Other People's Words

By Hilary McPhee

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976722550
• ISBN13: 9780976722557
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: (Seth M. Siegel
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 2.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Unshackling the antiopodean literary press

This wonderful true story of a "dinky-di" Australian woman's struggle to form an independent publsihing company is more than just an interesting biography. It is emblematic of many aspects of Australias' general history and its particular publishing world in which Australian readers and writers break away from the "mother land's grip" to assert a more confident national self-identity. In describing the vision of her independent publishing business which she finally establishes, the author captures this more general sense of self-identity and declaration of literary independence, asking "Why should Australian readers be denied a new novel from an East Timorese writer, say, because an English editor doesn't think readers in Britain would be interested?" The writing style is engaging, personal, and moving. By describing the details of her childhood literary diet, we come to understand the depth of far flung influence of Penguin Books of Britain, and British publishing generally, into the far reaches of the Southern hempishere. A memorable extract depicting the years before the great changes of the 1970s: "The majority of publishing houses in Australia were branch offices of British publishers in every sense of the term. When the chairman of a major London-based publishing house declared at a British boosellers' dinner that all he needed in Australia was a 'chimp with a crowbar to open the crates' he was only half joking."This book is a a wonderful way to understand the maturation of Australian society, culture and politics and offers a lesson in how the history of publishing in a country can tell a much broader history. For example, without being a major part of this book, Australia's emergence as a multi-cultural society becomes apparent when the author describes, for example, the Greek and Turkish language editions developed for a new series of children books ("Practical Puffins") in the 1970s. Ultimately, the independent publishing house - which the author established with another women - is sold. But the author considers herself lucky to have caught the new wave of Australian thinking and writing. "Australia was where we happened to be, what we wanted to be part of as it took on its new shape. And, after all, we were of the generation that thought we could do anything, and for a little while, in a small way, we might have."