CONTENTS

Anthology of Forty Memories

The Early Days

Turning Forty A Retrospective

13

The Abbeys Story

Queen Victoria Building

14

Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop

16

Henry Lawsons Bookshop

18

Centrepoint Bookshop

20

Abbeys Crime Scene

24

Forty Memories

An Introduction

25

Our Customers

43

Our Family

47

Our Staff

68

Forty Favourite Books Eve Abbey

70

Jean Abbey

72

Ann Leahy

74

Lindy Jones

76

Greg Waldron

78

Peter Milne

Anthology of

Forty Memories
1968-2008

bbeys Bookshop is forty years old this year. For our 21st, 25th and 30th
birthdays, we gave 21%, 25% and 30% off all books in stock, which was a nice
celebration for everyone. We couldnt quite manage 40% off for our 40th, so we decided to
publish this Anthology of Forty Memories.

In the March and April 2008 issues of Abbeys Advocate and Crime Chronicle, I asked customers
to send in an interesting anecdote from their days of buying books at Abbeys. Hecklers
Wanted, I called it. But not many customers felt like heckling! So I sent out appeals to
Brisbane, Hobart, the South Coast and locally for some ex-staff to contribute as well.
Abbeys has always been a family business, so we have kept in touch with more than a few
of our ex-staff. Nowadays, because we are open extended hours, we have almost 50 staff,
including our part-timers. When I look at all the different names, I am reminded how much
Abbeys has changed and also what a cosmopolitan city Sydney is today. From a time where
half the staff had the surname Abbey, just look at the assorted names of our current staff :
Eve Abbey
Administration
Alan Abbey, Tom Aravanis, Kelly Azizi, Jo Evans, Adrian Hardingham, Jeremy Le Bard,
George Miskovski and Jack Winning.
Abbeys Bookshop
Eve Abbey, Leighton Arnold, Rose Ayres, Kathryn Bugeia, Adrian Deutsch, Maryann DSa,
David Hall, Gerard Holmes, Christian Hummelshoj, Bree Jenkins, Lindy Jones, James King,
Ann Leahy, Sian McNabney, Peter Milne, Daniel Ritchie, Chris Scott, Bruce Turner,
Anthoulla Vassiliades, Greg Waldron and John Wong.
Language Book Centre
Maja Brodaric, Panthea Keshvardoust, Haewon Kim, Steven Muzur, Jacqui Rychner,
Christopher Villamar, Tania Villamar, Nounou Vongphit and Yanling Zhang.

Galaxy Bookshop
Carraigmichael Boweslyon, Geoff Caesar, Johanne Knowles, Sofia Morales, Matthew Nielsen,
Chrissie Polec, Adam Tall, Stephanie Tall and Mark Timmony.

40 Memories

The Early Days

n 1960, we were living in

Hampstead, London. 97 Frognal,
NW3 had a blue plaque on the front
because Kathleen Ferrier had lived there
once. It was a terribly good address, but a
rather crummy flat. Malcolm Williamson, the
Australian who became the Master of the
Queens Music, once visited to see about
moving in when we left, but thats the
closest we came to a musical connection.

from all over the world. All the stamps were

kept to sell in the Philatelic Department
in the shop (as were the foreign coins,
which turned up in the tills). He then got
a job driving the van that delivered books
around London. This was a big perk and a
soft option in those days. He often had a
nice quiet sleep on the mail bag. His friend
Klaus, who rented the room with him, was
from the Belgian Congo. Patrice Lumumba
had just been assassinated and people were
flooding back to Europe. Klaus was put in
charge of the Foreign
Coins Department. One
day he came home very
upset because he had
mixed up his stock of
foreign coins with the
float in his till. Theyre
all foreign coins to me,
he explained.

Ron Abbey was working in the technical

department of
Foyles Bookshop in
Charing Cross Road
(as some sort of
acknowledgement
of his expertise as
a Master Mariner,
I suppose). Foyles
at that time was a
legendarily awful
Ron happily left Foyles
place for staff. It was
to go to work for Oliver
famous worldwide for
Gollancz (nephew of
supplying books to
the famous publisher
Brits who worked in
Ron Abbeys start in bookselling, 1960
Victor Gollancz, founder
the colonies. Foyles
of the Left Book Club). Oliver was a lovely
liked to employ Continental staff who
fellow, but not very well organised. Ron
were in London learning English and were
recalled the Penguin rep pleading with
cheap to employ. However, most werent
him: Please Oliver, start at the Z end of
much good at bookselling. One girl in Rons
the alphabet next month when you make
department arranged all the red books
out the cheques (since he had usually run
together, then all the blue ones, etc true!
out of money by the time he came to P for
Penguin).
We had too much space in our big flat at
Hampstead, so we let rooms, often to fellow
The shop was called Book House and was
Foyles employees. One of our boarders,
in Whitehall. There were many famous
Bruno from Germany, did rather well. For
customers, including Sir Eric Rolls, the
some reason he spent longer than usual on
economist. One day Ron brought home a
the mail table - the big bench where newly
arrived workers opened the mail that arrived young Australian of Good Family,

40 Memories
as they say, but down on his luck. He had
been employed for several days when Ron
discovered he slept in the park at night. He
wore his pyjamas to work under his clothes,
and when his trousers began slipping down
it was an indication of something amiss. This
boy had a generous monthly allowance,
but he couldnt manage it well. He bought
so many books from the shop that Oliver
asked Ron to investigate whether he was
reselling them somewhere else! He bought
The Complete Works of Thomas Aquinas, for
instance. Hardly light entertainment! These
books (several tea chests full) ended up in
our big kitchen for a year or two when their
owner went off to Denmark chasing some
beautiful girl. When we left, we put them
into storage at Thomas Cooks. I wonder
what became of them? He was a lovely
fellow and at Christmas took us all, including
six-month-old Alan, for lunch at the Strand
Palace Hotel. We felt very sophisticated, but
this was short-lived as he had left his pipe
(still softly glowing) in his coat pocket that
hung on the stand near the door. It set fire
to the coat! Not exactly plum pudding.
From Book House, Ron moved up into real
book paradise when he gained the job
as Manager (and almost sole employee)
of a small bookshop opened by Colletts
in Charing Cross Road to sell all the titles
published by Penguin Books. The great
respect and affection and appreciation for
Penguin Books at that time is now almost
forgotten. You could perhaps talk about a
Penguin Generation self-educated people
who did it all by buying the economical,
high-quality books flooding out of
Harmondsworth. I am amazed today to find
that the warehouse that distributes Penguin
Books in Australia does not put the Penguin
colophon on the outside of their boxes. It
must be the most well-known and revered
trademark in the world.

Ron did think of applying for a job with

Max Ells Bookshop in Newcastle, which he
saw advertised in The Bookseller magazine
in London. We wanted to return to this
part of the world. However, we looked up
Newcastle in Encyclopedia Britannica, which
went into great detail about the terrible
weather there, which was quite off-putting.
Anyway, he didnt apply, and by 1964 we
were sailing on the Canberra as Ten Pound
Poms, migrating to Australia. We had our
own supply of tea chests filled with books.
The Pursers Office was anxious to meet us
since we had more luggage than anyone
else on board. No furniture. Just books!
We arrived in Fremantle on Anzac Day
1964. Ron had an interview with Penguin
Books in Melbourne on the way across to
Sydney, but didnt get whatever job that
was. Nonetheless, in later years, we opened
three no, four Penguin Bookshops.
A tiny one in Rowe Street before it was
demolished to make way for the MLC
Centre; the Paddington Penguin in Oxford
Street; Penguin Bookshop at 66 King Street;
and finally at 131 York Street as part of the
big general Abbeys store.

