Australian Classics Series. Angus & Robertson. Printed and bound in Hong Kong.

Christina Stead’s The Man Who loved Children (jacket, Russell Drysdale’s ‘Two Children’), David Ireland’s The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (jacket, Jeffrey Smart’s ‘Factory Staff, Erewhyna’), and Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (jacket, Charles Conder’s ‘Feeding the Chickens’) are among recent additions to A&R’s ‘Australian Classics’ series. These are well­made cased books (heavens, they even have head and tail bands!), with strong and well-chosen jackets, selling at a recommended $6.95 each. The price must be emphasised, for some of them are big books; the Stead novel is of 527 pages, plus over 40 pages of prelims. This is a tour-de-force of mass market production in the ‘classics’ field, in which Lloyd O’Neil was, I think, the pioneer. The books are clearly printed and well finished, and if the margins of some are a bit eccentric, because they have been fitted to a series page size, the question is, does it matter? I would say it doesn’t. 2 ½ picas.

Victorian and Edwardian Melbourne from old photographs, by Patsy Adam-Smith. John Ferguson. Printed by Macarthur Press.

The 210 photographs in this book are engrossing; they deserved a more generous layout than they receive in these crowded pages. If ever I saw a book that would have benefited from a sympathetic design, this is it. This production is in the tradition of the unprofessional shire history (note the text in 10 point Times set to an amazing 34 picas), but in richness of material it is practically as strong as anything we have seen since Cyril and Irma Pearl’s Our Yesterdays of long ago. An opportunity wasted, but an interesting book all the same. The printing is very fair. 1 pica.

Micomicana, by Norman Lindsay. Melbourne University Press. Printed by Wilke; bound by the Dove Bindery.

This 527-copy, $500 limited edition – sold out, I believe, within a month of publication – may prove to be the fastest-growing investment stock in the Australian book market in 1979. It is a nobly conceived and beautifully executed production. The generously leaded 13 point Baskerville looks splendid in this huge format (38 x 27cm), and the creamy Teton paper is highly sympathetic. The 200 or more pen drawings are well reproduced in all their fineness of line, and if the author/artist’s full-bosomed subjects seem repetitious after nearly 300 pages, that is no reflection on the production. The gilt top and full leather binding by Peter Marsh’s Dove Bindery are appropriately traditional in style. Beautiful as the book is, and much as I wish l had one, two criticisms can be made. One is that the drawing printed on the Solander box in which the book is presented is very muddy and unsuccessful in the gold-blocked version on the front of the case. The other is that in some sections there is unevenness of inking of the text from one side of the sheet to the other. The humblest as well as the proudest of Australian books are often bedevilled by this fault. 2 ½ picas.