AustLit

Samuel Cook trained as a printer in England, and worked briefly as a compositor for the London Morning Herald before coming to Australia where he took up a position at John Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald. Cook had a close relationship with the Fairfax family, and he would remain a Fairfax employee for his entire career, rising through the ranks of the organisation, and taking on many different roles. He worked first as a compositor, then as a journalist, then editor, eventually becoming managing-director of the Herald and the Sydney Mail, a position which he held from 1888 until his retirement in 1907. In his more than fifty years' association with Fairfax, Cook had seen the organisation grow from a small group of 'seven or eight men', to a staff of hundreds.