Eve, Don, Jane and Alan Abbey

Australia-bound, 1964

Turning 40

A Retrospe
ctive
by Eve Abbey
Republished from Abbeys Advocate

n 1968, Ron Abbey and I were

living in Brisbane. Ron was deputy
manager of the shipping department at
Ampol Refinery. Our children Donald,
Jane and Alan were at Camp Hill Primary
School and I was keeping the home fires
burning. I went down to Sydney at Easter to
visit Rons sister Jean. Ron said, While youre
down there, see if you cant find a space
for a bookshop. Ron was always a good
delegator.
I visited our friend Jim
Thorburn at his Pocket
Bookshop in Pitt
Street. When I came
out, I saw that the
Rural Bank Building
opposite was vacant
due for demolition.
Two months later, we
had taken a temporary
lease of the premises.

ne day in 1969, Ron Abbey was

walking past the Queen Victoria
Building. He noticed the Sydney County
Council (now Energy Australia) was moving
out, into the big black box on the corner
of George and Bathurst Streets. He came
back to our shop at 115 Pitt Street and said
Ring the Council and see whats happening
to that space in the QVB. I rang and the
Council was delighted to have a bookshop
in that empty space,
so we took out
another temporary
lease at a very good
rental.

That temporary lease

lasted for 14 years
until 1983 when the
QVB was fortunately
refurbished by Ipoh
Gardens. It was a very
happy time there
straw matting on
the floor, cartons
That was the very first Abbeys in the Queen Victoria Building, circa 1978
of books flooding
Abbeys Bookshop
in from our visits overseas, especially from
at 115 Pitt Street. Jim was not pleased, but
Book People in California. We were famous
weve always believed its beneficial for
for poetry and lots of remainders at reduced
several bookshops to be near each other,
prices. Architects kept coming round and
just as there is now with the Sydney Book
Quarter on our block here in York Street. One knocking on walls to see what was behind
or below. Our lunch room and reserve was
of the things that customers liked about us
was that we were mavericks who sold cheap the old council paymasters office, complete
with giant safe. Eventually we built a little
remainders at the front of the shop.
mezzanine level overlooking the shop floor
to accommodate our office.

Turning 40
I even remember using price stickers that
were colour-coded so we knew how long
books had been on the shelf a far cry from
todays computerised inventory records!
Although no longer a tenant in the QVB, we
still think of ourselves as the QVB Bookshop.
Now directly across the road, we get to bask
in the glow of its stunning faade.

n 1977, preparing for our

inevitable final day in the Queen
Victoria Building, we took out a lease on
three floors basement, ground and
mezzanine at 66 King Street (on the
corner of King and York), once again a
space that had been vacated by a bank.
Artistry Furnishings had also been a tenant
and I had some difficulty selling off the
magnificent Bohemian crystal chandeliers
left behind in the basement, which
didnt really suit the theme of our Bargain
Bookshop! Our office was on the mezzanine,
while on the ground floor we started our
third Penguin Bookshop (after Rowe Street
and Oxford Street, Paddington), stocking
every title available from the Penguin
warehouse, which then included Faber
Books. Alongside this we opened Oxford
Bookshop, which stocked every title from
Oxford University Press. This later became
Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop, stocking all
titles from both these famous Presses - the
first such shop in the world.

We had some mixed technology for

recording sales. In Penguin, we tapped the
ISBN into an adding machine and used
the paper print-out as our order form. In
Oxford & Cambridge, we wrote down every
Author, Title, Format and Price on a piece
of paper! OUP and CUP supplied us with
sample copies of every book, which we paid
for only when we sold them, so some very
expensive and unusual books found their

way onto the shelves of a city bookshop

a big plus for both the reader and the
publisher.
It was another six years before we finally
had to move Abbeys out of the QVB, the
last tenant to leave before its restoration. We
squeezed Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop
into the mezzanine at 66 King Street and
Abbeys moved into the ground floor, with
Penguin Bookshop still beside it. Despite
the perils of moving a bookshop away from
street level, we had many famous customers
up on the mezzanine, including Clive James,
Kathryn Greiner and Gough Whitlam.

long the way, we opened

various specialist bookshops,
allowing us to provide greater depth in
our range of books. We opened Galaxy
Bookshop specialising in science fiction,
fantasy and horror in Bathurst Street in
1975. Over the years, this shop moved to
Castlereagh Street, then Clarence Street and
its now in York Street, just five doors away
from Abbeys.
We started Language Book Centre in 1976
at 129 York Street, having taken it over
from Mrs Iroms E F & G Bookshop (English,
Foreign & General) and thereby hangs a long
tale in itself! We also had another general
bookshop, intended for swinging young
people, in the brand new Centrepoint, but
that was a dire failure.
Our version of Vanity Publishing (I call it
Vanity Bookselling) was Henry Lawsons
Bookshop, which we opened in 1973 in the
newly refurbished Royal Arcade beneath the
Sydney Hilton. Some years later we moved
this beautiful shop complete with specially
designed Federation-style fixtures and
historical memorabilia to York Street, next
to Language Book Centre.

A Retrospective
We carried only Australian books and books
on the Pacific, including many Natural
History books. The shops manager, David
McPhee, was a renowned expert on snakes
who shared his home with over 200 of the
slithering reptiles! We made very little profit
from Henry Lawsons, but we were intensely
proud of it. In a way, the successful growth
of Australian publishing overtook the need
for this specialist Australian shop, which is a
good thing. We held our first annual Zonta
Meet the Author Event at Henry Lawsons in
1982 as part of the Women and Arts Festival.
Authors attending were Blanche DAlpuget,
Jessica Anderson, Barbara Jefferis, Sandra
Hall, Elizabeth Riddell and Fay Zwicky.

rom 1977, we occupied space at

66 King Street, near the corner
of King and York, home firstly to Penguin
Bookshop, Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop
and Bargain Bookshop, then eventually
Abbeys Bookshop when we moved out of
the Queen Victoria Building.
It was here in 1978 that Jack Winning (now
Managing Director) returned from overseas
to work for us again. He had previously been
the Accountant for our other business, Book
Wholesale Company a whole other story
for another time!

This is when we made our first steps into

computerisation, initially only for the
accounts, under the guidance of Tony
Oosthuizen. The computer printouts were
over 50cm wide with punch-holes down
each side and I thought Id have to mutate
and grow more eyes to read from one
side of the page to the other! Point-of-sale
computerisation of the stockholding didnt
happen until we moved to 131 York Street
eight years later.
Looking back over forty years, Im amazed
by the number of places in which weve
had bookshops certainly not forty years
in one place! We wandered around the
city (including Centrepoint) and suburbs
(including Paddington, Taylor Square and
Bondi Junction), opening small specialist
bookshops and at one time had ten shops.
Ron was always coming back from a long
lunch to declare Ive found another good
spot for a shop!
However, Abbeys did not become so wellknown until we amalgamated our shops in
1986 at 131 York Street, where we remain
today. Galaxy Bookshop, our science fiction
shop, opened in 1975 in Bathurst Street,
but is also now nearby at 143 York Street.
Language Book Centre, which began at 127
York Street, with Hanni Baaske
as manager, is now here on the
first floor of Abbeys. While we
treat it as a separate shop, to
most of our customers it is just
another part of Abbeys.

