UNIVERSITY PRINTING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 363, 7 June 1946, Page 18

UNIVERSITY PRINTING

N our issue before last we marked the setting up of a University Press in New Zealand with an article which gave our readers some idea of the origins and working methods of University Presses overseas. Briefly mentioned in that article was the Melbourne University Press, with its schemes for operating a university bookshop to make money to subsidise scholarly publishing. But we did not know in time for that issue that there is a representative of the Melbourne Press at present in New Zealand who could have told us in more detaii what Melbourne is doing. He is Peter Middleton, who comes from England in the first place, but is willing to be calied a New Zealander, because he lived in the Dominion from 1924 to 1939, and some verse by him was published here. Mr. Middleton’s job here is in particular to get orders for M.U.P. publications, and in general to establish relations between the press and the New Zealand University Colleges. Co-operation Hoped For Mr. Middleton told us that at a guess about 40 per cent. of the publications at present are textbooks, and the remainder includes a good deal of general literature, and some teachers’ reference books. Some books are by New Zealanders. M.U.P. published Professor Ian

Gordon’s book on John Skelton, Professor Horace Belshaw’s book on agricultural organisation in New Zealand, and Professor D. B. Copland’s biographical study of W. E. Hearn, the first Aus. tralian economist. The Board of Managers is interested in the establishment of a university press in New Zealand, and foresees valuable opportunities for co-operation, Mr. Middleton told us. Cooperation in distribution is not uncommon between University presses, ‘and Melburne has already associated with the Oxford Press in bringing out one or two books which are of interest in England, New Zealand Writers Wanted M.U.P. also publishes some periodi+ cals, of which the main ones are the sixmonthly Historical Studies — Australia and New Zealand, the literary quarterly Meanjin Papers and the Economic Record. Meanjin Papers was started/several years ago in Brisbane by E. B. Christesen, and made such headway that it became recognised as Australia’s leading literary journal. Christesen was recently invited to bring it to Melbourne, and continue as proprietor and editor, the publishing to be done by M.U.P. Meanjin was the original name for the settlement that became Brisbane, and it is pronounced with the accent on the a. The Spring issue is to be an all New Zealand number, and Mr. Middleton has been looking for contributors over here.