Sydney Bookshops

By Joan Lawrence & Richard Blair

^{Originally published in Biblionews 408 (December 2020), pp 151-184}

Earlier days

None of us would remember when Mr Tegg ran a bookshop between Barrack and Margaret Streets in Sydney, then was bought out by WR Piddington, a specialist with acknowledgement of good books and selling high-class literature.¹ As Frances Pollon suggests, the first books in Australia were probably brought by people in authority and educated colonists.² But what books did the First Fleet carry? Certainly, Phillip and his officers would have carried books. As a naturalist George Bass, forever linked with Matthew Flinders, would surely have brought books to cover that interest with him on voyages. It is known that Mrs Macquarie carried to the colony a copy of Edward Gyfford’s Designs for Elegant Cottages, possibly used in the rebuilding of Government House in Sydney. The New South Wales Directory of 1839 lists ‘Britton T.G. bookseller and stationer in Pitt st.’, together with William Moffatt, stationer and bookseller.³

Old Chum recalled Jerry Moore during an earlier age of booksellers. Moore had arrived by ship as an Irish immigrant in the 1830s and although by trade he was a shoemaker, he began to purchase from immigrants books that had been read during the long sea voyage. He would obtain a bag of books for 5 shillings which were worth £5 and sell them from a bookstall in the open air against the old cemetery wall that was on the site of today’s Sydney Town Hall. Old Chum also remembered a bookstall of a Mr Murphy in Elizabeth Street, near Liverpool Street, where he found an old book from Jerry Moore’s stall.⁴

Old Chum was the pen name of journalist Joseph Michael Forde (1840-1929), who was born in Ireland and arrived in Australia in his teens. He had a varied life in Victoria and New South Wales. From around 1919 he lived at Hazelbrook in the Blue Mountains, where he died on 3 May 1929. He used his pseudonym in articles in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin, Sydney Gazette, Truth and The Age.⁵ In his Sydney Morning Heral obituary, in relation to Australia, ‘every page of its history was at once a magnet and an enchantment’.⁶ He had been:

collecting as a hobby everything in the shape of literature bearing on the history of Australia that came within his reach, until in his later years he found himself possessed of a library of books, pamphlets, original letters, and pictures equal possibly to that possessed by more favoured bibliophiles in the same line of research.⁷

Forde was an early member of the Royal Australian Historical Society and retained a close connection with that organisation.⁸

McNamara’s

In 1893 Bill McNamara (1857-1906) and his wife, Bertha (1853-1931), opened a bookshop at 238 Castlereagh Street, advertised as a ‘Democratic Rendezvous’. McNamara was born in Victoria, his parents from Ireland. They moved the following year to No. 221.⁹ Jack Lang (1876-1975), Labor Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927 and 1930 to 1932, claimed his political education began at McNamara’s in the 1890s:

There flocked the poets and the philosophers of Sydney town. The idealists and the materialists. The republicans and the anarchists. The atheists and the parsons. They browsed and they argued. They planned and they plotted . . . McNamara was a fiery idealist. He lived in the world of William Morris, Bellamy and Hyndman . . . His wife Bertha, since called the Mother of the Labor Movement, was much more practical.¹⁰

Bertha, who was the mother-in-law of both Henry Lawson and Jack Lang, also ran a boarding house at the bookshop. Bertha died at Glengarlen Private Hospital, North Sydney, in 1931. She had been ill for a week and had been unable to attend the opening of a new hostel for unemployed women and girls in George Street West, which was named after her.¹¹

Angus & Robertson (A & R)

Older than McNamara’s and better known is Angus & Robertson, founded in January 1886 by David Mackenzie Angus (1855-1901), who was born in Thurso, Scotland. He worked in Edinburgh bookshops, but consumptive, and advised to seek a warmer climate, he sailed to Sydney where he arrived in 1882 to join his brother Donald, a carpenter. Initially, he worked in the Sydney branch of George Robertson & Co. of Melbourne, where he met George Robertson, who was unrelated to the Melbourne bookshop owner of the same name. Anxious to establish his own bookshop, in 1886 Angus rented a small shop at 110½ Market Street together with Robertson, and in 1895 they moved their head office to 89 Castlereagh Street. Angus was described as gentle and tolerant, but impatient with customers who haggled. Ill health caused him to sell his share of the business to Robertson and return to Scotland where he died in Edinburgh in 1901.¹²

His partner George Robertson (1860-1933) was born in Essex, England, but following the death of his father his mother took her seven children to Scotland. Robertson was apprenticed to a bookseller and publisher at the University of Glasgow. He sailed to New Zealand to join his three brothers, but later went to Sydney and worked for the Melbourne bookseller George Robertson before partnering with Angus.

From 1888 A & R commenced book publication and many authors became household names: Henry Lawson, AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson, CJ Dennis, Frank Clune, Ion Idriess, Will Ogilvie, EV Timms, Blinky Bill’s Dorothy Wall, May Gibbs and a host of others. Henry Lawson was for many years a familiar figure in the store. In 1932 Robertson fell in the bathroom of the flat above the Castlereagh Street shop and died as a result of the accident.¹³

A & R was at 89 Castlereagh Street until 1971 but the store in no way resembled the 1895 photograph of the earlier store (above), though it retained its atmosphere of a much-loved bookshop. During lunch hour it was always busy with customers – shop assistants were mostly men in suits.

Beatrice Deloitte Davis (1909-1992), AM, MBE, held sway upstairs as editor, having joined A & R in 1937. It is said she nurtured a generation of writers and ‘helped shape Australian literature for half a century’.¹⁴

In 1971 the Castlereagh Street shop was replaced by a glossy bookstore in the nearby Imperial Arcade area. However, in 1983 one review declared A & R at that site as:

a great shop in which to spend a couple of hours on a weekend afternoon. Shelves are well-spaced, lighting is superb and the background music soothing. The biography section may be the largest in Sydney, as probably is their children’s book section . . . If you’re into foreign languages this shop is one of the few in Sydney which has an adequate range.¹⁵

Eventually there were some 70 A & R stores throughout the country, but when A & R went fully online in 2011 all their bookshops started to close. In 2015 A & R was sold to online retailer Booktopia.

Greenwood’s

Another Castlereagh Street bookshop which existed for over 50 years was Greenwood’s, which closed in 1983. After George Greenwood forsook law, his father, a customs officer, who had a knowledge of books and was a collector, suggested an alternative of opening a bookshop and provided his 21-year-old son with a nucleus of books. Greenwood’s opened on 11 April 1932 at 199A Castlereagh Street, and, despite being in the middle of the Great Depression it became a familiar haunt for book enthusiasts. He initially specialised in education books.¹⁶

Online is an interview with Greenwood by his great nephew, David Carroll.¹⁷ Greenwood recalled that in the 1930s there were few cars on city streets, but the trams ran along Castlereagh Street for 35 years. Former Prime Minister Billy Hughes visited his bookshop twice but was not a customer. Arthur Caldwell, former Leader of the Labor Opposition, called by looking for Chinese language books. Another who came to Greenwood’s was journalist and publisher Francis James (1918-1992) in his big sombrero hat, described in an obituary as ‘one of Australia’s most brilliant and eccentric polymaths and ratbags’.¹⁸ He was arrested in China as a spy in 1969 before his release some 18 months later. Clive James – unrelated to Francis James – when a student at Sydney University, often visited before his fame as author, poet and TV presenter. Other visitors included Daisy Bates, Dymphna Cusack and Harold Wilson.

Greenwood recalled other bookshops in the earlier era including:

• Skinner’s near Market Street

• a secondhand branch of the Methodist Book Depot

• Universal Book Store of Mr and Mrs Delacar, which was a bit leftist

• Gilmour’s secondhand bookshop which had been Everyman’s,

operated by a Mr de Burgh Snr, in the late 1930s

• Mr Lusebrink, a German, who with his English wife ran a small shop in Goulburn Street, opposite Anthony Hordern’s, for years before moving to Campbell Street

• NA Murray between Park and Market Streets

• a leftist shop, the Basement Book Company in George Street near the Glaciarium ice-skating rink.

One devotee of Greenwood’s wrote in 1979:

When I think of an adequate secondhand book market, I think of the Sydney I knew as a boy. I think of those delightful days – sometimes whole weeks – of drifting from musty old Greenwood’s next to the Catholic Club in Castlereagh Street, through pokey old Kenneth Stewart’s to Angus and Robertson’s huge secondhand department, into and out of a variety of smaller shops, right down to the mighty Tyrrell’s in lower George Street and around to that isolated little shop in Crane Place. Exploring secondhand bookshops in Sydney was the kind of experience that only a metropolis could provide. It gave new meaning to Montaigne’s observation in his essay on books, ‘I care not much for new ones, because the old seem fuller, and of stronger reason.’¹⁹

George Greenwood also recalled a secondhand bookshop in a Pitt Street basement near Christ Church St Laurence. Run by a Mr White, his two sons recorded books on two computers as the computer era was becoming popular. Greenwood had rejected using computers, but acknowledged there was a trend in that direction. By 1982 Greenwood’s was in Elizabeth Street, but after 50 years in the trade he decided to retire aged 72.

