successful was Gilford, Wood and Reitsma’s Australian Banking which ran to four editions.
During the 1950s the technical and textbook output of the Press included May’s Anatomy of the Sheep, Lee’s Physiology of Tissues and Organs and Hill and Maxwell’s Elements of the Stratigraphy of Queensland. No doubt Perkins’ science background and interests were an influential factor. There were some exceptions. Schonell, Meddleton and Shaw's Study of the Oral Vocabulary of Adults, co-published with the University of London Press, was ‘the first large scale investigation of the oral vocabulary of any group of adults’ in the Commonwealth.36 When debating the prospects of publishing Leopold's careful analysis of Thomas Mann’s ‘Joseph the Provider’ in 1958, Perkins was able to conclude that, ‘although very special in its context and appeal, I don't suppose it is any less special than some of the geology and botany papers we print’.37
Prior to the 1960s there was little attempt to establish an editorial direction or philosophy for the Press. It was the involvement of Frank Thompson, armed with commercial experience and a passion for literature, which later brought this about. During the Queensland Centenary in 1959 the Press had nevertheless responded with several local works, including Hadgraft’s Queensland and Its Writers and Dick's Five Towns of the Brigalow District. Until that time the great majority of publications dealing with Queensland were devoted to science and economy — its flora, fauna, soils and primary industries. The Press continued to reject publication requests from talented Australian writers on the grounds that it is not the University’s policy to publish contributions received from persons outside the University’.38 With Thompson’s appointment in 1961, the Press became more responsive and entrepreneurial in attracting work, much of it literary and sustained by the interests and expertise of incoming staff. Perkins was no doubt relieved to relinquish his protracted role as ‘Father of the Press’. At the time of his retirement in 1964, in circumstances of personal misfortune (he had begun to lose his sight), the Professorial Board noted appropriately the ‘long period of service Mr Perkins has given to this University, not only in the field of Entomology but also by carrying extra duties in connection with the Bookshop and the Press’.39
Notes
The author acknowledges the valuable input and assistance of Elizabeth Exley, Mark Cryle (Main Library), Craig Munro (UQP), Phillippa Nelson (UQA) and Dr Elizabeth Marks in the preparation of this chapter.
- Senate Paper, 9 August 1916, in Publications—Original Papers 1915-1947 (UQA S130).
- Re a University of Queensland Press. Summary of Action Taken to Date, 3 July 1935, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947 (UQA S130).
- Draft Constitution, J. D. Cramb to J. F. McCaffrey, 28 March 1927, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- Registrar to the Senate, 31 May 1927, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- Obituary, University of Queensland Gazette, 10 October 1948, pp. 4-5.
- Summary of Action taken to date, 3 July 1935, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- Library Committee, 26 June 1935, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- President Queensland Dental Students’ Association to the Registrar, 17 November 1939, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- Senate Minutes, 7 August 1936, in Publications—Original Papers 1915–1947.
- H. C. Richards to the Registrar, n.d., in Publications—Original Papers 1915–1947.
- Richards to Wand, 15 July 1941, in Publications—Original Papers 1915–1947.
- Quoted in Elizabeth Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins 1897- 1976’, Entomological Society of Queensland News Bulletin, v. 4, no. 9,1977, p. 14.
- Auditor-General to J. D. Story, 3 December 1945, in Publications—Original Papers, 1915–1947.
- Frank W. Thompson, ‘The University of Queensland Press: Past, Present and Future’, Typescript, UQP, 1973, p. 5.
- Re The Revenue of the Publications Department being Regarded as a Trust Fund, Auditor-General to J. D. Story, in Publications—Original Papers 1915–1947.
- Thompson, ‘The University of Queensland Press’, p. 4.
- Report of the Sub-Committee appointed to consider the question of the establishment of a university press, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1947–1948 (UQA S130).
- Statute XXIII C.(138) University of Queensland Press, University of Queensland Calendar 1949 (UQA S171).
- University of Queensland Bookshop, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1947–1948.
- Publications Committee, 1 May 1947, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1947–1948.
- Retailers’ Association of Queensland to the Vice-Chancellor, 8 November 1962, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1947–1948.
- Thompson, ‘The University of Queensland Press’, p. 5.
- Thompson, ‘The University of Queensland Press’, p. 8.
- Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins’, p. 174.
- Registrar to Senate, 1939, in Bookshop and Press—Establishment 1925–1947.
- Quoted in Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins’, p. 174.
- Elizabeth Exley, communication with author, August 1997.
- Elizabeth Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins: 1897–1976’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, no. 89, June 1978, p. xix.
- Extract Staff Files (UQA SI 35).
- Senate Minutes, 1 July 1948, in J. D. Story Papers 1948–1949 (UQAAC1).
- Quoted in Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins’, p. 174.
- Elizabeth Exley, communication with author, August 1997.
- Marks, ‘Frederick Athol Perkins’, p. 168.
- University of Queensland Gazette, May 1949, No. 13 (UQA S170).
- Correspondence October 1957, in Publications—Original Papers 1948-1962 (UQA S130).
- Study of the Oral Vocabulary of Adults, Preface, p. 6.
- Publications Committee, 2 May 1958, in Publications—Original Papers 194B-1962.
- Correspondence, 26 February 1960, in Publications—Original Papers 1948-1962.
- Extract Staff Files (UQA SI35).