AustLit

Endeavour Press was the publishing initiative of P.R. 'Inky' Stephensen and Norman Lindsay who joined forces in 1932, with the financial support of the Bulletin company. Under the Bulletin's new imprint, the Endeavour Press, Stephensen launched a number of commercial titles including Norman Lindsay's Saturdee (1933), Banjo Paterson's The Animals Noah Forgot (1933) and Miles Franklin's Bring the Monkey (1933). In 1933, too, Xavier Herbert also approached the Endeavour Press with a manuscript for a 'sprawling novel', which Stephensen took with him when he parted company with the Endeavour Press in late 1933. Stephensen was used to running independent publishing ventures and had clashed with the Bulletin's 'conservative management' and with their printer, who had quite different views from Stephensen on book production standards. (p. 60)

After Stephensen had founded his own press, P.R. Stephensen, and moved onto yet another publication - a literary magazine, The Publicist - Herbert's novel Capricornia was finally published by Stephensen under the Publicist imprint in 1938. Thereafter, the novel was taken over by Angus & Robertson, which had by then twice rejected the manuscript, and it became a bestseller.

Sources:

Craig Munro, 'Case-study: P.R. Stephensen' in M. Lyons and J. Arnold eds, A History of the Book in Australia 1891-1945: A National Culture in a Colonised Market, UQP, St Lucia, 2001: pp.60-63.

Craig Munro, Wild Man Of Letters: The Story of P.R. Stephensen, MUP, Melbourne, 1984: pp. 115-134 and 135-149.