Ashwood’s

In 1946, as well as Greenwood’s, books for sale at Ashwood’s Bookshop were listed in The Secondhand Bookworm column of The Sun newspaper.²⁰ In 1987 Christine Flynn wrote: ‘Ashwood’s was established in 1932, taking its name from its original location in the Ashfield-Burwood area. In 1942 it moved to Bathurst Street and in 1962 to 376 Pitt Street, where it intends to remain despite developers’ pressure to sell.’²¹

Isadore Brodsky recalled:

Bathurst Street fathered Ashwood’s, whose secondhand stock included volumes from the ancient Mechanics School of Arts, Sydney’s first attempt at technical education. I rescued Archbishop Trench’s Words and Places from Ashwood’s, for four shillings, and still think it a great bargain. ‘Ashwood’ was Dick Gumpertz.²²

Christine Flynn wrote:

At any time on a Saturday morning you can see maybe 20 to 30 people, nearly all makes, elbow-to-elbow in Ashwood’s. Six assistants plus two owners, all males, work hard to keep up with the rapid turnover . . . No new paintwork, nothing done to the floor, same old fixtures, still that familiar dusty and musty smell. Up on the wall, a very large sign is an integral part of the place: ‘To Yourself / May we assure you that we are unable to function as a shop unless we are first able to buy from private people like yourself.’²³

The Daily Telegraph carried an item in October 1942 about the finding of the family bible of Boer War General and first Premier of the new Union of South Africa Louis Botha amongst old books a few weeks earlier:

Mr Ashwood, bookseller, of Bathurst Street, City, said: ‘While looking through some old books I had bought, I found the Bible, which was printed in 1860 in the Afrikaans, or Cape Dutch, language. It is in an almost perfect state of preservation, and has the births, marriages and deaths of General Botha’s family recorded on the fly-leaves. As the Bible will be of more interest to South Africans than to Australians, I intend to send it to Cape Town at the first opportunity. How it ever came to Australia is a mystery.’²⁴

Ashwood’s was also something of a swap shop as reported in the Townsville Daily Bulletin in 1946 when Ashwood, who lived in West Concord, ‘offered to swop [sic] his 1938 Morris 8-40 Tourer and his typewriter for stamp collections.’ He believed in barter, claiming he could sell stamps to clients, some of whom were Sydney’s eager philatelists. He was willing to barter books, carpets, pictures and furniture for stamps.²⁵

Ashwood’s was also a popular music store which, in 1951, turned over about 10,000 records each week.²⁶ The shop relocated in 1987 from Pitt Street to Castlereagh Street, before its final move to 129 York Street as Ashwood’s Music and Books. One customer recalled:

When it was full of records all jumbled up with only rudimentary order, so to shop at Ashwoods was to search deeply through the history of recorded music. The records all had the trademark round edged square price stickers and the price scrawled in pencil on the record itself, perhaps to stop any price tag switching. The store had a spiral staircase leading up to a less-used upper level, most of the action happened downstairs among the men (and it is usually men) flipping through records.

Ashwoods was an adventure, and as well as the records I found the sometimes irascible owner a great character. One time when I was browsing in the York Street store, I listened to him hold forth on the topic of ‘why don’t we eat zoo animals’ for quite some time.²⁷

A collectors’ Mecca for many, Ashwood’s closed in the mid-2000s.

Stewart’s

Isadore Brodsky wrote:

New books seem out of place in Bathurst Street . . . The most ‘promising’ of the secondhand bookshops there was Stewart’s. Stewart always made the promises, but it was his extremely pleasant wife, Sue, who was more likely to see them kept. The couple used to go out together o’nights to bargain for stock, and many would hold that Sue Stewart was the ‘power’. Stewart first started in Elizabeth Street next to the T & G building in 1941, but his main success was at No. 115 Bathurst Street, which I once characterised as the street of great expectations in The Streets of Sydney.²⁸

Established in 1932, after Bathurst Street, it was located at 284 Pitt Street, between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets. It was later owned by FH Linney, with PW Duval as manager, and an aged poster on the window reading ‘No One Ever Has Too Many Books.’ Linney also owned the Menzies Arcade Book Nook at 15-16 Menzies Arcade.²⁹ This arcade vanished in 2019 when the Menzies Hotel in Carrington Street was demolished for a high-rise development.

In the 1940s there were various bookshops scattered around the city streets:

• Stan Nicholl’s Book Bargain Bazaar, 30 Pitt Street, then Crane Place³⁰

• English & Foreign Bookshop³¹

• EFG English and Foreign Bookshop, Bull’s Chambers, 28 Martin Place³²

• Town & Country Bookshop, 17 Pitt Street³³

• Moore’s Book Shop Pty Ltd, 264 Pitt Street³⁴

• The Up-To-Date Bookshop, 12 Barrack Street³⁵

• N.S.W. Bookstall Co., Pty. Ltd., Market and Castlereagh Streets.³⁶

Tyrrell’s

Anyone with a love of or interest in books would be aware of James Robert Tyrrell (1875-1961), known in his era as ‘the doyen of sellers of second-hand books.³⁷ Author Frank Clune wrote when the Tyrrell family lived in Petersham, Jim Tyrrell’s first job was as a newsboy selling papers at the railway, before he commenced in the book trade at Angus & Robertson, as a 13-year-old running errands and delivering books in a billycart.³⁸

Isadore Brodsky wrote:

Tyrrell was thirteen when he saw Angus & Robertson wanted a boy in 1888. He saved the penny fare from Newtown, and walked into town, only to find that fifty other boys were also there, waiting to be interviewed. He outflanked his rivals by nipping around to the back into the laneway behind the shop. Over the back gate he climbed and went into a back room. ‘Hey, hoo [sic] did you get in?’ came the voice of Angus. The answer was not all that important, and the young opportunist had to wait his turn for the interviewing. He got the job.³⁹

In 1905 Tyrrell commenced a bookstore at the corner of Castlereagh and Market Streets, then moved several times.⁴⁰ For a time he went to Adelaide where he opened a bookshop at 128 Gawler Place. Among those he met was CJ Dennis. In a 1941 Smith’s Weekly article Jim Tyrrell is described as:

one of the Bohemian boys before the Great War. Henry Lawson borrowed more pipes of tobacco from him than from any other man. Rod Quinn wrote a poem in his honor. [Victor] Daley was his crony. CJ Dennis took his advice to get out of Adelaide and won fame.’ Jim is 65 and as mellow as some of the old books he has for sale. All in Sydney who like browsing know him.⁴¹

In 1955 the bookshop relocated from 261 George Street (opposite Hunter Street) to 202 George Street abutting Underwood Street. In 1981 Tyrrell’s forsook the city and relocated to Tyrrell’s Buildings, Level 1, 328 Pacific Highway, Crows Nest where it remained until its closure around 1998.

In 1952 James Tyrrell wrote Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney, his fascinating reminiscences as a Sydney bookseller.

After the Tyrrell’s era, the Crows Nest shop was acquired by Peter Tinslay, who had previously conducted his business, The Antique Bookshop & Curios,with his late wife Maureen in Cremorne from around 1974. In Crows Nest bookshelves are crammed with books on all subjects; the floor often covered with boxes of recently acquired books. Climb up the long set of stairs from the Pacific Highway footpath to discover this treasure house devoted to collectors and book lovers. One could browse for hours or chat with the redoubtable Peter Tinslay, whose knowledge is vast. His shop offers history, Australiana, the Pacific, militaria, art, literature, juvenile, local history, Indigenous Australians, photographs, biography, travel, among others. There is also a regular catalogue of a selection of books issued, if requested, from their mass of fine, rare, out-of-print and antique books.

Peter is a Past President of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Antiquarian Booksellers (ANZAAB) and is one of the country’s foremost valuers of large public collections.

Berkelouw

In the 1950s down King Street from Queen’s Square where trams circled the statue of Queen Victoria en route for Bondi, one could visit, between Pitt and George Streets, Berkelouw, close to the French Perfumery, with the perfume wafting into the street. Berkelouw has a long history, initially in 1812 in Kipstraat, Rotterdam, Holland, and in the period after World War II when Isidoor Berkelouw began to re-establish the firm in Amsterdam with successful book auctions.

In 1948 he liquidated the company and came to Australia. He issued a catalogue which generated interest with book collectors in his new country and established the shop at 38 King Street with book auctions as a regular feature. The business relocated to 114 King Street where his sons Henry and Leo took increasing responsibility. They prospered and the firm made a brief move to Rushcutters Bay, then, in 1977, acquired Bendooley, close to Berrima, a historic property in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Always a popular stop, the huge book barn had a warm fire in winter months, then a café and the special rare book section elsewhere on the property. It survives but has changed and now also offers wedding receptions.

Sydney was not neglected as the next generation of Paul, Robert and David Berkelouw opened the store in Oxford Street, Paddington. Since then stores appeared in Leichhardt, Newtown (later closed), Rose Bay, Hornsby, Cronulla and Mona Vale as well as one on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. There is a full history of the Berkelouw business online.⁴²

Dymock’s

Down King Street and left into George Street there remains Dymock’s. William Dymock (1861-1900) was born in Melbourne to Scottish parents and the family moved to Redfern, Sydney, in 1867. By 1878 Dymock was working in the book trade. He visited England and on his return began his own business at 208 Pitt Street by 1884, before he moved to Vaughan Chambers at 142 King Street, with bargain boxes outside the shop. In 1896, Dymock’s Book Arcade was a shop beneath the Royal Hotel on George Street; the hotel rose above with three iron balustrade verandas. David Scott Mitchell, later the impetus for the State Library of New South Wales, was a favoured customer. In 1900 the firm incorporated as Dymock’s Book Arcade Limited.

