Pre-press accepted version, 2014.
@David Finkelstein, University of Edinburgh
Biography of a Book
Paul Eggert, Biography of a Book: Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils (Sydney UP, 2013) ISBN 9781743320143. A$40.
Paul Eggert, ed., with explanatory notes by Elizabeth Webby, While the Billy Boils: The Original Newspaper Versions (Sydney UP, 2013) ISBN 9781743320099 $25
Is it important to know how a book came into being in order to evaluate it critically? Can literary theory benefit from the insertion of material production concerns into its discussions? What difference does it make to know what editors did to texts as they wended their way through publishing production processes? These are some of the questions that Paul Eggert confronts in his balanced and informative dissection of the creation, distribution and reception of Henry Lawson’s groundbreaking 1896 Australian short story collection, While the Billy Boils.
Henry Lawson, born in Grenfell, Australia in 1867, raised in poverty, partially deaf, until his death in 1922 led a peripatetic life characterized by intensive interest in documenting in prose and verse the Australian outback and those who lived and worked in it. At the same time, his contributions to republican leaning journals and periodicals such as the Bulletin and the Workerpositioned his work in spaces that complicated his initial reception within the context of colonial and Dominion literary interests.In the 1950s, as nationalist interest in creating an Australian canon reshaped Lawson into a key trailblazer in literary nation building, such credentials became valuable currency As Eggert brilliantly demonstrates, this literary recasting has been done in general ignorance of the trajectory of production and reception that marked the reshaping of Lawson’s periodical work into book form, which contributed greatly to form, content and subsequent appraisals.
Eggert carefully and successfully tracks the shifts that occur as Lawson’s stories moved from newspaper publication to collected book publication. In 1896, after a thirteen-month production period, the Sydney based publishers Angus and Robertson brought out While the Billy Boils, a collection of 52 of Lawson’s stories. The editorial process effected many changes on the original, such as imposing (with Lawson’s consent) a standardization of language that smoothed out idiomatic colloquialisms into what were deemed acceptable written structures and phrasings. Likewise production needs radically shaped the ordering of stories in ways unnoted until now.Both contemporary and later critics have frequently commented on and faulted the seeming lack of thematic cohesion evident in the original issuing of the collection. Through careful evaluation of bibliographic and production evidence, Eggert reveals that the order of the table of contents was shaped by production requirements: some stories were shuffled about to enable even distribution of commissioned illustrations throughout the volume, while other stories were shifted in order to enable long term plans to divide and reprint content in cheaper, two volume format. Function, in this case, affected form in ways unacknowledged or unknown by subsequent commentators.
Such idiomatic rephrasing, rewriting and content reordering has to be seen in context of larger colonial markets: Australian authors could command fairly large audiences within the Australasian markets, usually through multiple publication opportunities in different formats priced to reach wider audiences.But global success was invariably secured through linking with British publishers. This meant finding ways to enfold Australian themes within larger colonial series issued from London, Edinburgh or Glasgow. Successful British issued publications tended to generatehigherincome and reputation across the Anglophone world, while Australian based publishers had to work harder to achieve similar recognition and success for their works.
Cases in point astutely noted by Eggert are the varying fates of Lawson and Rolf Boldrewood, an Australian counterpart. Lawson became one of Angus and Robertson’s breakthrough successes at the turn of the century: in the seven years following publication, between 1896-1903, While the Billy Boils generated almost 30,000 in sales in either one or two volume formats, but only produced a net profit for Lawson of about £108. In contrast, Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms, first issued by the London publishers Macmillan in 1889, sold over 100,000 copies in its first seven years, earning Boldrewood £2,367. By the time of his death in 1916, Boldrewood’s earnings stood at £6,600; in contrast, Lawson’s total earnings by the time of his death in 1922 stood at £550. Reasons for such disparity were not just better contractual negotiations, better distribution networks, and the dominance of Uk publishers such as Macmillan in the colonial and Anglophone markets. Equally important was the positioning of both authors: Macmillan enfolded Boldrewood within their colonial series, marketing him as an Australian entrant into a larger shared colonial space. Angus and Robertson, in contrast, played up Lawson’s national credentials, marketing him as an Australian author within Australian markets, ensuring his work was sent for reviews to over 250 Australasian journals, but failing to secure adequate British market representation through co-publication with lesser placed London based Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton and Kent & Co. In the years that followed Lawson’s death, Angus and Robertson issued increasing editions of both his prose and poetry, seeking not just to take advantage of increased interest in his work but also to cement his place as Australia’s poet laureate and bush chronicler.
What emerges from both the study of publication and the accompanying, lovingly curated edition of the original newspaper versions of Lawson’s stories is a fine evaluation of textual complexity. Eggert carefully unpacks the multiple complexities of negotiating authorial reputation in a UK dominated marketplace, offering insight into how Angus and Robertson sought to claim a place for Australian based publishing through robust management of Lawson’s fresh and engaging work, while at the same time contextualizing these negotiations within larger social and cultural movements and evaluations. It is a valuablestudy that makes a strong case for infusing book history and bibliographically informed processes into literary critical evaluation.
David Finkelstein
University of Dundee
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