Stuart Kells’s speech at the launch of From Convict Printers to Book Arcades: The History of the Book in Australia Volume 1. Acknowledgement of country. Distinguished guests and representatives of Melbourne’s book community. It’s great to be back at the Athenaeum Library. Thanks for the opportunity to launch this important book – the definitive publication…
Tag: books
PMI Library: Much loved library is a legislative curiosity
After a long history of evolution, legislative changes mean the Prahran Mechanics Institute is poised for an even brighter future. In 1799 the physician and philanthropist Dr George Birkbeck gave a series of free lectures for the working men of Glasgow. Extremely popular, the lectures led to more permanent facilities dedicated to workers’ education: the Edinburgh…
The State Library of Victoria is facing a crisis. Is it time to rethink how public libraries are governed?
Stuart Kells The State Library of Victoria, founded in 1854, is one of the most visited libraries in the world. And right now it is in the middle of a crisis. Leading Australian authors such as Grace Yee, Michelle de Kretser and Tony Birch have resolved to no longer work with the library – unless…
Library Planet Blog, March 2024
1. We would love to publish profiles of your favourite libraries. Please send profiles to booksofkells@live.com.au 2. Some recent posts on Library Planet include profiles of Vancouver Public Library, the Kyoto International Manga Museum, Mildura Library, the State Library of Queensland, Murray Valley libraries and the Brussels Air Museum. <https://libraryplanet.net/> 3. Please also check out…
The Penguin Paperback
The Penguin paperback is an icon of publishing and design. The first covers were attractively simple. A rectangular shape, 181×112 mm, adhering to the golden ratio of 1.61 and based on work by Leonardo da Vinci on the ideal page size. Friendly bands of orange, white, and orange—like the map of an imaginary European country,…
Melbourne University Publishing: A Centenary History
1. Why did you want to write about the history of Australia’s oldest university press? I relished the opportunity to write about one of Australia’s most important publishers. Many details of MUP’s history are not widely known, and with the press reaching its centenary, the timing for the book was just right. I’ve always been…
Philologists, pedants and obsessives: how crowd-sourcing created the Oxford English Dictionary
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes who Created the Oxford English Dictionary is a celebration of words and word-people: authors, editors, publishers, linguists, lexicographers, philologists, obsessives, pedants. Its author, Sarah Ogilvie, was formerly an Oxford English Dictionary editor and wrote the 2013 book Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary….
Library tourism by Mark Dapin
One way to get a sense of a country’s cultural touchstones is to visit its libraries — both the famous and lesser-known ones. BY MARK DAPIN Some years ago I was at a conference of international thriller writers (no, I hadn’t known they were a thing either) when a fellow Australian author suggested we visit…
All the Will in the world: Four centuries of the First Folio (State Library of New South Wales)
The 1623 volume, Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, aka the ‘First Folio’, was 400 years old in 2023. Why is it so special? I should begin by putting all my cards on the table. I’m fascinated by Shakespeare and his books, including the First Folio. In the immediate pre-Covid years, I took my…
Library Planet 