Dymock made three trips to Europe seeking Australiana and other books, claiming Dymock’s was ‘the largest bookshop in the world, with upwards of one million books.’He acquired both new and antiquarian books as an agent for Bernard Quaritch as well as a number of libraries of antiquarian books, including those of Sir George Wigram Allen, of Glebe, and Dr George Bennett.⁴³ It was said David Scott Mitchell drew his attention to the value of Australian books from the commercial standpoint and to build up his business.⁴⁴

Dymock stood for the Sydney municipal elections in December 1898 when he defeated Sydney Burdekin and remained an alderman until he died at the young age of 39 in 1900 of a cerebral haemorrhage.⁴⁵ Dymock, who never married, had lived with his sister Marjory and her husband John Forsyth in Peckham, Cowper Street, Randwick. Dymock left the bookshop to Marjory, and she and John continued to run the business.

In 1914 Dymock’s had to quit the Royal Hotel and a shop was built in Elizabeth Street. Dymock’s later joined a syndicate to purchase the Royal Hotel. The government planned to demolish the hotel for a new Government Savings Bank, but with a petition signed by occupants of King and George Streets the bank rose in Martin Place, with Dymock’s bookstore then buying the Royal Hotel. It was demolished in 1926 for the Art Deco Dymock’s Building, completed in 1930, known as The Block with Dymock’s Book Arcade on the lower floors.⁴⁶

In 1983 Dymock’s was described as:

highly computerised and can tell you in a few seconds all you need to know about the availability, price and other information of the book(s) you are interested in. The shop itself displays predominately expensive, glossy hardbacks and poplar sellers.⁴⁷

The railed balconied area upstairs, where pets and birds were once for sale, has been transformed into a self-contained café. Dymock’s remains a busy bookstore on its site in George Street at The Block and continues to prosper in the hands of the Forsyth family.

In 1926 George Robertson (Sydney) recalled affectionately ‘the somewhat erratic but wholly lovable William Dymock’; despite vigorous competition, relations remained good between two outstanding firms created about the same time.⁴⁸

Swain’s

In 1956 near Angel Place was Swain’s Stationery. Books. Artware. Fancy Goods. Henry Charles Maitland Swain was born in 1873 and in 1895 established a family business, H.C. Swain & Company bookstore. It was originally in Moore Street – a former name for part of Martin Place – before it relocated to nearby 123 Pitt Street, incorporated as an art gallery and rare books division. The store name later changed to Swain & Company Pty Ltd, and in July 1960 merged with Angus & Robertson.⁴⁹

By the 1980s Swains–Angus & Robertson was at 330 George Street with the book area on a lower level and the stationery area upstairs.⁵⁰

The Craftsman Bookshop

Records reveal the Craftsman Bookshop at Hosking Place (off 86 Pitt Street) was functioning in 1943, but Arthur Polkinghorne wrote in his Sydney Diary column in 1952 that:

Sydney is to have Australia’s first exclusively children’s bookshop. It opens in the Craftsman Bookshop in Hosking Place . . . Idea is Owen Clayton’s. He’s the chap who started the Craftsman and also the Penguin bookshop, and he says he’ll cater for all children from the tiniest tots to the teenagers at school.

It’s not a bad idea, at that, with the vast improvement in children’s books in recent years.⁵¹

Clayton’s venture was clearly successful as in December 1952 The Sunday Herald carried an article titled ‘Big Business Boom In Children’s Books’ which indicated big business in these books ‘all over the world at this time of the year’. The demand had nearly doubled in the previous decade. Manuscripts submitted to Australian publishers amounted to thousands a year, but Angus & Robertson believed they were lucky if two in a hundred were worth reading. Television had not stopped the sale of children’s books in America; in fact, it was rapidly increasing, where in the 25-cent market alone, more than 70,000 children’s books a year were being sold. Informative books remained the biggest sellers in both Australia and America. ‘Older children are clamouring for books on careers – flying, acting, ballet dancing, ice skating – “anything with a bit of romance to it within the bounds of possibility,” in the words of one publisher’.⁵²

At the time Miss Norma Chapman was the manager of the Craftsman Bookshop, which catered exclusively for children and teenagers. She declared: ‘Children demand books on horses, aeroplanes, or wild animals when they come shopping for themselves . . . they always know exactly what they want and ask for it by name . . .’ Rather than group books according to age, Miss Chapman grouped books by subject as in any library. She also believed children should be given books as soon as they can hold them.⁵³

In 1951 The Daily Telegraph’s ‘Novel of the Week’ had the Craftsman Bookshop recommending The Scarlet Sword by HE Bates with the review written by Miss Bronte, surely a nom-de-plume.⁵⁴

Penguin Bookshop

Near the Craftsman Bookshop in Hosking Place was the Penguin Bookshop. In Jim Macdougall’s column Contact in The Sun he wrote:

On Friday, Richard Lane, director of Penguin Books (London), will open Owen Clayton’s Penguin Bar in Hosking Place, the first exclusive Penguin bookshop in the world. He’s got a ton of Penguins on show. His original idea was to start a Penguin exchange, but he’s abandoned that.⁵⁵

Shortly after, mention was made in The Sun that Loudon Sainthill, who did the artwork for a Ballet Rambert souvenir, programme covers and playbills for the Old Vic was completing paintings for a one-man show at the Macquarie Galleries . . . and completed a panel of murals in the world’s only Penguin bookshop, in Hosking Place.⁵⁶

It is not clear how long this bookshop operated.

Grahame Book Company

Grahame’s is believed to have started in the early 1940s and in 1955 was listed at 330 George Street. At one stage there were three stores in the city and one in North Sydney. In 1959 the Grahame Book Company was taken over by Stanley Horwitz in Sydney. In 1983 a review claimed the shops catered for the common denominator among book buyers:

these shops are crammy and not suited to long-time browsing. Their stock of Penguins (relatively cheap but highly interesting paperbacks) however, are more than adequate and service is good.⁵⁷

By 1987 the mid-city branch of Grahame’s was at 197 Pitt Street, next to the Strand Arcade, with Mary Howell as manager. The shop was described as:

opening onto the footpath under the gleaming glass awning of the Mid-City Centre, this shop’s charm is for those with a sparkle in their eye for crisp new paperbacks – from Penguins to science fiction. If this is your choice, staff are trained to serve you well. Much smaller and newer than the parent shop, with a much more up-market feel.⁵⁸

It was not surprising that Selwa Anthony was to have a life connected with books. She was born in Cowra, NSW. Her father arrived in Australia from Lebanon; he later gave his daughter, Selwa, her first library card when she was eight years of age. He loved Australian writers – Lawson, Paterson and Marcus Clarke – who fostered his love of his new country.

In the 1960s Selwa Anthony was the retail and marketing manager in the book section of a large city department store. With her passion for books she later managed a bookshop in Park Street and Pitt Street. She became the retail and marketing manager of Grahame’s and was the first manager to present Australian books at the front of the shop. In addition, she had a radio chat programme and reviewed books with Bill Collins.⁵⁹ As an author herself she established her Author Management Agency in 1984. She stated ‘her yellow brick road was paved with books’.⁶⁰

The last Grahame bookshop was at the corner of Hunter and Pitt Streets, now the site of Westpac. Standing nearby was sometimes a figure dressed as Seth, the Egyptian God – the symbol of their book stamp. It was said at the Grahame Book Company in Sydney, an order from the National Library was dubbed ‘a cream cake day’.⁶¹

Adyar Bookshop

The Adyar Bookshop in Bathurst Street, Sydney, was established in 1922. It was owned by the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society, which also had quarters in Mosman overlooking Taylor’s Bay on the harbour. This house, The Manor (c. 1911), was rented by the Society in 1922. The original owner of The Manor, also known as Bakewell’s Folly, was a Yorkshireman named William Bakewell, a successful brick and tile maker, who mistakenly thought his sons, their wives and children would all reside there. The theosophists at The Manor also operated a school attended by Australian actor, Peter Finch, when he was a child.⁶² By 1987 it was located on the Mezzanine Level, State Theatre building, 49 Market Street.

The Adyar Bookshop moved over the years from earlier prominent locations in Macquarie Place and Clarence Street. The shop, which claimed to be ‘Australia’s largest and longest established metaphysical and alternative bookstore’, claimed to carry 40,000 New Age books, and also sold incense, crystals and, for those who wished, even a reading of Tarot cards. But after 90 years it was forced to close on 31 January 2012. The store manager, Warren Wickham, said the closure was due to ‘declining retail sales and fierce online competition’.⁶³

Notanda Gallery – Roycroft Library

The Notanda Gallery was first opened in 1935 by artist Margo Lewers, but in 1940 her brother, Carl Plate, as Director, reopened the premises at 41 Rowe Street, Sydney. They sold paintings, art books and posters. Notanda meant ‘something to be noticed.’ Notanda Gallery remained in Rowe Street until the early 1970s.

Much earlier in Rowe Street there had been the Roycroft Bookshop of Mrs Frances Zabel, who was born Frances Seebeck to German parents in Victoria in the 1860s. She married Kunibert Zabel in 1886 in Woodend, Victoria, and moved to Coolgardie, Western Australia, where she acquired the Booklovers’ Club in Hay Street, Perth, originally owned by Blanche Lockett. Frances Zabel had visits for tea from DH Lawrence during his stopover in Perth in 1922. There Lawrence met Mollie Skinner, with whom he co-wrote The Boy in the Bush. Lawrence’s wife, Frieda was disappointed as she had hoped to find a new England or Germany in Perth. The couple sailed on to Sydney, where they stayed in Neutral Bay, and for a few weeks in Thirroul on the south coast, before again moving on.

