Nonfiction bargains from Melbourne University Press
Melbourne University Press is arguably one of Australia’s finest publishers of nonfiction. As they will soon be moving to a new warehouse they are reducing their stock in readiness. Luckily for you, and us, this means we are able to offer these wonderful titles, and more, at 60-70% off.
Under the Rainbow: The Life and Times of E.W. Cole by Richard Broinowski
Under the Rainbow is the life story of E.W. Cole, a colourful and much loved figure of 19th century Melbourne. Best remembered for his Funny Picture Books, his sense of the absurd and his marketing genius, his wonderful arcade was the first ‘department store’ in Melbourne, replete with a live orchestra, an aviary and monkeys alongside books, ornaments, art, curios and tearooms.
But there was more to Cole than his merchandising prowess – he scandalised the clergy with his views about Christianity, campaigned passionately against the White Australia policy, and advocated education for all.
William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story by Bain Attwood
William Cooper's passionate struggle against the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the denial of their rights and his heroic fight for them to become citizens in their own country has been widely commemorated and celebrated. By carefully reconstructing the historical losses his Yorta Yorta people suffered and endured, William Cooper: An Aboriginal Life Story reveals how the first seventy years of Cooper's life inspired the remarkable political work he undertook in the 1930s.
Focusing on Cooper's most important campaigns – his famous petition to the British king George for an Aboriginal representative in the Australian parliament, his call for a day of mourning after 150 years of colonisation, the walk-off of the Yorta Yorta people from Cumeroogunga reserve in 1939 and his opposition to the establishment of an Aboriginal regiment in the Second World War – this carefully researched study sheds important new light on the long struggle that Indigenous people have fought to have the truth about Australia's black history heard and win representation in Australia's political order.
Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland by Jim Davidson
Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith were giants of the world of Australian books and writing from the 1940s to 1980s.
‘Lilliput’, in this dual biography, is the world of literary magazines in Australia between the 1940s and the 1980s. Here Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith, of the journals Meanjin and Overland, were determined, driven visionaries. Both were very human – and occasionally bruised – believers in and workers for a better nation.
The book ranges from before the Menzies era and the Cold War, through the Whitlam period and beyond to the challenges of the 1980s. It shows how the editors constantly aimed for a culture more liberal, diverse and developed than the one then prevailing. Their publications may have lacked resources and economic return, but they nonetheless possessed authority, regularly providing stimulation for their readers and for the nation.
Inner Song: A Biography of Margaret Sutherland by Jillian Graham
Margaret Sutherland was one of the most innovative and influential Australian composers. In the first half of the twentieth century, her desire to be both serious composer and mother was atypical, and she faced significant challenges – public and private – in blending these roles.
Against the backdrop of an unhappy and unsupportive marriage and a society not yet ready to accept her creative ambitions and strong views on Australia's musical development, she remained admirably steadfast in pursuing her goals. Sutherland created over two hundred compositions, ceaselessly campaigned on behalf of Australian music and musicians, and led the initial push to construct what is now Arts Centre Melbourne.
Bruno Leti: Series - A Life of Images edited by Thomas Middlemost
A genuine original, in art and life Leti tends to work in series that hold a continuity and common inspiration similar to that of an artist’s book. The whole of the book – cover texture and holistic feel – is the artwork and to contemplate a single artwork in isolation is to neglect the forest for a tree.
Bruno Leti: Series lays bare a life of art, of intertwined visual and theoretical revelations, inspirations and chance encounters, prudently curated for the joy of discovery. Composed by both Leti and editor Thomas Middlemost, it is a longitudinal study of curiosities, with added observations by other contributors.
