Doug Munro review of Stuart Kells, MUP: A Centenary History

(Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 2023), 554 pp., HB $60.00, ISBN 9780522878097

Almost from the moment of its founding in 1921, Melbourne University Press (MUP) became an important part of the Australian intellectual and academic landscape. Other university presses followed, but MUP has always been at the forefront in the prestige stakes. MUP has also had its share of controversies and difficulties, and there is something to be said for the aphorism that conflict and scandal, although distressing to the individuals involved, are so much more interesting to observe, and to read about, than steady and stolid progress. Or—to deploy another adage, this time from journalism—the only good news is bad news. Seen in this light, Stuart Kells’s commissioned centenary history of MUP holds much promise as an account of an important cultural institution that has endured bad times as well as good. In agreeing to the commission, Kells accepted a monumental task, and this despite his credentials, which include a longstanding interest in publishing and books, and his authorship of a history of Penguin Books.¹

MUP was initially the bookshop for the University of Melbourne, which meant an involvement in the second-hand book market, and soon after a gown hiring service. But it was not long before the publication of its first book—Myra Willard’s History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (1923; reprinted 1967, 2017). In relating what followed, Kells largely organises his material around the tenures of successive directors of MUP, starting with Stanley Addison through to (at the time of publication) Nathan Hollier. It is a sensible arrangement given the influence they exerted, despite being answerable to a board. Continuing in a biographical mode, Kells provides potted biographies of the directors, although, in the case of Addison (pp. 12–13), we get little sense as to how his antecedents might have had a bearing on his tenure as director.

Who was it who said that the history of a university press ‘does not promise a gripping read’? Starting with a discussion on the concept of a university press and the tension between publishing low- and slow-selling academic titles and the need to remain solvent, usually through subsidies, Kells moves to the qualities that make the ideal publisher—‘an amalgam of commercial editorial, artistic and scholarly elements’ (p. 78). The difficulty in getting the planets to align in any one individual is writ large in the case of Addison, whose tenure ended following his misappropriation of funds. He had been given a free hand with minimal oversight and the chickens came home to roost, so to speak (pp. 66–9). Addison was ‘let go’ without further sanction and the oversight and governance of MUP was immediately tightened. This episode, together with the discussion of the financial and publishing aspects of MUP during the 1920s and 1930s, makes for compelling reading, and Kells’s narrative and scholarly skills are on full display. Sadly, Barbara Ramsden, who was the editorial mainstay at MUP and remained so until her retirement in 1967 (pp. 258–60), fell victim to the boys’ club syndrome, despite being eminently qualified to fill the vacancy created by Addison’s departure. In what Kells rightly describes as ‘a deplorable pattern’ of the times, and later, the job was advertised for ‘Men Only’ (p. 74; also p. 318). This was the first of three occasions that Ramsden was passed over for the directorship of MUP.

Fast-forward to 1942 with the appointment as MUP’s fourth director, Gwyn James, who was a history lecturer and foundation editor of Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand prior to his association with MUP. His was a troubled reign and another example of the qualities needed in a publisher not residing in the same person. He had a sure feel for the publishing side of MUP but lacked administrative skills and financial acumen. In contrast to his predecessor, who did his best to ensure that MUP lived within its means, ‘James’s strategy, and his answer to any problem, was growth’ (p. 160), and he looked to the university to fund this expansion, which included a printing press and a bindery and buildings in which to house this equipment. By 1961, MUP’s trading surplus was less than £4,000, which, as Kells points out, was ‘out of all proportion to its bank overdraft of £150,000’ (p. 166).

At this point, William Macmahon Ball (chairman of the MUP Board) stepped in to remove James. Kells clarifies what happened next. First, Ball trimmed the fat by shedding MUPs superfluous activities, over James’s objections. He then had the board restructured under a new statute, which included the creation of a ‘director’ of the press. James was excluded from consideration and was offered instead the position of ‘Publisher to the University’. This would make him answerable to the new director and, at the same time, exclude him from membership of the board. Kells blandly says that ‘James had been encouraged to leave and that is what he did’ (p. 168). Rather, it was a constructive dismissal. What Kells does not indicate is that the first volume of Manning Clark’s A History of Australia was in the mix. Kells mentions the controversy elsewhere in the book but does not link this with James being pushed out (pp. 279–80). In short, Ball did not want MUP to handle Clark’s History but, against his better judgement, he reluctantly acquiesced. A disgruntled Ball then, according to James, ‘browbeat’ the board with ‘vindictive petulance’ into reducing the proposed print run and accused James of ‘culpably under-pricing’ the cost of sheets to the co-publisher Cambridge University Press.² All in all it was a messy parting of the ways.