Jack Winning, circa 1978

Turning 40

n 1986, we moved
from King Street into two floors
of a new, glass-fronted building at 131
York Street, where we are now. There was
some delay getting approval to build the
staircase to the first floor, but fortunately it
came through eventually. Language Book
Centre and our office occupied half the first
floor, with the other half sub-let to a finance
broker, but it wasnt long before we needed
all the space upstairs for Language Book
Centre serving, as it does, schools and
colleges throughout Australia, as well as our
growing multicultural population.
On the ground floor, we had a counter on
each side of the entrance with one cash
register on each side. There was space
for unpacking new arrivals at each front
counter one for Penguin and one for
other publishers. Oxford & Cambridge
Bookshop was retained intact in the back
quarter of the shop with its own cash
desk and receiving. In 1987, we decided
to make things simpler, both for browsers
and ourselves, by amalgamating the stock
from all publishers, other than Oxford and
Cambridge. A general receiving area was set
up at the back of the shop in Peter Milnes
old office and the front counters were used
solely for information and cash registers.
In the early hours one morning in 1989,
we were fire-bombed in reprisal for selling
Salman Rushdies Satanic Verses, after which
we reorganised the shop to amalgamate
Oxford and Cambridge books with all other
stock. Along the way, we lost a few sections,
including Transport and Nautical.

Some customers regretted the passing

of the New Titles sections for Oxford
and Cambridge, but we now have an
unsurpassed selection of all New Titles
where browsers can quickly see the latest
books from all publishers. In addition to
what we call the ziggurat (those high piles
of important new books that greet you as
you enter), we have New Titles sections
for Non-Fiction, Fiction, Crime, Science,
Biography, Australian Biography, Travel and
Cookery thats over 200 metres of shelves
overflowing with wonderful New Titles!

n the previous chapter I mentioned

only some of the many alterations
to our layout at 131 York Street. Jack has not
only initiated all these changes, he has done
the nitty gritty detail as well. And of course
lots of staff have done plenty of physical
hard work in addition to bookselling.

Jack working on another new floor plan, 1998

A Retrospective
There have also been huge improvements
in the way we access information. In the
early days, we had two huge red volumes of
British Books in Print. We even had a special
lectern built to house these great lumps so
we could open them more easily.

TitlePage, a company set up by the

major Australian publishers, which
reflects the status of titles distributed by
these publishers, including indicative
stockholding. It is regularly extended to
include additional distributors and is fast
approaching a million titles available in the
Australian market.
BookDatas BookFind, which covers the
whole English language, but is best for
Australian and British books.
Bowkers Global Books in Print, which
covers the English language, but is best for
American titles.

Eve Abbey and Peter Milne, 1986

We also have access to stockholding and

bibliographic information from two US
wholesalers Baker & Taylor and Ingrams
and British wholesaler Gardners, as well as
most publishers websites.

We then had a microfiche reader and each

month received a set of fiche from D W
Thorpe, which gave the latest updated
information for British titles, and a separate
set for Australian titles, and yet another from
Bowker providing American Books in Print.
We also had a microfiche from a number
of suppliers, including Cambridge, Oxford,
Penguin and US wholesaler Baker & Taylor.

Changes have also taken place with our

record of what is in stock or on order. In
the early days, we used stock cards, filled in
manually, a truly laborious process. In 1989,
we began putting our stockholding onto a
point of sale computer system, which has
been improved over the years, and now all
the terminals tell us what is in stock or on
order.

The next move was to CD-ROM, first on one

computer, then networked. This proved
to be much easier on the eyes than the
microfiche and, in theory, faster.
Now this is all done via websites, which has
the advantage of providing some indication
of availability. Most of these websites
are updated daily. Now our information
terminals have five or more browsers open
to enable quick access to information for our
demanding customers. These include:

Jack Winning and his wife Annette

at our 30th Birthday Sale

Turning 40

10

In our early days in the Queen

Victoria Building, we placed a
small advertisement in the literary pages
of the Sydney Morning Herald promoting
particular books to show the type of stock
we carried. When we were at 66 King Street,
we had a small earpiece ad on the top
corner of the Heralds literary section which
simply said All Titles from Penguin, Oxford
and Cambridge, Virago, Picador, Everyman,
Dover. This was quite effective. (The Herald
eventually said theyd like that space back,
thank you, for themselves!) On those old
five-sided street bins we placed ads that
said Observe the Writes of Spring or Been
Booked Lately?. We also used Step-Ads
on the risers of steps at Town Hall Station.
I used to advertise in gardening columns
and magazines on the assumption that
gardeners were usually good people who
liked books!

Our Zonta Meet the Author Events have

been very successful because we have
a guaranteed number of guests from
club members and their word-of-mouth
recommendation is greatly appreciated. Our
Abbeys Card loyalty scheme helps attract a
solid base of loyal customers. And discount
coupons in City of Sydney resident guides
have also been useful.

Of course, the best promotion you can

get is editorial mention, which is not easy
to achieve. We have staged wonderful
Medieval Days in which knights clad in
chain mail re-enacted events from the
Crusades. Yet despite lots of public interest
and lots of fun, we didnt manage to get a
single mention in the papers.

Step-Ads (above)
Been Booked Lately?
Abbeys Bin Ads (right)

Medieval Day knights in battle

Our most expensive promotion continues

to be our monthly newsletters Abbeys
Advocate and Crime Chronicle but even
here the cost of printing and mailing
has become unsustainable, so all new
subscribers receive these via email, which
seems to work okay. We are in the process
of subdividing this monthly information into
specific Alerts which can be delivered more
promptly upon arrival of new titles and also
allow customers to be more selective in the
information they receive. Our website at
www.abbeys.com.au is very popular and we
get many emails from satisfied customers.
We are now in the process of upgrading this
website to make it even easier to use and
to make a much wider selection of books
available in fact over 800,000 titles!

A Retrospective

was wondering what to write

for the almost last chapter in this
series of retrospectives when our buyer for
Penguin books, Greg Waldron, told me that
we will soon receive a new series from the
worlds most famous publisher. (Anyone who
disagrees, be quiet).
The new series is called Popular Penguins
and they will look just like the original
Penguins 73 years ago with a big band of
orange and a plain title. So I felt I should
write about our special connection with
Penguin. Not only did Ron Abbey open,
for Colletts, an all-Penguin Bookshop in
Charing Cross Road in 1962, at various times
we also operated four different Penguin
Bookshops in Sydney: in Rowe Street; Oxford
Street, Paddington; 66 King Street; and 131
York Street until we amalgamated the
stock of this last shop with books from all
other publishers.
We did special historic displays for Penguins
50th and 60th Anniversaries, and for
Penguin Australias 50 years. Ron Abbey, Jim
Thorburn (of Pocket Bookshop fame) and
Ed Campion all lent books for these displays.
Alec Sheppard lent us some wonderful
material about his involvement in getting
Lady Chatterleys Lover published in Australia.
In 1985, I went to a big party in Londons
Festival Hall to celebrate Penguins 50th
Birthday.

Historic Penguin window display Abbeys 1995

Eve with Penguin executives Peter Blake and

Peter Field at a Penguin function at Abbeys, 1996

At one stage, we stocked every single

Penguin title, but nowadays we cant
quite say that, although we do carry most
Penguin Classics, even those titles that only
sell once or twice a year. In the past, Penguin
has reissued some crime Penguins in their
original green jackets, so maybe some time
they will reissue some pale-blue non-fiction
Pelicans?
Is it possible Penguin today does not carry
quite the same cachet? When I lived in New
Zealand and England, a Penguin paperback
was the only book to carry! If you were
going to widen your knowledge, there
surely was a Penguin book for you. There
are 50 titles in the Popular Penguins series
and it is interesting to see the chosen titles,
which include Perfume by Patrick Suskind, In
Cold Blood by Truman Capote, The Classical
World by Robin Lane Fox, My Family and
Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and What is
History? by E H Carr, as well as Run Rabbit Run
by John Updike and Delta
of Venus by Anais Nin. All
only $9.95 and how lovely
to have an orange Penguin
on your shelves!