The Roycroft Bookshop in Rowe Street was previously the Roycroft Library which Miss Lucy Peacock had opened in 1906 at 25 Hunter Street. She shifted to other locations in Hunter and Castlereagh Streets and to 164 Pitt Street where Frances Zabel first acquired the shop. She moved the shop to 11 Rowe Street in 1925, and in 1926-28 it was at 13 Rowe Street. Much earlier there had been the Bookworms’ Library in Rowe Street from 1902. Mrs Zabel weathered the early days of the Great Depression and when the Scullin federal government banned ‘indecent books’, including, in 1930, Norman Lindsay’s Redheap, Mrs Zabel imported the book from England. However, when she became aware that a raid was planned on her premises, she had her shop assistants in their work smocks smuggle the remaining copies out of the shop and leave them in rubbish bins around the city.

In 1932 with failing health and aged 65 years Frances Zabel died of congestive heart failureat her home, Dunrobin, 76 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay. It was reported she was found an hour or so later by a friend lying back against the pillows of her bed, an open book in her hands.

With redevelopment, Rowe Street and its many fascinating little shops was all but destroyed in the early 1970s, along with the adjoining prestigious Hotel Australia.⁶⁴

The 1950s onwards

Many of the now extinct bookshops still thrived in the 1950s CBD of Sydney. There were book departments in city department stores, with an art gallery in both Farmer’s in Market and George Streets and in David Jones at Elizabeth and Market Streets. For some it was easy in a lunch hour to rush to Angus & Robertson in Castlereagh Street, or to Berkelouw in King Street.

Bob Gould’s Bookshop

Bob Gould’s Third World Bookshop opened at 35 Goulburn Street in 1967. In the 1970s he moved across the road; he also had a Third World Bookshop at Woollahra. Robert (Bob) Stephen Gould (1937-2011) was a political activist and book dealer. In all, he opened 12 bookshops, including the Pitt Street Bargain Co. and the Book Arcade in Leichhardt piled high with books: always his shop style. In 1989 he opened Gould’s Book Arcade at the city end of King Street, Newtown, with shelves crammed and books piled along the floors. Entering was a challenge if seeking a particular book; far easier just to step carefully and browse. Christine Flynn said:

Some get dusty, some get dirty, some get damaged. Many have travelled years with the shop . . . Gould pioneered evening and weekend opening of bookshops in Sydney and the combination of bookselling with videos. His video library is now the largest in Australasia.⁶⁵

Bob Gould’s life was surrounded by books and his death at 74 was the result of a fall in his bookshop while sorting books, though he had been unwell for some time.

Always a political activist he joined the Labor Party in 1955 and remained a member all his life. He was active in the anti-conscription movement, was a protestor against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and was a prolific writer on many issues such as Irish civil rights, Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and the war in Iraq, etc. Often raided by the New South Wales Vice Squad, in 1969 he was charged with ‘selling posters of erotic Aubrey Beardsley drawings. After a long and ridiculous trial he was fined fifty cents.⁶⁶

After Bob died, the business was inherited by Bob’s daughter Natalie. She closed the huge north Newtown store in late 2018 and relocated to a much smaller and better organised bookshop in south Newtown, near the New Theatre. The shop now trades under Gould’s Books.

Margaret Woodhouse

Margaret Woodhouse (1927-1990, nee Barwell) after matriculation worked in the typing pool at the Public (now the State) Library of New South Wales, studied part-time and became a librarian. In 1958 she was librarian in charge at Bathurst Teachers’ College and married a fellow librarian Frank Woodhouse in the same year, having returned to Sydney. After further library positions she opened her first bookshop in 1962 in Miller Street, North Sydney, where her early customers included Walter Stone, Sir John Ferguson and Geoffrey Ingleton.

Two years later she moved to History House, home of the Royal Australian Historical Society, then at 8 Young Street, and started selling secondhand and antiquarian books. When the RAHS moved to 133 Macquarie Street in 1970, Margaret went too, setting up shop on the ground floor.⁶⁷ Not surprisingly, she sold local history books. On one occasion she attempted to carry what she assumed was a box of books downstairs, only to discover it was a gift box of red wine, which she dropped with red wine flowing freely.⁶⁸

In 1971 she published the first volume of Australian Book Auction Records, a biennial compilation of prices realised at auctions, which became an essential reference for dealers and collectors. The last of five volumes was published in 1979, all under her editorship. In 1974 she was a foundation member of the ANZAAB; she conscientiously organised book fairs and in 1989 was elected president of ANZAAB, a position she held until her death.

In 1983 Margaret Woodhouse moved to a shop on the Pacific Highway, Roseville, just opposite Roseville Station. In 1986 she moved further north to the 1st Floor, 666 Pacific Highway Killara nearer to her home in Gordon, to look after her elderly mother who resided with her husband Frank and her. Both the shop and the Woodhouse home were filled with books and ephemera. With her death from acute asthma on 12 July 1990 at her home, much of her collection went to the National Library of Australia and academic libraries.⁶⁹

Woodhouse was known for her fair dealing and was described as a warm and friendly person, always lively and enthusiastic, with an impish sense of humour. She also was actively involved with Meals on Wheels. She was said to be genuinely interested in others, asked questions of customers and generously shared her knowledge with other booksellers, especially those less experienced or younger.⁷⁰

Collins Booksellers

Collins Booksellers Pty Ltd is an Australian book chain founded in 1922 by Frederick Henry Slamen, who died in 1961. The firm’s name derived from the original store at 622 Collins Street, Melbourne. While they now have online services Collins had over 70 franchised shops in Australia. Today, there are over 20 Collins stores nationwide, mostly throughout Victoria and NSW, as well as two in WA and one each in Queensland and SA. They also own two Hill of Content shops: one in Balmain, Sydney, and one in the city of Melbourne.

A detailed history of the Hill of Content Bookshop was written by AH Spencer and published in 1959 by Angus & Robertson.

University Co-op Bookshop

The University Co-Operative Bookshop was established in 1958 by University of Sydney students Malcolm Broun and John Sharwood, initially operating out of one of their garages.⁷¹ At its peak it was Australia’s largest member-owned retailer and had 60 branches across Australia, though predominantly in NSW, with two million members.⁷²

One of its key branches in Sydney was at 76-84 Bay Street, Ultimo, off Broadway. Here one could browse endlessly with various discoveries made. The Co-op Bookshop head office and warehouse were at this Bay Street site for decades years before the Bay Street building was sold and head office relocated to Jones Street, Ultimo; the warehouse was moved to Alexandria.

Until the early 2000s Co-op bookshops sold mainly new textbooks, specialised computer books and software, course notes and general books. They then diversified by also selling a range of merchandise mostly unrelated to university requirements. Book sales started to decline with the trend towards texts becoming accessible and downloadable online.

In late 2019 the Co-op Bookshop went into voluntary administration, due to consistently poor sales, and owing millions of dollars. For some time, criticism had been levelled at the Co-op for ‘straying away from its principles of democratic control by members’.⁷³

In March 2020 it was announced that ‘the chain had been sold to Australian online book retailer Booktopia’.⁷⁴

Red Cross House

In the 1980s there was an opportunity to find a book in the Red Cross premises in Jamison Street. Red Cross House existed much earlier and in 1943, during the grim years of World War II, the Truth newspaper carried an appeal under the heading ‘Women in War Work’. The article asked:

What about all those books you were given for Christmas? You must have finished reading them now. No doubt they gave you grand enjoyment reading them, and they could continue to give great pleasure, too, because Red Cross has urgent need of them for libraries in military hospitals, convalescent homes, etc. They do so want current novels, books on affairs of the day – by such authors as Quentin Reynolds and Shirer – and volumes of travel, particularly those dealing with the Middle East and the Islands where their comrades are so busily writing the pages of Australian history and providing material for still more books. If you can help, please leave your literature at Red Cross House, Jamison Street, and if you can enclose some illustrated papers with your parcel so much the better!⁷⁵

Mary Martin Bookshop

The Mary Martin bookshop in York Street was one of several of that name in Australia. The first shop was founded by Mary Maydwell Martin (1915-1973), who hailed from a liberal-minded family. Drawn to the arts and humanities, after eight years of university study, in 1945 Mary decided to open a bookshop on Grenfell Street, Adelaide. Mary Martin Bookshops:

became known for mail orders, bargain books, and a big collection of art books and artwork. Readers were also drawn to the woman described as a ‘little wren’, who would serve tea and coffee to her customers, encouraging them to browse and make her shop their second home. The bookshop became a hot-spot for students, creatives and intellectuals.⁷⁶

In 1947 she asked her friend Max Harris, AO (1921-1995) – critic, journalist, publisher and later editor of the Angry Penguins – to become a business partner. By then the shop had moved to Alma Chambers, 13 Commercial Place. Harris agreed and suggested a newssheet Mary’s Own Paper, although he wrote his own opinions. By 1955 the shop had expanded and was at 75 Rundle Street; in 1957 it covered a large part of the first floor of the Da Costa Building, Gawler Place.

However, having embraced the Indian culture and made several trips to India, in 1962 Mary decided to relocate to India which she had visited many times. She spent the rest of her life there where she died in 1973 aged 57.