Enter Peter Ryan, who was James’s surprise replacement and the longest-serving director of MUP (1962–88). Disappointingly, Kells’s account of Ryan’s stewardship is overly reliant on the latter’s memoirs (Final Proof), which Kells takes at face value.³ In these parts of Kells’s narrative, which are extensive, my feeling was ‘I’ve read it all before’. And knowing the extent to which Final Proof is unreliable, I was left with feelings of unease. Take the occasions when Kells’s accounts of a given book’s publishing backstory replicates Ryan’s descriptions but without corroboration. For example, did Ryan’s confrontation with Lance Townsend over the republication of the latter’s Gynaecology for Students pan out the way that Ryan so amusingly describes it (p. 418)?⁴ I mention this to highlight that Kells, despite the extent of his research in other parts of the book, did not consult MUP’s author files, which might (would likely?) have imparted a different picture to the one portrayed by Ryan.

Another puzzling aspect of Kells’s MUP is that he did not use recently published books, which are itemised in his ‘Acknowledgements’ (p. 517) that would have added to his own narrative.⁵ One of those books is my own short account of the Peter Ryan – Manning Clark controversy, which might have made Kells think twice about relying on Ryan’s fraudulent version of events.⁶ Ryan’s posthumous attack on Clark was spread over three issues of Quadrant in 1993 and 1994, in which he condemned the man and his works lock, stock and barrel.⁷ Among other things, Ryan claimed that he was locked into a contract formulated by his predecessor and thus had no option but to proceed with as many (unrefereed) volumes as Clark cared to write, irrespective of their deplorable quality. To the contrary, there was no contract with Clark when Ryan joined MUP. Ryan himself drew up the contract a year after assuming office and he neglected to make provision that Clark’s manuscripts be sent out to readers. Neither did Ryan insist on varying the contract to provide for refereeing and neither did he reveal that Clark increasingly got cold feet about continuing to churn out successive volumes. He wanted to wrap up the project at an early juncture, but Ryan desperately encouraged him to go on, praising his work to the hilt—and laughing all the way to the bank because the sales of Clark’s History significantly alleviated MUP’s financial woes. This is a very different picture to the one painted by Ryan, whose misrepresentations are perpetuated in Kells’s narrative.

The likely explanation for the neglect of the latest literature is because these books came out too late to be used. My own book was published in October 2021 and was immediately available as a free download, but MUP’s production schedules meant that Kells was unable to rework his narrative in the light of recently published books that would have made a difference. Another factor at play was that Kells was working to the ‘very tight schedule’ imposed by the publisher, the idea being the book’s release should coincide ‘with the centenary anniversary of MUP’s first publication’.⁸ This left little leeway for contingencies such as Covid restrictions, which were especially severe in Melbourne. Kells alludes to this (p. 516). In the circumstances, it would have been better, if possible, had MUP extended the deadline.