11

A Retrospective

his is the last instalment of

our historical memories of
40 years of bookselling in Sydney. Peter
Milne suggested I mention a few of
the many interesting events and book
launches we have held in the shop over
the years. Peter will mention some of the
big crime events, including P D James,
when so many people turned up we
needed to invest in a sound system so
everyone could hear! The busiest time
was during our 25th birthday in 1993
when we had a series of lunchtime and
early evening seminars arranged for us
by Dulcie Stretton. There were 26 authors
involved, including Rodney Hall, Kel
Richards, Marele Day, Vikram Seth, Joanna
Trollope, James Gleick, Colin Wilson and
Carol Shields. When Peter Carey won the
Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda, he sat
on the steps leading up to Language
Book Centre and took part in a lively
conversation with Elizabeth Riddell, who
was probably better known as a journalist,
but was also a highly regarded poet.
Neville Wran came to launch a book by
that rare thing, a Labor MP for Manly.
Justice Michael Kirby, a man who loves
words, came to launch a new edition of
The Chambers English Dictionary.

12

Peter Carey and Eve in 1988,

the year Oscar and Lucinda won the Booker Prize

Author Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins came. Charles Birch

came when he won the Templeton Prize in
1995. Gerard Henderson, Tim Bowden, Tim
Flannery, David Ireland, Anne Deveson,
Stephanie Dowrick and Maggie Alderton all
came. Even Gough and Margaret Whitlam
came. Paul Barry came to sign copies of
Going for Broke.
It is fun being a bookseller in Sydney. All
sorts of interesting people come through
our doors. They meet their friends here
and check out whats new in the world of
books. And with over 200 metres of shelves
displaying New Titles, there is always a great
temptation to buy another good book!
Eve Abbey

Abbeys first bank deposit $357

Abbeys Story

Queen Victoria Building

Bookshop in Bathurst Street at a site where
Alec Sheppard and Wally Summons had
previously had a bookshop.
We also had a section called Religion
and Mythology! This was simply to utilise
available space, but it did arouse a certain
amount of antagonism.

ne day in May 2008, Chris Scott,

who has worked for us for many
years, gave me a copy of Isaac Asimovs
The Rest of the Robots in the Panther Science
Fiction series. He thought I would be
interested in this particular copy of the
book. And indeed I was. It was a copy of the
first edition published in 1968 by Granada
Publishing. And on the back was a price
sticker from Abbeys Bookshop, 477 George
Street, Sydney, the shop we opened in the
Queen Victoria Building in 1969. The price
was $1.60c. Those were the days!
This reminded me of our old stock control
system, which consisted of changing the
colour of price stickers on books every three
months, and changing a letter on the pricesticker gun every month. By looking at the
colours, you could quickly see which books
were not selling, and by checking the letter,
you had an even better idea.
We found we were doing so well selling
Science Fiction books that Ron decided to
open a specialist shop for Science Fiction
and Fantasy. I was overseas at a Cambridge
Summer School and came home to find
yet another new bookshop! Not the last,
by any means. This was the first Galaxy

Robert Adamson, in a poetry review for the

Sydney Morning Herald, said I cant mention
the name of the best poetry bookshop in
Sydney, but its within spitting distance of
the Town Hall. While giving some lectures
at the WEA, he also kept mentioning The
Cantos of Ezra Pound, which promptly
became one of our bestsellers for a while.
The floors were covered with straw matting,
which smelt rather nice. We had a number
of large tables for remainders at discounted
prices, which also provided a lot of useful
storage space underneath for reserve stock.
We bought these tables from Coopers
Corner in Camperdown, which was a good
source of second-hand shop fittings.
Our time in the Queen Victoria Building
were very happy years.

13

Turning 40

Oxford & Cambridge

Bookshop

he original idea for a

bookshop stocking all of the
titles of Oxford University Press came from
Jim Walker, who previously worked for Faber,
but was at that time working for Oxford
University Press. It was arranged that we
would receive a single copy of every book
available from the Australian warehouse,
plus sample copies of some other titles
deemed likely to sell, but usually only
sold on indent ie. on order from England.
These books came from the samples sent
to the warehouse and were supplied to us

Oxford Bookshop at 66 King Street, 1978

on a consignment basis ie. we didnt pay

for them until we had sold them. We did
carry more than one copy of some titles,
of course, but we identified the original
consignment copy with a C. On a foolscap
clipboard we wrote down the author, title,
format and designation (either C or A copy)
as well as price. As the shop was not exactly
buzzing all day, this was quite easily done.

14

Before too long, Cambridge University

Press also joined in this opportunity to
show their books to the reading public,
so we could now offer titles from both
Oxford and Cambridge. It really was a winwin situation because many of the books
were not only very expensive, but also of
very limited interest, so were unlikely to be
ordered by a bookseller trying to maintain
high stock turnover. For instance, Abbeys
carries all the volumes of The Cambridge
Ancient History and The Cambridge History
of China, books that are priced from $300
to $500 and would otherwise be very
difficult to justify stocking. This consignment
arrangement with Cambridge University
Press has continued to this day (with some
modifications). We think this is to our mutual
advantage and to the benefit of readers. I
remember there was a hugely successful
TV documentary about China some time in
the 80s. The documentary-maker bought
all of his copies of Needhams Science and
Civilisation in China at Abbeys. It must be
marvellous for a history buff to walk into
Abbeys and know that these famous,
irreplaceable books are there for them
to browse or buy immediately. We also
stock The Cambridge History of Africa, The
Cambridge History of Ancient China, The New
Cambridge History of India, The Cambridge
History of Judaism and The Cambridge History
of Iran.

Abbeys Story
There was a time when McGraw-Hill
was also interested in establishing a
consignment arrangement, but the famous
Denis Hinton, who was the prime mover,
died at that time, and the idea also died.
Initially the Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop
was at 66 King Street, next to Penguin
Bookshop. In 1984, when Abbeys had to
move out of the Queen Victoria Building,
which was being renovated by Ipoh
Gardens into the wonderful shopping
centre it is today, we squeezed the
shop onto the mezzanine level at
King Street (previously for office staff
only) and put Abbeys into the space
vacated on the ground floor.
In 1986, we moved Abbeys, Penguin
Bookshop, Oxford & Cambridge
Bookshop and Language Book
Centre into our present premises
at 131 York Street, still maintaining
them as separate shops until 1992.
I remember Geoffrey Cass, the big
chief of Cambridge University Press
(he was known as God), came to visit on his
way back to London. He was enormously
impressed with our Oxford & Cambridge
Bookshop and exclaimed why cant we
have something like this in Cambridge! I
suggested all he needed was a bookseller
whom he could trust to keep the system
going. However, he went one better and the
Press itself opened a bookshop containing
only Cambridge University Press titles right
in the centre of Cambridge, opposite Kings
College. Perhaps some booksellers were
unhappy, but Im sure CUP was not. I visited
this shop several times when attending the
Cambridge Summer School and felt secretly
pleased that the busy shop was a spin-off
from Abbeys.