Harris became bookshop manager and Mary sold her interests in the firm to him and his wife Yvonne. He later opened branches in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. Today, two shops continue to flourish in Melbourne at Southbank, Port Melbourne, and a permanent stall in the Queen Victoria Markets. In 2019 Mary Martin Bookshop ‘was the proud winner of the ABIA Independent Book Retailer of the Year’.⁷⁷

Mary Martin Bookshop, Sydney, and a fortuitous segue

When Max Harris decided to open a branch in Sydney he approached Maureen and Bob Fry, who were originally from Adelaide. Bob, an atomic scientist, had been working in England for some time and on their return, as they were going to Sydney, where Bob was to work at Lucas Heights, Maureen could manage a Mary Martin bookshop in the city. She agreed. The shop at 47 York Street was fascinating, not only for its books, but also because of a glass cabinet containing antiquities from Greece and Greek woven bags. On Friday evenings Maureen held soirées at Mary Martin’s, and my husband Ron, a book enthusiast, walking from work to Wynyard station to head home, often wished he could join the happy crowd inside. It was during the shop’s daytime hours that we visited with our two small daughters.

Carrying and moving heavy boxes of books Maureen injured her back, which resulted in her leaving Mary Martin’s for a long period of rest. When she recovered Maureen decided to conduct historic walks of Macquarie Street and to establish tours catering for overseas visitors to Sydney.

In the 1980s, while a guide at Hyde Park Barracks, Maureen advertised for someone to join her in conducting the historic walks she had commenced. I (Joan Lawrence) was the only applicant and I recall walking to Maureen’s home in Glebe, being escorted to a rear courtyard for tea and a dish of fresh fruit, to be interviewed. Born in Manly, I had a passion for history from childhood, with a good knowledge of the harbour, Sydney and its history. Maureen and I clicked, and suddenly I had a new career.

Our walks around Sydney CBD and surrounding suburbs continued for over 30 years, in addition to working as tutors at the WEA (adult education) in the city, giving talks, conducting day-long coach tours to historic spots, and various weekend breaks with people self-driving to a destination. As a result, Maureen was approached by a friend, Sylvia Hale, publisher, of Hale & Iremonger, who wanted a series of historic walking tour books in Sydney. Maureen suggested I write them, so five such books were published by Hale & Iremonger. I wrote ten Pictorial Histories for Catherine Warne, of Atrand Books, which became Kingsclear Books. Not surprisingly, given our many shared interests, I became close and enduring friends with Maureen and Bob.

During their years in England the Frys got to know many interesting people, including Madeleine St John, who was the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with The Essence of the Thing (1997). Her best known novel, The Women in Black, was made into a stage musical and a successful movie renamed Ladies in Black (2018), directed by Bruce Beresford, who was at Sydney University with Madeleine. Not long before Madeleine’s death, Maureen saw her struggling along a London street with her breathing apparatus, when they had a brief chat. Madeleine St John died shortly after in 2006.

Abbey’s

Abbey’s, at 131 York Street opposite the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), was founded by Ron Abbey (1927-2005) and his wife Eve. Ron grew up as one of seven children in London during the blitz of WWII when his family had the misfortune of having their home bombed twice in one day; he also witnessed his brother David die when a bomb landed in their backyard. At 16 he studied at Southampton Naval College and left England as a naval cadet with the South American Saint Line on his first trip around the world lasting over a year. At war’s end he and a brother, Bill, departed England for New Zealand, where he became an officer of the Union Steam Ship Company.

Abbey married Eve in New Zealand and returned to London where he and his wife lived in Hampstead Heath while Ron worked in the technical department of Foyle’s Bookshop in Charing Cross Road. He then left to work for Oliver Gollancz, nephew of the famous publisher, Victor Gollancz.⁷⁸

In 1964 the family sailed to Australia on the Canberra as Ten Pound Poms with their tea cases. The Purser’s Office said they had more luggage than anyone else – no furniture, just tea chests of books. On arrival in Melbourne Abbey had an unsuccessful interview with the Penguin Bookshop. After a time in Brisbane, the Abbeys returned to Sydney in 1968 and founded their bookshop in the old Rural Bank building at 115 Pitt Street. Abbey had a passion for books, and it was said he lived his life by the words of Bertrand Russell: ‘Books and bookshops are the cornerstones of civilisation; as to self-education, what other kind is there?’

Abbey’s later moved to premises vacated by the Sydney City Council in the QVB before relocating to their present site opposite in York Street. Ron and Eve Abbey opened other smaller shops, including a tiny Penguin bookshop in historic Rowe Street – an area mostly demolished in 1972; the Oxford and Cambridge bookshop at 66 King Street selling titles from the two famous universities – with the discord resulting from the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1989 their Oxford and Cambridge shop was fire-bombed; the Galaxy Bookshop in Bathurst Street in 1975, then one of the oldest and largest science fiction bookshops in the world; it later moved to Castlereagh Street, Clarence Street and York Street in the former Mrs Irom’s English, Foreign and General bookshop. The Abbeys were most proud of the Henry Lawson Bookshop, opened in 1973, in the refurbished Royal Arcade under the old Hilton Hotel, before it moved to York Street next to their Language Book Centre.

The Henry Lawson Bookshop was beautifully outfitted in a Federation style and sold only Australia books. Abbey’s also opened a wholesale book distribution company in Australia, which distributed bookmarks and cards. In 1982 they participated in the Women and Arts Festival, with a function at 66 King Street which included many well known women authors.

In 1984 a secondhand bookshop was opened in Darlinghurst, using Abbey’s vast private collection as its base and named the Pickwick Bookshop, for Ron’s favourite author. This store was sold in 1990 when Ron moved to the Southern Highlands. The last shop he opened was Abbey’s Bookhouse in Bowral, with a front pathway lined with lavender leading to the entrance. It closed in 2006 after Ron died.

He also had a passion for bookbinding and spent hours in his extensive bindery, restoring and repairing books with loving care akin to worship, for indeed, books were his religion. With his death in 2005 a service was held at St Jude’s Anglican Church in Bowral, although he had declared ‘I have never seen or believed in any supreme being, unless you include Gough Whitlam or my mother!’⁷⁹

Eve Abbey had continued running the York Street shop and over the years they had many notable customers including Gough Whitlam, Clive James and Kathryn Greiner. In 1994 Eve Abbey, Jack Winning and Peter Milne bought out Ron’s shares and remained as shareholders. In 2008 Eve produced a booklet titled An Anthology of Forty Memories: 1968-2008. One of her quotes sums up her time there:

It is fun being a bookseller in Sydney. All sorts of interesting people come through our doors. They meet their friends here and check out what’s new in the world of books. And with over two hundred metres of shelves displaying New Titles, there is always a great temptation to buy another good book!⁸⁰

Higgs Bookshop

In a 2007 Sydney Morning Herald article it was said that ‘no one knew their stock better than Ronald Higgs, venerable bibliophile and proprietor of Higgs Bookshop’.⁸¹ This article indicated the shop on George Street near Goulburn Street opened in 1975, but Brodsky refers to Ron Higgs’s lifelong career in bookshops, the ‘huge stock of secondhand and a good sprinkling of remainders’ in his 1973 book suggesting his shop well predated 1975.⁸² In the David Carroll/George Greenwood interview reference is made to Higgs’s ‘remarkable knowledge of the classics – their authors and their titles’.⁸³ Ron’s wife Jean, worked closely with Ron in the shop, and her specialty was martial arts manuals. Her son Jonathan described her as ‘a sort of mother to the martial arts fraternity of Sydney’.⁸⁴ The shop closed in 1990.

Tea in the Library

For a time, a few doors from Abbey’s was Tea in the Library. Its founder, Annette Freeman, was a booklover who wanted to create a haven for readers, but also a cosy forum for writers. She had a dream she worked hard to fulfil and, briefly, achieved. It was a joy to discover Tea in the Library, wander down the stairs from the street to a lower area and step into a haven of books, white covered tables for lunch, tea or coffee, browse through a book and, hopefully for the owner, purchase – an exciting experience for any book lover. There were author talks and evening gatherings, so how could it fail? It was, perhaps, not a wise choice to be located just a few doors from such a successful bookstore as Abbey’s. Even today, wandering along York Street a glance down the remaining stairs evokes a memory of a lost dream: it opened in November 2003 and closed in March 2005.

In 2007 Annette wrote her story of her dreams and ambition to found Tea in the Library. It is a handbook for anyone wishing to not only establish a bookshop, but to start a small business. Freeman was a recognised trademarks lawyer of 30 years’ experience when she embarked on this journey, perhaps innocently believing ‘How hard can it be to run a successful small business. People do it every day. It can’t be rocket science.’ As the book’s blurb states: ‘The triumphs and disasters, the eccentric characters and the myriad challenges of retail are spiced with wry observation and a good sprinkling of literary references.’⁸⁵

Any book lover will enjoy this book for its frankness and perils of trying to create a dream. Freeman is honest concerning errors made in employing staff (including a manager and book buyer) ordering paper bags, carry-bags, stationery etc, and setting up the café with staff to manage the business.⁸⁶

In 2015 Freeman brought out a second edition of Tea in the Library.

Borders

Borders was an international book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, and founded in 1971. In 1992, Borders was acquired by Kmart. At the start of 2010 there were almost 700 Borders superstores and smaller Borders outlets across the US employing roughly 19,500 people.

