Angus & Robertson

And Miles Frankton takes that message, that instruction absolutely to heart and then sits down and writes My Brilliant Career the following year.

And when she then sends that manuscript that she's written, she sends it to Angus and Robertson, a very famous publishing house in Sydney.

She writes to them, you know, I'd appreciate it if you'd read my book.

And then she says, nothing great has been attempted.

The heroine who tells the story is a study from life and illustrates the misery of being born out of one's fear.

I think that's astonishing because it shows that in just two years, she's not only taken that advice from Hebelwhite, the newspaper editor to heart, but has managed to produce a masterpiece as well that is doing exactly what he has advised her to do, And she's written a novel which is absolutely true to her experience as a young woman growing up in New South Wales.

Now, the irony is that having shifted from writing about England for an Australian audience to writing about Australia itself for an Australian audience is, The book is rejected by Angus and Robertson.

And it makes you wonder, you know, what the hell else did Angus and Robertson have to be publishing of such importance in 1899? And she sends it to one of the writers she admires the most, Henry Lawson, a great short story writer and poet from New South Wales.

And it happened that I had seen a homeopath a little bit because I had a friend who was into homeopath.

I bought this book on the Angus and Robertson seconds table and homeopathy.

And I looked up ear infections and it said one cheek pale, one cheek red, chamomilla.

I had a bottle of chamomilla in my cupboard because of teething.

Uh, and, and thankfully, you know, when I do open those stores, you know, I get, I get thanked by the local community for bringing a, you know, a bookshop, you know, to their lives.

Um, 'cause, you know, often, you know, they haven't had one since the demise of Angus & Robertson.

Yeah.

And so, you know, so, um, they are responding to that investment, you know, by us, um, by bringing their, their dollars to the store and, and, uh, having a conversation.

But that doesn't affect publishers, they just publish more books.

When I was running Angus & Robertson, we were the most prolific Australian publisher.

We did about 120 new Australian books a year.

Allen & Unwin is now the most prolific Australian publisher, publishes about twice that number in their year and, and probably will go on to do more.

Her first three books are well received, but then in 1965...

Reviewing the manuscript of her fourth book, The Hot Winds Blow, Beatrice Davis at Angus and Robertson discovers what about that manuscript.

discovers that Alice has appropriated passages from the South African writer Laurence van der Post.

And you may know that he's a celebrated guru, Prince Charles guru, or King Charles' former guru, but generally esteemed as a source of law and wisdom from the Kalahari Bushmen.

So there are passages found or phrases found by the skilful editor working at Angus and Robertson and they decide that this means that they can't publish that book and they send it back to Alice.

And say, we've cancelled the contract.

And she says, OK, I accept that.

And then, yeah, and so Lowell Thomas's book is published in in 1924, and that's with Lawrence in Arabia.

And in 1926, Angus and Robertson, the Australian publishers, get the rights to a cheap version of it.

So it becomes a kind of best-selling paperback.

Yeah.