Before the first shipment of stock arrived, I

went through the Oxford and Cambridge
catalogues and marked the sections in
which each title would be shelved, so we
could check that we had enough shelf
space. It was a real learning curve. Id never
heard of monocotyledons or dicotyledons
(botanical terms). Working in a bookshop is
a quick education. It might be superficial,
but it comes in handy when bluffing!

66 King Street, home to Abbeys from 1983 to 1986

(now Red Eye Records)

At 131 York Street in 1992, we eventually

combined the Oxford University Press
and Cambridge University Press titles with
the books from other publishers, but still
continue to offer many slow-selling titles
as part of our goal to be a world-class
bookseller.

15

Turning 40

Its time for

Henry
Lawsons
Bookshop
W

hen we opened Henry Lawsons

Bookshop in 1973, it was
definitely a case of Its Time! The Whitlam
Government had just been voted in and
there was great nationalistic enthusiasm, as
well as historical nostalgia. We had this idea
that Australian literature deserved much
better support, so we set up Henry Lawsons
Bookshop, which only sold books about
Australia and the Pacific. David McPhee,
author of The Observer Book of Australian
Snakes, was Manager. We felt that specialist
bookshops were the way to go. That is, we
would have separate shops, each choosing
most of their stock from a certain area, such
as Galaxy Bookshop for Science Fiction
and Fantasy, Centrepoint Bookshop for
arty young things around town, City Lights
Bookshop for art students and counterculture, as well as the two little shops we
had for Penguin books only. Small but
beautiful!

16

When we first set about planning Henry

Lawsons Bookshop in the Royal Arcade
beneath the Hilton Hotel, we were invited to
a meeting of prospective tenants. It seemed
that Ron and I were given a certain amount
of deference, which puzzled us. We soon
realised it was because of our name badges.

The company overseeing the building of

the Hilton Hotel and the replacement Royal
Arcade was The Abbey Group, which I think
is part of the Royal Estate. But we were just
another tenant like everyone else.
Part of the deal was that the bookshop
would be a sub-newsagency and supply the
newspapers for the Hilton Hotel above. This
entailed stocking and manning a tiny kiosk
up in the foyer of the hotel. The newsagency
turned out to be a lot of work for very
little profit. The kiosk mainly supplied the
employees of the various shops struggling
in the foyer, so we never added the usual $1
markup which is commonplace for kiosks
these days. When the Hilton was bombed,
Peter Milne remembers having to take the
afternoons supply of newspapers to the
kiosk from Abbeys across the road, watched
very closely by a large group of security
guards.
We employed a firm of designers to fit
out Henry Lawsons and bought some
interesting memorabilia for decoration.

Abbeys Story
A gorgeous Federation jardinire, which
now sits in my pantry, was placed on the
baize-covered central display area and filled
with a large palm. We had lots of framed
photographs and postcards and old notices.
It was lovely. The shelving was all arched
timber, beautiful but greatly flawed. Books
displayed face out leant against each other,
so when a book on the left hand side was
picked up, the book on the right hand side
fell down. We ended up fitting a backing
board into every shelf.
The other design flaw was the shops
location itself. There were five ways through
the Royal Arcade from Pitt Street to George
Street two arms to the arcade on two
levels, plus you could walk through the foyer
of the hotel so as tenants we could only
expect one in five pedestrians to pass our
door!
The shop next to us on opening day was
owned by a Greek couple selling the most
delicious handmade ice-cream and gelato.
They invited us to join them in throwing raw
eggs onto the floor of their shop, for good
luck. They didnt last there very long.

We managed to hold out for almost five

years. It was an absolutely gorgeous shop,
which everyone would enter and exclaim
how lovely it all was, but they would all too
often walk out without buying anything!
In August 1978, we dismantled all those
beautiful shelves and re-erected them at
127 York Street. The shop was across the
entry foyer from Language Book Centre,
which we had taken over from Mrs Irom
and had previously been called the E F & G
Bookshop, which stood for English, Foreign
& General, or was it English, French and
German?
Although this was a more successful site,
the shop was never profitable. We resigned
ourselves to calling it our version of
Vanity Bookselling (as distinct from Vanity
Publishing), but we did our very best. In
October 1981, Henry Lawsons Bookshop
was awarded the third Michael Zifcak Medal
by the National Book Council to honour
professional excellence in book promotion.
We sold Henry Lawsons in 1984. The new
owners did no better than us and the shop
soon closed. Although I safely held the
National Book Council medal, I had to buy
the framed certificate awarded with it when
the shop fittings were auctioned because it
was screwed onto the end of one of those
beautiful fittings!
It was at Henry Lawsons that we held the
first Meet the Author Evening in 1982. I had
that year been invited by Hilarie Lindsay
to join Zonta Club of Sydney, a womens
service club. I had met Dr Ivor Indyck at
one of the dinners for the Premiers Literary
Award and he had suggested that local
authors were seldom given personal
acknowledgement and that readers were
very keen to meet authors whose books
they had read.

17

Turning 40
Unlike today, there were few public events
for readers to meet authors. I had the idea
that instead of a book launch for a particular
book (which we did do often, but usually
only invited journalists and friends of the
author), we could have a cordial evening
where a number of authors came to chat to
readers and perhaps sign and sell copies of
their books not necessarily new books.
I planned to charge people to come (to
cover the cost of catering) and donate 10%
of the sales made on the evening to the
current project of the Zonta Club. I think
that first year it was for a scholarship at
Sydney University for a female studying
aeronautical engineering. It was called the
Amelia Earhart Scholarship. We were assured
of an audience, firstly because it was a
new thing to meet a group of authors, and
secondly by choosing the last Wednesday
in November, it would give busy people
an opportunity to buy some Christmas
presents, while also raising funds for their
project. A guaranteed crowd was a big asset.

As an aside, I can remember having a small

signing session in Henry Lawsons for a
rather famous Australian historian. Only
three people turned up, so I arranged for
various staff members from Abbeys to arrive
at intervals to talk to the author. Authors will
identify with this awful dilemma.
The Zonta Meet the Author Evening has
continued, interrupted only for a couple of
years when I briefly retired, and this year
will be our 25th Annual Event. Originally
the authors were sometimes more pleased
than their fans. They had an opportunity
to meet fellow authors and gossip and
compare notes. Some of the authors who
have been our guests over the years are
Anna Funder, Kate Grenville, David Ireland,
Gough and Margaret Whitlam, Monica
Attard, Tim Bowden, Ian Moffitt, Peter Robb,
Peter Skrzynecki, Louis Nowra, Mandy Sayer,
Gabrielle Lord, Lucinda Holdforth, Sue
Woolfe, Anne Whitehead, Nancy Phelan,
Glenda Adams, Gerard Windsor and Tim
Flannery.

Abbeys at Centrepoint

1973
18

was a year full of enthusiasm.

Having had such fun
opening Henry Lawsons Bookshop in the
new Royal Arcade underneath the new
Hilton Hotel, we decided to take up an
offer of space in the exciting new shopping
complex called Centrepoint, beneath the
triumphant tower that still stands out on the
city skyline today. Salesmen trying to find
tenants for new space seemed to know that
Ron Abbey was full of ideas and a bookshop
was a desirable tenant, so we were often

approached with tempting offers.

However, this one was not a good idea!
The shop was to stock art books, books
on fashion and decorative arts, film and
architecture, as well as fiction. All in all,
beautiful books for the beautiful people we
envisioned shopping at Centrepoint. We
took a huge unencumbered space on the
mezzanine level of Centrepoint. I think there
is a large caf there now. Unencumbered is
important because pillars dictate where you
can set your rows of shelving in a bookshop.