Even so, there are avoidable blemishes. There is the statement that Clark, after the publication of the final volume of his History in 1987, ‘authored half a dozen other books. Not one of those subsequent titles, Ryan pointed out sharply, had received the MUP imprint’ (p. 280). To the contrary, five of Clark’s post-1987 books were published by MUP.⁹ To compound the error, Kells states two pages earlier that the last volume of Clark’s autobiography was published in 1992 by MUP. It is also unfortunate that Kells takes a needless swipe at one of Ryan’s critics in accusing Don Watson of hypocrisy for ‘claiming as his own Paul Keating’s landmark Redfern speech’ (p. 282). To the contrary, again, Watson made clear that the ‘contract’ between politician and speechwriter is that that the speech ‘belongs’ to the politician and is ‘owned’ by the politician irrespective of the speechwriter’s authorship.¹⁰ A third instance concerns Ryan’s successor at MUP. Ryan thought he had Michael Cannon lined up to succeed him as director and he spat the dummy when he discovered otherwise. Kells dismisses this as being typical of Ryan’s ‘idiosyncratic’ approach to matters, but even Ryan’s gentle biographer says that ‘the decision on his replacement was actually none of his business. Nor should it have been.’¹¹ A further blemish is the fanciful and unsubstantiated statement that the Encyclopaedia of Papua New Guinea, which Ryan edited on behalf of MUP, ‘accelerated the move to [PNG’s] independence’ in 1975 (p. 194). If this were the case, then it carries the irony that the premature granting of independence to PNG, which Ryan deplored, was the catalyst for him ceasing to support the Australian Labor Party and falling headlong into the embrace of the political right.

Fast-forward again, this time to the appointment MUP’s second longest-serving director, Louise Adler (2002–19). Kells provides a compelling portrait of Adler, who was hired as ‘the new broom’ who would return a restructured MUP to financial stability. Given Adler’s dynamic and sometimes combative personality, which Kells brings out compellingly, MUP was headed for interesting times. A sharp departure under Adler was the proactive publication of politicians’ biographies and autobiographies, and there were dark mutterings that MUP had abdicated its primary mission as a truly academic publisher. The sales of such books were often impressive¹² but MUP got itself into bidding wars with other publishers, resulting in advances to authors ‘that were out of proportion to the royalties generated by sales’ (p. 371). Then there was the contention over the publication of a book on Cardinal George Pell in 2017. With the advent of a new vice-chancellor in 2019, MUP’s business model was brought low. Rather than submit to the return of MUP to primarily the role of a traditional academic press, and amid considerable controversy, Adler resigned. The Adler era, which in my view is the most impressive part of the book, was not a new dawn nor the way of the future. MUP returned to the fold of the traditional academic publisher.

For the most part Kells’s MUP is a sound and scholarly contribution. It is even-handed, sometimes to a fault, and most certainly an exceptionally well-written book. More the pity that ways and means were not found to provide extra time so that the Ryan era was adequately treated.

1. 1 Stuart S. Kells, Penguin Books and the Lane Brothers (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2015).

2. 2 James to Clark, 5 January 1961, and James to Clark, 5 April 1961, both in Clark Papers, National Library of Australia (hereafter NLA), MS 7550, Series 18, Box 156, Folder 1; James to Clark, 6 August 1987, Clark Papers, Series 18, Box 160, Folder 29.

3. 3 Peter Ryan, Final Proof: Memoirs of a Publisher (Sydney: Quadrant Books, 2010).

4. 4 Ryan, Final Proof, 92–3.

5. 5 For example, John Tidey, Ryan’s Luck: A Life of Peter Ryan MM (Melbourne: Arcadia, 2020); Michael Cannon, Cannon Fire: A Life in Print (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2020); Jim Davidson, Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christensen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2022), doi.org/10.2307/jj.1176754.

6. 6 Doug Munro, History Wars: The Peter Ryan–Manning Clark Controversy (Canberra: ANU Press, 2021), doi.org/10.22459/HW.2021.

7. 7 Republished in Peter Ryan, Lines of Fire: Manning Clark and Other Writings (Binalong: Clarion Editions, 1997), 177–234.

8. 8 Nathan Hollier, ‘A Letter from the Publisher: The February Publisher’s Letter, Looking at the Month Ahead for MUP’.

9. 9 See Mark McKenna, An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2011), 713–14.

10. 10 Don Watson, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM (Sydney: Vintage Books Australia, 2011), 734–6.

11. 11 Tidey, Ryan’s Luck, 95. Michael Cannon does not mention the succession problem in his autobiography, but he repeatedly states how beholden he was to Ryan for finding him work, introducing him to people and publishing his books. Cannon, Cannon Fire, 141, 152–3, 178, 182–4, 186, 206, 214.

12. 12 For sales figures, see Troy Bramston, ‘Gillard’s Own Yarn Spin Nice Little Earner’, Weekend Australian, 24–25 January 2015, 5.