John Mystery and the Australian Book Trade

Abstract

The Children’s Literature Collection at the State Library of Victoria holds over 100,000 Australian and overseas children’s books published between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. In 1994 this collection was significantly enhanced through the acquisition of the Ken Pound collection of children’s books and ephemera. When buying at local fairs and markets over twenty-five years, Ken Pound made no distinction between quality of content or ephemerality. If a publication addressed a child readership, Ken Pound added it to his collection. The State Library’s acquisition of this collection means that publications from small Australian publishers, variant editions of titles, advertising, merchandising and other ephemeral material augment the existing strengths of the Children’s Literature Collection. The comprehensive scope of the Australian component of this heritage collection of children’s books positions it as a unique research resource for children’s literature scholars.

I begin by identifying the factors that operated to relegate the John Mystery children’s books to the forgotten basket of Australian literary heritage. The John Mystery emporium occupied a niche in the Australian book trade at a time when existing Australian publishers were minimizing output due to war-time restrictions on labour and materials. In contextualizing the John Mystery phenomenon, I compare the flamboyance and eccentricity of the creator, Lester Sinclair, with the earlier entrepreneur, E. W. Cole, who employed similarly theatrical marketing strategies. Also, I interrogate content of a selection of John Mystery titles and reflect on the values embedded in these seemingly innocent escapist fantasies. Finally I will suggest how the State Library of Victoria’s heritage collections present potential resources for scholars of children’s literature.