Abbeys Story
The initial plan for our level was for
escalators to offload shoppers at one
end and require them to walk around the
escalator to proceed to the next level. This
was common practice to ensure shoppers
passed all the shop fronts. However, this
did not happen and shoppers were able
to just keep on going up. Unless they were
dedicated book buyers, they just didnt get
off the escalator.
The front of the shop was all glass, so it was
a big job to decorate for a window display.
Eventually Ron had the idea to paint over
the entire window with a psychedelic
surreal mural. We paid a large sum of money
to a young artist who did this beautifully,
then went off to enjoy a nice long holiday
in the sun in Fiji. Some time later, we paid
a school friend of Janes to scrape it all off
with a razor blade. A fashionable shopping
centre was simply not the right place for
a specialist bookshop, no matter how
fashionable we thought our stock.
There was one small advantage. From
1975 to 1977, Ron Abbey was a very active
President of the Australian Booksellers
Association, so he set up an office in
some of the spare space in Centrepoint
Bookshop for himself and his sister Jean,
who was his secretary and also worked in
the bookshop. She has horror memories of
keeping a basket of small change handy to
accommodate endless requests for coins for
nearby telephones.
I attended to the advertising for all shops,
but found it very difficult to advertise
Centrepoint. It was virtually impossible to
explain to people how to find us. There
were countless different ways to enter the
building and reach the mezzanine. In fact, I
sometimes got lost myself!

We only lasted four years. Centrepoint

Bookshop closed on 30 June 1977, but
some of the very well-made fixtures
travelled further with us on our bookselling
adventures. In fact, Peter Milnes current
desk here at 131 York Street is part of the
counter from Centrepoint Bookshop. Thats
over 30 years later. Waste not, want not!

o be a bookseller for 40 years

in a great city is something to
celebrate. There have been some tough
times, but Abbeys Bookshop is now an
institution and I am proud to be part of a
great team of booksellers, led especially by
Peter Milne and Jack Winning. Language
Book Centre, established in 1976, must
be the most comprehensive language
bookshop in the world. Galaxy Bookshop,
established in 1975, is the oldest and largest
science fiction bookshop in Australia.
These are all part of our goal to offer a
deep range of books to our customers
something more than the latest bestsellers
in a friendly atmosphere. This will continue
to be the goal of the wonderful team of
booksellers at Abbeys, Language Book
Centre and Galaxy Bookshop led by Alan
Abbey, Adrian Hardingham, David Hall,
Jacqui Rychner and Adam Tall.
2009 will see the installation of a new
computer system and expanded web
services. There will always be careful and
constant change in bookselling at Abbeys.
Eve Abbey

19

Turning 40

Abbeys
by Peter Milne
It is amazing to look back over 40 years and
reflect on the changes in our Crime section
at Abbeys. When I
joined the company
in 1971, the amount
of space devoted to
Crime was only half a
bay (six shelves); the
other half of the bay
was Science Fiction.
It was a big day when
Crime and SF were
given a whole bay
each! In 1975, we
made the momentous
decision to open
Galaxy Bookshop,
devoted exclusively
to Science Fiction.
Naturally the extra
space created in Abbeys went to Crime,
although only after much discussion.

Over the years, as we moved from George

Street to King Street to York Street, our
Crime section gradually grew. Today we
have over 6,000 titles in 25 bays 5 bays
for New Titles, 16 for Modern Crime, 2 for
Historical Crime, 1 for Crime Non-Fiction and
1 for Australian Crime and Anthologies.

20

In the early years at 477 George Street in

the QVB, for the information of customers,
I started creating checklists for individual

authors, listing their complete works. In

1984, after we moved to 66 King Street, I
decided it would be
more informative
to produce a
newsletter, and so
in August of that
year we produced
the first issue of
Crime Chronicle.
It was printed on
a single, doublesided foolscap
page.
From this small
beginning, it grew
and grew like Topsy,
helped initially by
Professor Stephen
Knight, then crime reviewer for the Sydney
Morning Herald, who gave it a mention in
his column. Crime Chronicle soon became
a double-sided A4 sheet, folded in half and
printed in different colours, before growing
to four A4 pages in May 1994, then 8 pages
in June 1996. In November 1998, it finally
matured to 12 pages, the size it remains
today - we figure theres a limit to how much
information you can absorb! By December
of this year, 24 years and many thousands
of books after its inauspicious start, Crime
Chronicle will reach issue number 275!

Crime Scene
Over the years, I have done crime reviews
on radio with Tony Barber (a friend from my
Naval College days) on 2KY, and also with
Kel Richards, who always gave our Crime
section a good plug on his programme
on 2GB. Radio can be a hazard, however,
especially if talkback is allowed. Theres
always the possibility that someone will ask
a detailed question about a book youve
only skimmed through. This didnt happen
often, but it did happen a couple of times,
much to my mortification!

was much improved. It was divided into

three parts: Fiction, Non-Fiction and a list
of characters together with their authors/
creators. We also produced two Historical
Fiction catalogues, which included Historical
Crime, the last of which came out in 1995.
Today, most of the information provided by
these types of publications can be accessed
online, if you know where to look, and
nearly all authors have their own websites.

We have discovered over the years that our

shop isnt really geared for author events,
primarily as we dont have a suitable space
In 1985, I was asked by many customers to
to hold them. However, we have held some
bring out a complete list of available Crime
events over the past
titles, so I earnestly set
40 years that have
to work. Remember
attracted quite large
this was in the days
numbers of people.
before computers and
The first event that
the internet, so it was
proved very popular
difficult for people to
was for P D James, who
easily access this type
attracted a crowd of
of information. After an
over 250. We ended
enormous amount of
up having to move
time and effort spent
our New Titles fixtures
researching and typing
into the forecourt
(on a typewriter!),
to accommodate
our first Crime & Spy
everyone! The next
Catalogue came out in
time we hosted P D
October 1985. It was
James, we held the
very well received,
event in the nearby
which was greatly
Bowlers Club, and again
encouraging. I was so
Our final hardcopy Crime Catalogue
attracted a large crowd.
encouraged, in fact, that
by March 1987 I had
Another big in-store event was for Janet
produced a second edition. Despite having
Evanovich. When we promoted this, we
the first edition as a base, it was still a huge
asked people to RSVP to assist with catering.
amount of work and typing. Less than two
The response indicated we would have
years had passed since issue one, yet the
around 110 people. However, unbeknown
size of the catalogue had nearly doubled
to us, the event had been mentioned in a
from 24 pages to 44 pages.
popular womens magazine, and Janet had
also mentioned it in a radio interview and
In 1993, I started work on the third and final
edition. This was a much more sophisticated publicised it on her website. The result was
that 340 people turned up and we were
version than the previous two editions as
packed to the rafters!
it was done on computer and the layout

21

Turning 40
Our catering was stretched to the limit
as was our stock of her books but we
all enjoyed a very entertaining Saturday
afternoon.
Another celebration which had an
unexpected response was a window display
we did at 477 George Street to celebrate
the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and
in particular Sherlock Holmes. The window
was decorated with books, original copies
of Strand Magazine (kindly loaned by Philip
Cornell, a Holmes aficionado), many photos,
a dead body covered by a bloodstained
sheet (the blood was mine), plus a noose,
an ugly looking knife and a starting pistol
(which didnt work, I might add). We ended
up getting a visit from the police, who
seized the pistol! I
left a note in its place
saying it had been
taken by police for
evidence.