In the late 1990s they opened a large store in Pitt Street, Sydney, and one in Chatswood. They sold mainly books and CDs. At their peak, there were 26 stores in Australia and the stores made a profit until 2006, but over the next four years the yearly income dropped by $1 billion. In 2011 The Sydney Morning Herald reported there remained nine stores in Australia and advised the imminent closure of all stores with some 315 staff to lose their jobs by the end of July. The administrator commented the employees had shown extraordinary commitment in their efforts to keep the business going.⁸⁷

Kinokuniya

In the early 2000s a new bookshop opened in Young Street, Neutral Bay – Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookshop offering a wide range of books. As book lovers we soon knew the manager and each weekend when we visited she would have a stack of books she knew we would appreciate. It was then one of five bookshops in the suburb, including a secondhand bookshop. Most have now vanished and today only Dymocks remains.

Kinokuniya relocated to Sydney CBD and their large store is on Level 2, The Galeries, 500 George Street, opposite the QVB. It is Australia’s largest bookshop with 300,000 books ranging from English to Japanese, Chinese, French and German in all fields. There is a children’s section, stationery and other items on sale. Sometimes a volume is found not located elsewhere. There is also a popular coffee spot, and mostly the shop is busy.

Lost and Surviving Bookshops

We have lost, and continue to lose, many loved bookshops:

· New World Booksellers at 425 Pitt Street, renamed New Era Bookshop, between Campbell and Goulburn Streets. The manager was Gary Pressey and the premises owned by New Era Books & Records. The shop also carried Russian souvenirs, as well as strawberry jam and mineral water, amongst socialist newspapers and periodicals. Flynn claims it was ‘Sydney’s plushest left-wing bookshop’.⁸⁸

· An excellent travel bookshop at Circular Quay facing Alfred Street and close to the busy ferry terminals

• Quayside Books, owned by Max Ell, at 19 Pitt Street, near Circular Quay, which specialised in remaindered books. Flynn also refers to Ell’s Bookshop located in the Roselands Shopping Centre, near Bankstown, which was the first large shopping complex opened in Sydney. The owner was Mary Ell, and she and Max were co-owners of the Circular Quay shop.

· Bookshops came and went in The Rocks area. Australia’s Heritage Bookshop was a basement shop at 81 George Street, The Rocks, owned by Keith Johnson and Malcolm Sainty, who were also founders of the Library of Australian History. They co-wrote several works on genealogical research, including Sydney Burial Ground 1819-1901 (2001). This cemetery became the site of Central Railway Station.

· Above The Rocks area and Dawes Point on Observatory Hill, the National Trust had a room with tables of books, especially Australiana. Today there is a smaller area as one enters the adjoining Ervin Gallery with books, cards and other items for sale. The National Trust each year requests gifts of pre-loved books for their annual book sale.

· The ARHS (Australian Railway Historical Society) NSW bookshop on the Central Railway concourse has recently returned after an absence of some years. A bookshop is also at the ARHS headquarters in Henderson Road Alexandria. Online sales are included.

· The ABC shops of our national broadcaster and TV stations. These were in all capital cities. There were several branches throughout Sydney including at the ABC headquarters in Harris Street, Ultimo, and the QVB Building. They carried an extensive range of books and DVDs related to ABC programs. All 50 stores nationwide closed in 2015.

• In the 1980s, the Mint Building in Macquarie Street had a bookshop on the ground floor, with the affable Mary serving there.

Christine Flynn, in her 1987 Bookshops of Sydney, mentions many other bookshops now scarcely remembered, including:

• The Total Environment Centre bookshop on the third floor at 18 Argyle Street in the heart of The Rocks, opened in March 1972, then mostly run by volunteers

• While the Scots Presbyterian Church survives at 42 Margaret Street on the corner of York Street, a bookshop existed on corner of Jamison and York Streets within the building. It carried a wide selection of books, including various religious topics. Here was found a copy of Madresfield: The Real Brideshead by Jane Mulvagh. Evelyn Waugh frequently visited this Worcestershire mansion in the 1930s and found inspiration for his book, Brideshead Revisited.

· Bookthrift, 325 George Street, between Wynyard and Martin Place

· Chapters – The Bookshop, 632 Westpac Plaza, 273 George Street – a chess specialist as well as a Chinese bookshop

· The Church Missionary Society bookstores in Bathurst Street close to St Andrew’s Cathedral

· The Salvation Army had Red Shield bookshops and Comic Kingdom,at 71 Liverpool Street, on the corner of Kent Street

· Commonwealth Government Bookshop, 126 Clarence Street, on the corner of King Street

· Travel Bookshop at the corner of Jamison and York Streets whose owner-managers were Fred Beck and John Prat

• Cut Price Book Exchanges at 115 Clarence Street

· A Greek shop in Elizabeth Street towards Bathurst Street in the 1980s with various Greek items, including worry beads, newspapers and books

· Department stores, such as David Jones, usually had book sections.

Also still operating are bookshops connected to the:

• Sydney Opera House with Danish items, recalling architect JØrn Utzon

• Art Gallery of New South Wales

• Royal Botanic Gardens

• Australian Museum in College Street

• National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour

• Museum of Sydney on the corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets whose original bookshop was larger than the present one

• Hyde Park Barracks (opened 1984) run by Sydney Living Museums

• State Library of New South Wales

• Powerhouse Museum (opened 1988) in Harris Street, Ultimo, until recently threatened with demolition and removal to Parramatta

• Johnsons Overalls, 739 George Street near Railway Square and at 214 George Street closer to Circular Quay, are mentioned by Christine Flynn: both shops carried approximately 50 book titles for catering specialists.

• A Wilderness shop (opened 1984) at 57 Liverpool Street, near George Street: a great spot to take children with its range of Australiana, books, magazines and items related to conservation and the environment.

One of the city’s newest independent bookshops is Title Barangaroo, which opened in Barangaroo in 2017 specialising in books on art, film and music. It’s ‘mothership’ shop, Title Store, has operated ‘for yonks’ in Surry Hills. Their website claims they avoid trends and ‘offer the biggest collection of new art books in Australia’.⁸⁹

Beyond Sydney’s CBD

While Flynn’s Bookshops of Sydney is comprehensive regarding city and outskirts bookshops, it also lists numerous local suburban bookshops, many of which I recall and visited. In Mosman, close to Mosman Library, was Mosman Bookshop, another excellent bookshop – since closed – where a friend was employed. I recall her ringing me one day to say she had had a visit from the daughter of writer Charmian Clift (1923-1969), one of Australia’s foremost essayists, and she was seeking copies of her mother’s books. This was Clift’s daughter, Suzanne Chick, born before Clift married writer George Johnston (1912-1970). She had been relinquished by her mother at birth for adoption. Early in her life Chick had ironically lived nearby in Mosman at the same time as Clift and Johnston without either being aware of the proximity of the other. She had made her startling discovery not long before. In 1994 Chick wrote Searching for Charmian, concerning the search for and discovery about her mother.

Pages and Pages in 1995 was in the Belrose-Frenchs Forest area on the northern side of Sydney before it relocated to Mosman. In June 2019 Pages and Pages announced its planned closure because of a drop in sales. At the announcement of the closure of Pages and Pages The Sydney Morning Herald carried an article entitled ‘Sydney’s independent bookshops defy the chill’claiming:

Sydney’s bookshops are doing ‘fine’ and the imminent closure of Mosman’s Pages & Pages is a one-off, booksellers say. Neighbourhood bookstores all over the city are thriving community institutions, despite longstanding predictions of their demise. But with competition from chain stores and the internet, most successful booksellers don’t rely on sales alone.

Many independent bookshops incorporate a café or wine bar, host book clubs and author talks and sell other products such as records.

The health of the bookstore will be a hot topic at the 95th national conference of the Australian Booksellers Association in Melbourne today and tomorrow. More than 150 booksellers – mainly independents plus a smattering of chain stores and airport retailers – from across Australia and more than 50 publishers are meeting for the annual industry event.⁹⁰

While that is true of some, many bookshop owners admit it is a difficult time. In July 2019, The Sydney Morning Herald carried an item ‘Constant in Mosman’, which revealed that Jay Lansdown of Constant Reader in Crows Nest planned to open a second shop in the Military Road premises vacated by Pages. He had researched and was confident there were opportunities for Constant Reader, but it would be a learning curve. He would maintain Constant Reader at Crows Nest and cater to both communities. He, too, felt the market was currently flat, but ‘bookshops are, after all, part of the retail sector – people still love books.’Constant Reader was opened in 1979 at Crows Nest by Peter Kirby, who sold to Jay Lansdown in 2012.⁹¹ The new shop in Mosman opened in 2019.

A north shore bookshop that flourished for decades was Shearer’s in Gordon. Opening in 1986, the owners were Barbara and Tony Horgan. In nearby St John’s Avenue they also had a bookshop for a younger generation. Shearer’s relocated to Leichhardt – long considered the ‘Italian suburb’ – next to Palace Norton Street cinemas and it complemented Berkelouw over the road in Norton Street. Shearer’s closed in 2014.

Another north shore casualty, which had been in operation for 46 years, was the Lindfield Bookshop and Children’s Bookshop when in August 2019 it was revealed ‘with great sadness’ that this bookshop which ran:

as an excellent business for over 20 years by Scott Whitmont, was to close. Locals understood why it was closing but were devastated by the event. Customers ‘found never a too obscure [request] that he would not try to meet. He and his staff were always cheerful and knowledgeable.’⁹²

A tip led to finding The Old Church Bookshop at 346a Marsden Road, Carlingford. Housed in the former heritage-listed St Paul’s Anglican Church, which dates from 1847, it was bought in 1978 by June Sanderson, who, with husband Graham, converted it into a bookshop. It carried a great range of secondhand and antiquarian books at excellent prices. The shop closed in June 2020. Plans are afoot to convert it to a literary institute.

