The Neglected Textbook: Placing Educational Publishing in Australia in Context

Abstract

Publishing in Australia from the late nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth century was relatively haphazard, but nevertheless entrepreneurial. Arguably, publishers in the trade sector achieved their successes less through planning than through luck. This was not the case with educational publishing, where publishers had to work closely with educators and curriculum authorities in order to produce textbooks that met market needs. Peter Donoughue, former managing director of John Wiley in Australia, has observed that "educational publishing is usually thought of as the unglamorous side of the industry." It is also an aspect of the publishing sector that has remained largely invisible to public eyes. Educational publishers provide resources for teachers to meet their curricular outcomes, an unglamorous but essential publishing activity. Today, most textbooks are sold through educational distributors or campus bookshops. In times past, a primarily educational bookseller such as F. W. Cheshire in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, could attract a clientele interested in "its comprehensive holdings of Australian books and books by leading European and American thinkers." The success of such a bookshop could even underwrite a publishing program, as Andrew Fabinyi proved at Cheshire. The books he published derived from the bookshop's strengths in education and ideas, and included both textbooks, such as 'English Part One' (from 1967), and more wide-ranging intellectual discussions, such as Robin Boyd's 'The Australian Ugliness' (1960). As a result, Cheshire became a major Australian publisher of the mid-twentieth century, offering both trade and educational titles. Thanks to changes in the nature of publishing and its relation to corporate enterprise - reflected in the fact that Cheshire was absorbed by Longman, a company that has since evolved into the massive educational publisher Pearson Education (this paper will examine the evolution of such behemoths later) - such entrepreneurship on the part of booksellers has long since disappeared. There are some who say that booksellers themselves are disappearing, subsumed in a digital cloud.