AustLit

'The present decade has brought us major contributions to the history of dustjackets, notably G. Thomas Tanselle, Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use and Mark. R. Godburn, Nineteenth-Century Dust-Jackets. As one might expect, Tanselle's monograph is an exhaustive, admirably informed and impeccably organised introduction to a subject that is now regarded as of central importance in the history of publishing over the last two centuries in the English-speaking world. Predictably Australia plays a minor role in this study, as in Godburn's. Australian sources, individual and institutional-Brian McMullin, Patrick Spedding, Hordern House, Monash University Library and State Library Victoria-, are duly acknowledged for information about items produced in the United Kingdom. One genuine Australian imprint-J. H. Maiden, The Useful Native Plants of Australia (Sydney: Turner and Henderson, 1889)-is listed from a copy in the Ransom Center at the University of Texas. Reference is also made to the loan exhibition "Australian Dustwrappers" curated by Jonathan Wantrup for the 25th Australian Antiquarian Book Fair held in Melbourne in November 1998. This included a sole example from the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century: Edward Dyson, Rhymes from the Mines (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1896). Dust-jackets are not mentioned in Jennifer Alison's account of this book, including the detailed statement of costs. One has to assume that their production was subsumed in the printing or binding figure. It would seem that study of the practice of Angus and Robertson and of other Australian publishers of the period has to rely essentially on the very rare preservation-in private rather than public collections-of the material objects themselves. In Paul Eggert's analysis of the advertising of While the Billy Boils he is reduced to conjecture about the exact nature of the "wrappers" ordered for the book since "none appears to have survived."' (Publication abstract)