Another casualty, in September 2019, was the closure of The Children’s Bookstore at Beecroft, which was announced for November 2019. Established in 1971, it was said by state Treasurer and local MP Dominic Perrottet to be ‘the oldest specialist children’s bookshop in NSW’.⁹³ For the previous 15 years it had been owned by Paul Macdonald, who stated that with rising rents and 70-hour a week workloads he could no longer survive.

A Northern Beaches bookshop we frequently visited was Dial a Book at Newport, just off the main road. The owners were Muriel Andrews, Richard and Berna Neylon, who knew their secondhand and antiquarian stock. The staff had people dialling up and asking to be read to – hence the shop name! It was originally a mobile book service operating from the back of a truck, with people phoning through their orders. When the bookshop opened in 1971, they retained the name.⁹⁴ It moved to Narrabeen but since late 2016 it has been only online.⁹⁵

Back to the inner city. After Norma Chapman left the Craftsman Bookshop, in 1954 she opened her own bookshop, Clay’s, in Macleay Street, Potts Point. She ran a successful business there for 35 years and in a 2004 obituary it was said:

her tiny bookshop . . . lent dignity to the grubby footpaths of Kings Cross. Her taste, astute ordering and extraordinary knowledge of books were famous, as was her ability to put her hand immediately on any title among the teetering piles that occupied much of the floor in her little treasure chest of a shop.⁹⁶

In 1989 Norma sold the business to Carol Molnar, widow of the cartoonist and architect George Molnar. Carol’s customers included writers Peter Robb, Louis Nowra and Murray Bail. She renamed it Macleay Bookshop in 1997 and two years later sold it to Richard Stern. The business folded in 2014 after 60 years of trading.

Paddington once boasted some 14 bookshops including New Edition Bookshop and Tea Room at 328 Oxford Street. This caused some confusion for one art historian. In one of my authored books, I mentioned their adjoining café with its green glass topped tables and red chairs, as being reminiscent of the painting by Grace Cossington Smith, entitled The Lacquer Room (1936).⁹⁷

I was disconcerted on my next visit to see the menu stated the cafe was based on the painting. Erroneously, another person claimed it was the site chosen by Cossington Smith, which was entirely incorrect. I discussed the error with a then notable art historian, who was pleased to have this misapprehension explained.

Some of Paddington’s other fine bookshops were Louella Kerr Books at 26 Glenmore Road, off Oxford Street; Bibliophile at 24 Glenmore Road, with owner-manager Susan Tompkins; near Jersey Road at 466-468 Oxford Street was Doyle & Daughters, which had been trading some 30 years prior to Mary Doyle’s family buying the shop in 1952.⁹⁸ Paddington had a free pamphlet entitled ‘Art Galleries and Bookshops of Paddington and Environs’.

A literary connection with Paddington is for lovers of the famous children’s classic Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner. One chapter looks at the children of the family setting out for Paddington Barracks to deliver their father’s full-dress uniform to his room. There was a disaster when the baby of the family spills ink all over the uniform and the children decamp for a coastal beach. Paddington would have been familiar to Ethel Turner as she lived in the suburb until the age of nine years.

In 1987 Christine Flynn cited Lesley McKay’s Bookshop at 401 New South Head Road, Double Bay, stating it was a bookshop with:

a reputation for imagination and intelligence, and an interest in keeping-up with trends. Lesley McKay is good, too, on titles recently reviewed. Her window-displays of hardbacks constantly catch the eye with the newest in fiction and non-fiction, as well as children’s books.⁹⁹

In 2014 the shop relocated to Woollahra. Lesley said that she ‘was on the verge of selling her 45-year-old business and retiring because of rising rental costs and falling revenue but was convinced to stay open following a groundswell of community support.’¹⁰⁰

She remained; however, she finally sold the business in 2018 to Michael Eyes, who created Woollahra Bookshop in the same location.

Gleebooks is close to Broadway, Victoria Park and the University of Sydney at 49 Glebe Point Road Glebe. It has functioned for over 40 years. The Gleebooks website reveals:

On 26 January 1975 Ray Jelfs and Tony Gallagher opened a secondhand shop at 191 Glebe Point Rd. Previously it was the site of Peacock’s Hollywood Lending Library and Reading Room. Roger Mackell worked part time in 1975–1977 while he completed an Arts degree and Dip. Ed. at Sydney University. Following Tony Gallagher’s sudden death in 1978, Roger along with David Gaunt formed a partnership to keep the shop going. They expanded the business to include new books and they remain the owners of Gleebooks today.¹⁰¹

As the business expanded, the main store opened up at 49 Glebe Point Road, whilst 191 Glebe Point Road remained primarily the secondhand outlet, until its recent closure. A feature of Gleebooks has always been the tables of books on the footpath outside, and an excellent selection both down and upstairs. For many years there have been Event Evenings upstairs, where the seats quickly fill to listen to various authors, including those from overseas. Branches of Gleebooks are now at Blackheath, Dulwich Hill and Walsh Bay, which operates in the Roslyn Packer Theatre, in Hickson Road when there are performances.

At the annual Sydney Writers’ Festival Gleebooks have a book area set up offering books written by the guest authors to purchase. The Festival was formerly held at the old historic wharves in Walsh Bay, but more recently it has relocated to Carriageworks, at Eveleigh, with Sydney Town Hall and the City Recital Hall as extra venues. Some 300 events are held with authors and others discussing books and ideas. The Festival attracts some 100,000 people during this week-long event.

Another long lasting Glebe institution was Paul Feain’s Cornstalk on Glebe Point Road which was founded by Paul and his colleague Nan Waterford in 1980, Having graduated from being a Sydney cabbie to bookshop owner, it was not long before Paul became sole owner of the shop. A branch shop operated in Newtown for many years whilst the Glebe shop thrived in the antiquarian and Australiana book trade.

A flamboyant and shrewd operator, about five years ago Paul closed the Glebe bookshop, sold the building and has since focused on online antiquarian auctions with rooms in Wattle Street Ultimo. He has retained the Cornstalk name but also trades under Sydney Rare Book Auctions. Paul is a long time member of ANZAAB and has attended numerous overseas and interstate bookfairs. Paul and Peter Tinslay co-organised the 2019 Sydney Rare Book Week.

The number of Newtown bookshops has dwindled in recent times. As indicated, Cornstalk and Berkelouw’s closed their doors in Newtown some years ago and Gould’s has significantly downsized. Fine Print was a quality secondhand shop which operated successfully in lower King Street from 1993 to 2014 when it switched to online selling only. Last Books at the St Peters Station end of King Street operated for half a dozen years before closing in 2018 to also focus on an online operation.

However, other independent bookshops in King Street Newtown (and across Sydney) defy the doom and gloom and endeavour to operate as normal. Better Read Than Dead specialises in new books and will celebrate 25 years in 2021. It deserves the many accolades it has achieved. Founded in Perth in 1973 a branch of Elizabeth’s has been in Newtown for some 15 years. Perth and Fremantle branches of Elizabeth’s continue to thrive. Starting as a remainder shop called ‘Dollar Books’ in 1979, owner John Butler renamed it Modern Times and he integrates new and secondhand books with stationery and art supplies.

Another long term survivor originating in Newtown is the leftist-anarchist bookshop Jura Books, which opened in 1977 on King Street and later moved to Parramatta Road Petersham where it has remained. The shop has been a vibrant venue for meetings and talks and the Rebel Worker paper was produced from there between 1982 and 2013.

Many readers prefer using Kindle or an iPad for reasons of convenience, portability, saving money and wanting to own fewer books. However, I find there is nothing like the physical book, their history, often beautiful binding, provenance, colour plates, photographs and the feel of a book in the hand.

The scope of this review is such that some noteworthy Sydney bookshops past and present have not been discussed. The index to Brodsky’s Sydney’s Phantom Book Shops (1973) reveals scores of old bookshops.

Nor has much attention been devoted to the proliferation of online book outlets – an obvious advantage of online bookselling is that location is of little or no importance. Most bookshops now use online resources.

In passing, here are some other Sydney bookshops beyond the CBD:

Gertrude & Alice (Bondi Beach), Tim McCormick (Centennial Park), Potts Point Bookshop, Grand Days (Kings Cross), Ampersand (Paddington), The Bookshop (Darlinghurst), Ariel Bookshop (Darlinghurst, formerly Paddington), Hordern House Rare Books (Surry Hills), Oscar and Friends (Surry Hills), Urchin (Marrickville), Journeys (Annandale), Sappho Books (Glebe), Feminist Book Shop (Lilyfield), Brays Books (Balmain), Oracle Books (Mosman), Love Vintage Books (Willoughby), Desire Books & Records (Manly), Bookoccino (Avalon), The Best Little Bookshop in Town (Cronulla), Aquarius Rising Bookshop (Parramatta), Harry Hartog (a chain affiliated with Berkelouw’s), QBD Books (a chain originating in Queensland).

Online only: Bookhome, Booktopia, Boomerang Books, Louella Kerr, Nicholas Pounder, Out Of Print Books, The Book Searchers.