22

with a playlet put on by the Genesians,

competitions and special displays of Agatha
Christie titles, including many first editions,
and even an antique desk and 1920s
typewriter. The weekend was a great success
with over 100 people in attendance, which
certainly could not have been achieved
without the indefatigable Dulcie Stretton,
who really put it all together.

One of the growth areas that has interested

me over the years is the rise of Historical
Crime. It probably started with Ellis Peters
and her Brother Cadfael series (most of
which are still in print), starting with A Morbid
Taste for Bones in 1977. All of these are set in
medieval England during the reign of King
Stephen. Since then we have had mysteries
set in Ancient Greece
Margaret Doody;
Ancient Egypt
Paul Doherty, Lynda
Robinson and Nick
Drake; Ancient Rome
Lindsey Davis,
We also did a
Paul Doherty, John
number of events in
Maddox Roberts,
conjunction with the
Rosemary Rowe,
Sydney Mechanics
Steven Saylor, Marilyn
School of Arts Library,
Todd and David
which saw Barry
Peter Milne at Dorothy L Sayers centenary
Wishart. Medieval
Maitland at the SMSA
mystery authors include Maureen Ash
premises, and Minette Walters and Jill Paton
(13thC), Alys Clare (12thC), Margaret Frazer
Walsh at the State Library. Other authors we
(15thC), Susanna Gregory (14thC), Michael
have hosted in-store include Ruth Rendell,
Jecks (14thC), Bernard Knight (12thC), I J
Jonathan & Faye Kellerman, Lisa Scottoline,
Parker (11thC Japan), Candace Robb (14thC),
Kinky Friedman, Andrew Vachss, Kerry
Kate Sedley (15thC), Peter Tremayne (7thC
Greenwood, Alexander McCall Smith, Rhys
Ireland) and Robert van Gulik (7thC China).
Bowen and Ian Rankin.
Modern historical authors include Laurie
King, Carole Nelson Douglas, Barrie Roberts
Over the years, we have attempted a
and Brian Freemantle (all 19thC Holmesiana),
couple of big celebrations. The first was
Boris Akunin (19thC Russia), Bruce Alexander
in 1990 when, along with the late Dulcie
(18thC), Stephanie Barron (19thC), Carrie
Stretton and the Fairmont Hotel, we held
Bebris (19thC), Emily Brightwell (19thC),
a lavish weekend party at the Fairmont in
David Dickinson (Edwardian), Jason
Leura to celebrate the centenary of Agatha
Goodwin (19thC Turkey), Karen Harper
Christies birth. There was a formal dinner

Crime Scene
(16thC), Claude Izner (19thC France), Deryn
Lake (18thC), Clyde Linsley (19thC USA),
Edward Marston (17thC), R N Morris (19thC
Russia), Robin Paige (19thC), Anne Perry
(19thC), Elizabeth Peters (19thC Egypt) and
Victoria Thompson (19thC USA), to mention
but a few! (Note: if no country is mentioned
above, it is UK). So whatever your favourite
historical period, youre bound to find a
mystery to suit your interests. In response
to this phenomenal growth, we established
a separate Historical Crime section so
devotees could find all their desires in one
place.
One of the most pleasing changes in the
crime scene over the past 40 years has been
the extraordinary growth of Australian crime
fiction. There has always been Australianauthored crime, but little of it was published
in Australia. Jon Cleary started his Scobie
Malone series in 1966 and Charlotte Jay
won the first Edgar Allan Poe Award for
Beat Not the Bones, edging out Raymond
Chandler. Both these authors were originally
published in the UK. There was also Peter
Carter Brown and Larry Kent, pulp fiction
authors published by Horwitz with paper
covers, which I must say I devoured part of
my misspent youth, no doubt.
However the real rebirth came with the
publication of The Dying Trade by Peter
Corris, published by McGraw Hill (an
educational publisher) in hardback in 1980.
Australian publishers started to take notice
of Australian crime writers. The 80s and 90s
saw a blossoming of our writers, including
Jessica Rowe and Marele Day (winner of a
Private Eye Writers of America Award). Some
authors came and went as publishers tried
to find the most saleable styles and genres.
One that I regretted passing was Martin
Long with his historical series set in 19th
century Sydney only three were published,
but they were really great.

Australian crime writing today is in a very

healthy state with new authors like Leah
Giarratano, Katherine Howell, Kathryn
Fox, Leigh Redhead, Michael Robotham
and Michael MacConnell joining more
established authors like Kerry Greenwood,
Peter Corris, Shane Maloney, Gabrielle Lord,
Garry Disher, Barry Maitland and Peter
Temple, keeping the genre at the forefront
of the public mind.
Customers have been behind many of the
innovations that have occurred over the
years, both in regard to our stockholding
and the layout of Crime Chronicle. For
instance, in response to requests from
customers who wanted to know the style
of each title (eg. police procedural, private
eye, cosy, mystery, etc), we devised a system
of coding for Crime Chronicle to denote
the sub-genre. Later we also added the
authors nationality, which was perceived
as important by some who preferred not to
read American crime novels, for example.
To me, one of the saddest things in crime
has been the disappearance of many great
crime writers from the past who have gone
out of print or out of fashion and are thus
not available to modern readers unless
they scour second-hand dealers. I still enjoy
many of the earlier crime writers in my own
collection as I read and re-read them.
Peter Milne

23

40 Memories

Lifes a beach Eve, circa 1968

ere are more than forty memories from customers,

families and staff. Ian M Johnstone of Armidale has
two entries first he sent the prose entry, but then I asked him, for
old times sake, for one in Light Verse. Over the years, he has sent me
many verses, usually amusing and always with a moral. He was the
first customer to alert us to Aldo Leopolds Sand Almanac, rural prose
which we still carry in the Environment section. We were probably
the first bookshop to have a designated Environment section.
I wish I could find some of the amusing letters that were sent to
me by Afferbeck Lauder (otherwise Alistair Morison), author of the
famous book Let Stalk Strine. I have a nice collection of letters from
authors and customers that may one day end up in the State Library.
I hope you enjoy this collection of memories, but first enjoy this little
piece sent to me by Colonel Alec Sheppard when he was President
of the Australian Booksellers Association many years ago:
A Bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of
the hungry, very often the binder-up of wounds. There he sits
surrounded by a thousand minds, all done up neatly in cardboard
cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds,
all sorts and conditions, and there come into him other minds,
hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best
of his ability he satisfies them all. Its a great vocation. His life is one of
wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there is no death
in a booksellers shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit behind his
back, Shakespeare is on his right hand, Shelley on his left. Writers are
a very queer lot, but booksellers are the salt of the earth.
I might add to this that booksellers must have a sense of cultural and
social service, as well as a sense of business enterprise.

24

Eve Abbey

Our Customers
A Tall Story
by Christopher Tome
Early in the 1980s, I made my first visit to
Abbeys Bookshop. I dont remember the
exact location. And I really just went into
the shop to fill in some time. I had to meet
a friend in an hour and thought Id just
browse.
As I walked along the rows of books, I
noticed some of them stacked up very high,
up above the shelves. Im quite tall (189
cm) and these books were beyond my easy
reach. However, I noticed that one of the
books was Brian Lovemans Chile: The Legacy
of Hispanic Capitalism, published by Oxford
University Press. I was planning my first trip
to South America and had been looking for
Lovemans book, without success, for some
months.
I stood on my tiptoes and managed to get
the book down from its high location. I
looked at the price and it was outrageously
expensive. But after checking my wallet
(no credit cards in those days), I decided I
could go without eating for a few days and
proceeded to the sales counter with the
book.
The diminutive shop assistant looked at me
with some alarm, before she said I cant sell
you that book, Im sorry.
Why not?
Its reserved for university students.
I am a university student.

