Status | Active |
---|---|
Founded | 1942 1989 (5th incarnation) |
Founders | Harry Muir (original) Revived by Government of South Australia in early 1980s |
Successor | Michael Bollen (from 1989) |
Country of origin | Australia |
Headquarters location | Adelaide |
Distribution | Australia |
Publication types | Books |
Nonfiction topics | History biography art education food & wine environment |
Fiction genres | Literary fiction popular fiction young adult fiction poetry |
Official website | www |
Wakefield Press is an independent publishing company based in the Adelaide suburb of Mile End, South Australia. They publish around 40 titles a year in many genres and on many topics, with a special focus on South Australian stories.
Originally founded in 1942, the publisher celebrated its 30th anniversary under its current management and name in 2019.
A publishing company under the name The Wakefield Press [1] was founded in 1942 by Adelaide bookseller Harry Muir (1909-1991), owner of Beck Book Company Limited in Pulteney Street. [2] Beck Book Company, in Ruthven Mansions, [3] was a well-known bookshop, described as "once the city's outstanding second-hand bookstore", [4] and also known as Beck's Bookshop, [5] Beck's Bookstore, [6] Beck's Book Shop, [7] or simply Beck's. [4]
Muir's intention was to publish small, historical monographs which he believed would otherwise go unread. The company's first publication was A Checklist of Ex-Libris Literature Published in Australia, owing to Muir's interest in bookplates. The press operated out of the bookshop from the 1940s to 1960s. [8]
In the 1980s, the state government re-established the name as Wakefield Press, as part of the state's sesquicentenary (150-year anniversary) celebrations, and a series of histories was published. [8]
As proprietor of the monthly cultural magazine the Adelaide Review , Christopher Pearson bought the name of the Wakefield Press from the South Australian government and operated the company from 1986 to 1988. [8]
Michael Bollen, who had worked with Pearson, took over the company in 1989, with Stephanie Johnston buying in a year or so later. [8] They moved to premises in The Parade West, Kent Town, where they stayed until relocation to Mile End in August–September 2014. [9]
As of March 2022 [update] , Wakefield publishes approximately 40 titles each year on a diverse range of topics, including literary and popular fiction, young adult fiction and a range of non-fiction topics. [10] They retain their focus on Australian authors and topics, particularly South Australian. [2]
They have a focus on young adult fiction, with editor Margot Lloyd as publisher of the Young Adult list. They successfully launched Making Friends with Alice Dyson by Adelaide first-time author Poppy Nwosu in 2019. The management team believe that they can take risks that larger companies, being controlled by their marketing departments, cannot take. [2]
Many of Wakefield's books have achieved Australian bestseller status, including The Vanished Land, by Richard Zachariah, [19] The Home of the Blizzard, by Sir Douglas Mawson, [20] [2] One Magic Square, by Lolo Houbein, [21] Behind the Veil, by Lydia Laube, [22] [2] anf Your Brick Oven, by Russell Jeavons. [23]
Wakefield Press have partnerships with a number of cultural and educational institutions in South Australia, and relationships with overseas publishers which market their titles. [10]
Otto Penzler is a German-born American editor of mystery fiction, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
Andrew McDonald Taylor is an Australian poet and academic, and a co-founder of Friendly Street Poets in Adelaide, South Australia.
Charlotte Wood is an Australian novelist. The Australian newspaper described Wood as "one of our [Australia's] most original and provocative writers".
Tom Flood is an Australian novelist, editor, manuscript assessor, songwriter and musician. Tom Flood was born in Sydney in New South Wales, the son of writer Dorothy Hewett and grew up in Western Australia.
Ken Bolton is an Australian poet.
Pulteney Street is a main road which runs north-south through the middle of the eastern half of the Adelaide city centre, in Adelaide, South Australia. It runs north-south from North Terrace, through Hindmarsh and Hurtle Squares, to South Terrace, where it becomes Unley Road. It is the only one of the city centre's major north-south thoroughfares that does not continue northwards over North Terrace.
Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.
The National Biography Award, established in Australia in 1996, is awarded for the best published work of biographical or autobiographical writing by an Australian. It aims "to encourage the highest standards of writing biography and autobiography and to promote public interest in those genres". It was initially awarded every two years, but from 2002 it has been awarded annually. Its administration was taken over by the State Library of New South Wales in 1998.
Deborah Robertson (1959) is an Australian writer. She was born in Bridgetown, Western Australia, and lives in Melbourne.
Three Dog Night is a 2003 novel by Australian author Peter Goldsworthy.
The Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature comprise a group of biennially-granted literary awards established in 1986 by the Government of South Australia, announced during Adelaide Writers' Week, as part of the Adelaide Festival. The awards include national as well as state-based prizes, and offer three fellowships for South Australian writers. Several categories have been added to the original four.
Muir is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2014.
The Bookworm is a China-based literary organization with three bookstores by the same name in Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou. As of November 2019 all locations have closed. In addition to selling books, The Bookworm is a restaurant, cafe, event space and library with more than 50,000 English and Chinese titles. Lonely Planet called it one of the “world’s greatest bookshops.”
Mireille Juchau is an Australian author who was born and raised in Sydney New South Wales, where she currently lives.
Trent Dalton is an Australian journalist and literary fiction author.
Ellen Liston (1838–1885) was an Australian teacher and a writer of early popular fiction.
Vikki Wakefield is an Australian author who writes young adult fiction.
George Isaacs was an Australian author. Born in England to a Jewish family, he moved to Adelaide, South Australia with his wife and child in 1851. Often writing under the pseudonym "A Pendragon", Isaacs' 1856 novel, The Queen of the South became the first novel to be published in South Australia, and his play Burlesque of Frankenstein is recognised as the first Australian work of science fiction.
The University of New South Wales Press Ltd. is an Australian academic book publishing company launched in 1962 and based in Randwick, a suburb of Sydney. The ACNC not-for-profit entity has three divisions: NewSouth Publishing, NewSouth Books, and the UNSW Bookshop, situated at the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales, Sydney.