No doubt anyone who owns or manages a bookshop has a million stories to tell and some have penned their own books. A Melbourne-based example is Anthony Marshall, who wrote Trafficking in Old Books (Lost Domain, Melbourne, 1998) and Fossicking for Old Books (Bread Street Press, Melbourne, 2004). In Scotland, Shaun Bythell wrote The Diary of a Bookseller (2017), described as ‘funny and fascinating in equal measure’. He wrote of his experiences in purchasing and operating:

The Bookshop, in Wigan, Scotland’s largest second-hand bookshop at the time. Located in a Georgian townhouse full of twisting corridors and roaring fires, set in a beautiful town by the edge of the sea. A rummage on its crooked shelves can produce anything from a sixteenth-century leather-bound Bible to a first edition of Agatha Christie.¹⁰²

It is full of characters, among both staff and customers, all individuals who often raise a chuckle and one sometimes feels sympathy for the owner. Bythell’s Diary was followed by Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) and Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops (2020).

May bookshops everywhere continue to thrive.

Notes

1. Isadore Brodsky, Sydney’s Phantom Book Shops, University Co-operative Bookshop Limited, Broadway, Sydney, 1973, p 18.

2. Frances Pollon, Shopkeepers and Shoppers: A Society History of Retailing in New South Wales from 1788, The Retail Traders’ Association of New South Wales, 1989.

3. New South Wales Directory for 1839, pp 17, 32.

4. ‘Old Sydney’, Truth, Brisbane, 13 April 1902, p 7.

5. Joseph Michael Forde (author/organisation) AustLit:Discover.

6. ‘The Late Mr. J.M. Forde’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 May 1929, p 16.

7. ibid.

8. ibid.

9. Verity Burgmann, William McNamara and Bertha McNamara, Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), vol. 10, 1986.

10. JT Lang, ‘Bookstore was Labor’s Cradle’, Truth, 2 April 1950, p 21

11. ‘Death of “Little Labor Mother”: Mrs McNamara Passes’, Daily Telegraph, 1 August 1931, p 5.

12. GA Ferguson, ‘David Mackenzie Angus 1855-1901’’, ADB, vol. 7, 1979.

13. ibid.; Anthony Barker, ‘George Robertson 1860-1933’, ADB, vol. 11, 1988.

14. Tony Stephens, ‘A celestial friend and comforting goddess is honoured’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 1992, p 13.

15. ‘Guide to City Bookshops’, Tharunka, UNSW, Kensington, 7 June 1983, p. 31.

16. Margaret Baker, ‘George Greenwood’, Canterbury & District Historical Society newsletter, vol. 11, no. 6, June 1999. The Greenwoods lived in Canterbury, Sydney.

17. tabula-rasa.info/Writing/GeorgeGreenwood 1992 Interview by David Carroll with his great uncle George Greenwood.

18. ‘Unaffected, charming eccentric “enriched” the people he met’: obituary on Francis James, The Canberra Times, 25 August 1992, p 2.

19. Maurice Dunlevy, ‘ “Writer’s World”: Secondhand and Antiquarian Signs of Growing Up’, The Canberra Times, 15 December 1979, p 16.

20. The Sun, 22 June 1946, p 4.

21. Christine Flynn, Bookshops of Sydney, Primavera Press, Sydney, 1987.

22. ibid. Flynn indicates Ashwood’s was started by Richard Gumpertz; Brodsky, op. cit., pp 113-4.

23. Flynn, op. cit.

24. Daily Telegraph, ‘Found in Sydney Bookshop’, 4 October 1942, p 4

25. Townsville Daily Bulletin, ‘Swap Market’, 27 February 1946, p 4.

26. The Sun, 30 October 1951, p 13.

27. vanessaberryworld.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/sydney-record-stores-of-the-past

28. Brodsky, op. cit., p 114.

29. Flynn, op. cit.

30. Charles Beresford, ‘Speaking in Metaphor’, The Canberra Times, 30 April 1965, p 2.

31. The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 April 1949, p 8.

32. The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February 1949, p 8.

33. ibid.

34. The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April, 1949, p 8.

35. The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April 1950, p 9.

36. The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 November 1946, p 13.

37. WS Ransom, ‘James Robert Tyrrell (1875-1961)’, ADB, Vol. 12, 1990.

38. Frank Clune, Saga of Sydney, A & R, Sydney, 1961.

39. Brodsky,op. cit., p. 51.

40. Brodsky, op. cit., p 104.

41. ‘Once Life was Laughter’, Smith’s Weekly, 23 August 1941, p 9.

42. <berkelouw.com>.

43. ‘Death of Alderman Dymock’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October 1900, p 10.

44. ibid.

45. Wallace Kirsop, ‘William Dymock 1861-1900’, ADB, Vol. 8, (MUP), 1981. 46. ibid; the other firm was Angus & Robertson.

47. ‘Guide to City Bookshops’, Tharunka (UNSW), 7 June 1983, p 31.

48. Clune,op. cit.

49. <archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110322170>.

50. Clune, op. cit.

51. ‘Sydney Diary’, The Sun, 4 August 1952, p 11.

52. ‘Big Business in Children’s Books’, Sunday Herald, 7 December 1952, p 24.

53. ibid.

54. Daily Telegraph, 27 January 1951, p 10.

55. The Sun, 19 May 1948, p 1.

56. ‘Sydney Diary’, The Sun, 30 June 1948, p 9.

57. ‘Guide to City Bookshops’, Tharunka (UNSW), op. cit., p 31.

58. Flynn, op. cit.

59. Bill Collins was an English and Latin teacher who switched careers to become a television presenter for decades and known as ‘Mr Movies’ for his film reviews. He also conduced book reviews on radio. He died aged 84 in 2019.

60. <www.selwaanthony.com.au/about>.

61. Peter Cochrane, ed. Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library of Australia’s First 100 Years 1901-2001, NLA, Canberra, 2001.

62. Joan Lawrence, Pictorial History: Lavender Bay to The Spit, Kingsclear Books, 1999, p 95.

63. <cityhubsydney.com.au/2012/01/bookshop-closes-doors-after-90-years>.

64. A copy of ‘Mrs Frances Zabel, of Rowe Street, Sydney: a research paper’ by Joan Lawrence is in the City of Sydney Archives; also, see Joan Lawrence, ‘Mrs Frances Zabel of the Roycroft Bookshop and lost Rowe Street’ in Biblionews 380(December 2013).

65. Flynn, op. cit.

66. Matthew Asprey Gear, <matthewasprey2.wordpress.com>, 2020

67. Paul Feain, obituary on ‘Margaret Woodhouse’, Biblionews 287 (September 1990, pp 80-2).

68. Flynn, op. cit.

69. Neil A Radford, ‘Margaret Joan Woodhouse’, ADB, vol. 18, 2012.

70. ibid.; Feain, op. cit.

71. <independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/the-uncooperative-university-co-op-now-corporatised>.

72. <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Co-op_Bookshop>.

73. <www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/coop-bookshop> 5 December 2019, Frank Chung, ‘Co-op Bookshop collapses into administration owing $15 million’.

74. <bccm.coop/end-of-an-era-co-op-bookshop-closes> 30 March 2020, Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals.

75. ‘Women in War Work’, Truth, 31 January 1943, p 21.

76. ‘Mary Martin Bookshop, a history’ www.marymartinbooks.com.au/our-story.

77. ibid.

78. <www.abbeys.com.au/newsletters/advocate/0308.pdf>.

79. Online is a long interview with Ron Abbey in 2005; October 2008 <newsletter www.abbeys.com.au/newsletters/advocate/1008.pdf>; <www.editorsnsw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/bp_jan_09.pdf>.

80. Eve Abbey’s memories of the bookshops – Anthology of Forty Memories 1968-2008.

81. Jacqueline Maley, ‘Chapter of city’s history goes up for grabs’, Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2-3 June 2007.

82. Brodsky, op. cit., p 97.

83. <www.tabula-rasa.info/Writing/GeorgeGreenwood.html>.

84. The Sydney Morning Herald, op. cit., 2007.

85. Annette Freeman, Tea in the Library, Temple House Pty. Ltd., 2007, 2015.

86. Freeman, op. cit., 2007, 2015.

87. Chris Zappone, ‘The end: Borders to close remaining stores’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 2011.

88. Flynn, op. cit.

89. <concreteplayground.com/sydney/shop/title-barangaroo>.

90. Helen Pitt, ‘Sydney’s independent bookshops defy the chill’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 2019.

91. Jason Steger, ‘Constant in Mosman’, Spectrum, The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 July 2019, p 19.

92. North Shore Times, 22 August 2019.

93. <www.domperrottet.com.au/>.

94. Flynn, op. cit.

95. <www.dialabook.com.au/about.php>.

96. Elizabeth Brownlee, Judith Menzies, Ron Turner, ‘Legendary bookseller of the Cross’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 2004.

97. Joan Lawrence, Eastern Suburbs Walks, Hale & Iremonger, 1993.

98. Flynn, op. cit.

99. Flynn, op. cit.

100. Books+Publishing ‘New location for Lesley McKay’s Bookshop’, 27 May 2014: www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2014/05/27/30339>.

101. Gleebooks website: <www.gleebooks.com.au/about>.

102. Shaun Bythell, The Diary of a Bookseller, Profile Books, London, 2017. It was reviewed by Colin Steele in Biblionews 397 (March 2018, pp 54-5).