UQP makes history : a personal version

One way the history of a publishing house can be told is through the readers of the books that a publisher produces. Not a generic general reader, but individual readers and their personal histories that entwine with the publisher’s history, through books, over the years. As readers reflect on and are changed by particular books, a larger cultural and social history is made. That, at least, is my case in relation to UQP, and I’d like to share some of that history with you. I’m honoured to be invited to give the Fryer Lecture in Australian Literature this year and I thank Simon Farley and his colleagues for bringing me here. Without Australian publishing there would not be much Australian literature. On the seventieth anniversary of the University of Queensland Press, I take as my theme the contribution that this unique publisher has made to Australian literary history. It is especially fitting given the association with the Fryer Library, which is home to the rich UQP archive. As a UQP author from nearly 40 years ago, I can look back over a large chunk of the life of the press and from that vantage point I see revealing patterns in this particular landscape. UQP has shaped Australian literature for me and for many others in valuable, indispensable ways. I could instantly visualise a shelf of UQP books that spans my reading life. It was easy because those books are so familiar to me. They are the books I hang onto, the books that travel with me, the books I have in my head in a relationship that has formed me as a reader and a writer and a participant in cultural life.