No.
Well then Im sorry, but you cant buy it.
It was there on the shelves. There was no
sign to say it was reserved. As far as Im
concerned, its available to anyone who
wants it, and I want it.
Its only because youre so tall. I put it up
high so a normal-sized person wouldnt
even know it was there. Im not going to
let you buy it. If you werent so tall, you
wouldnt even know we had it.
I dont think my height should have
anything to do with it. I want to buy the
book.
Ill have to consult Mrs Abbey.
She then proceeded to phone Mrs
Abbey. I could hear only one end of the
conversation, which included the muchrepeated But hes just so tall. However, Mrs
Abbey clearly shared my view and, with
exceeding ill-grace, I was permitted to part
with a great wad of money and leave with
Lovemans book tucked under my arm.
Im happy to say Ive shopped at Abbeys
ever since. The quality of the collection,
especially on Latin America, is superb. I
recently purchased the third edition of
Lovemans still outstanding book from
Abbeys and Im still benefiting from his
insights into that beautiful country on my
annual visits there.

In the Latin American program at the

University of New South Wales?

25

40 Memories
From Advanis to Abbeys
by Shefali Rovik
In celebration of Abbeys XLth Birthday,
I wanted to say thank you for the special
role Abbeys has played in my life. My
brother and I were 14 and 12 when we
came to Australia from India in late 1967.
Uncle Ram Advanis Bookshop had been
a part of our growing up in Lucknow.
Much of missing India was bound up
with finding no replacement bookshop.
Then our grandmother introduced us to
the joys of the City of Sydney Library and
the wonderful librarians in the old Queen
Victorian Building, so when Abbeys opened
in 1968, it became our particular delight.
Memory plays tricks, but in those early
years Abbeys seemed to have marvellously
enthusiastic young staff who made the
finding and discussion of books to buy or
be looked at their particular delight, as they
scaled tall ladders to look for them. Journeys
with Freya Stark, Herodotus, Aeschylus,
Sophocles or Euripides were passionately
discussed and enjoyed. Medieval Arab and

26
Abbeys in the QVB, 1968

European history and literature unfolded in

a variety of editions.
Returning to Australia after years away,
Abbeys was like finding an old friend (who
had moved house to York St). There was
the gracious Adelaide and her phenomenal
ability to know exactly where to find
the most unusual titles, the joyousness
of discussing Rosemary Wells and her
illustrations with Eve, and Eves incredible
memory for the joys of Trotternama and
other delights.
It has never been difficult to know why one
goes back to a favourite bookshop: it is that
unique opportunity to share a love of books
with the people within it. You above all have
provided that continuity over all those forty
years and I cannot adequately say how very
much it is treasured.
Fondest love and salaams from a very great
fan.

Our Customers
Too Many Books are Never Enough
by Lowell McEncroe
When I was a little girl (many years ago
now), my mother and father instilled in me
a love of reading and books. Amongst all
the presents I received as a child, I always
remember my books, and have loved
reading and books ever since those longago childhood days.
It is over 20 years now since I walked into
a bookshop in King Street, Sydney called
Abbeys. I was on the track of books by P
G Wodehouse, and when tracking down
a book, my methods are akin to those of a
well-trained bloodhound.
Four good things happened to me that
day. One, I found Abbeys Bookshop. Two,
I met the wonderful Eve Abbey and Peter
Milne. Three, I placed an order for as many
hardbacks of P G Wodehouse as it was
possible to obtain. Four, I discovered the
Crime and Mystery section.
My P G Wodehouse books remain in
my book collection to this day. With the
passing of the years and the world seeming
to become more troubled, I find Evelyn
Waughs quotation about P G Wodehouse
more meaningful: Mr Wodehouses idyllic
world can never stale. He will continue to
release future generations from captivity

that may be more irksome than our own.

He has made a world for us to live in and
delight in.
Over the years, I have bought many
wonderful books from Abbeys that have
given, and continue to give, me countless
hours of pleasure. I look forward to many
more years of my continuing association
with Abbeys Bookshop and the excellent
staff whose acquaintance I have made
over the years, even if at times my husband
threatens me with eviction if I bring any
more books into the house. But a threat like
that means nothing to a booklover and I
continue merrily on my book-buying way.

Books are things

where things are
explained to you;
life is where
things arent.

Julian Barnes,
Flauberts Parrot

27

40 Memories
Only at Abbeys
by Richard Groves
Abbeys is my interior decorator of choice
because it has a huge selection of multicoloured dust jackets which cast such a
pleasant shadow in candlelight. One of the
great pleasures in life is letting the tip of
the finger gently stroke the inside flap of
the dust jacket before flipping it over and
exposing the spine beneath, caressed with
gold lettering.
I cannot recall my first expedition to
Abbeys, but I do remember vividly the alltoo-brief Oxford and Cambridge venture.
The musty yellow and ochre jackets of the
Clarendon editions belied the subversive
words encompassed within those bland
exteriors.
The multi-volumed sets of Boswells Life of
Johnson and John Evelyns Diaries escaped
me in my student days. Alas, these sets
seem cheap in todays market, but they
taught me that its better to pay full price for
a book to enjoy over a lifetime rather than a
heavily discounted volume soon sacrificed
at the altar of ever diminishing space and
either cast into the second-hand market or
subjected to that most ignominious of fates:
the school fair book stall.

28

For me, Abbeys is special orders. I rarely

make a spontaneous purchase from its
bookshelves because long ago I realised I
needed a mechanism to control the entry
of books into my library. So I erected a
barrier with one country and one century
as the checkpoint. Peter Milne was enlisted
as my border patrol. He lent me American
and English university press catalogues,
encased in plain brown paper envelopes.
I would take these guilty pleasures home

and luxuriate in the wonderfully arcane

subject matters. Then in a fit of exhilaration, I
submitted an order overseas.
Happily, there are many guerrilla assaults on
the bookshelves, such as the time I placed
an order for The Complete Sagas of Icelanders,
sure that I would be the only person to have
the wit to even know about such things. I
was crestfallen when David Hall informed
me that he had ordered a set some months
previously.
Finally, the climax of the Abbeys moment
was, and still is, placing the new purchase
in its rightful place on my bookshelf. Old
friends reluctantly make way for the upstart
arrivals, knowing that these newcomers will
be subjected to the same callous process at
a later time.
When I was much younger, I worked behind
the counter at Abbeys for a couple of
weeks, replete with ballpoint pen dangling
from a leather lariat. Ron would make sure
we printed a list from the cash register every
hour to determine the turnover. He and
Eve told me horror tales of an uncivilised
tribe who described books by subject and
colour. Now, as I get older, I find myself in
thattwilight zone and often describe books
by colour and size.
In doing so, I have
entered my own calm
Jamesian (M R of
course) nightmare of
book-buying, but
only at Abbeys.

Our Customers
Memories of Keneally
by Edmund Campion
Strolling into Abbeys, it is a delight to
find on the shelves a new edition of Tom
Keneallys Miles Franklin winner, Three Cheers
for the Paraclete. No surprise: the ads for the
new Random House Vintage Classics series,
of which Toms novel is in the front line,
proclaimed that you would find them in all
good bookshops, so of course they are in
Abbeys.
But its 40 years since this novel won the
Miles Franklin Award and I wonder what a
new generation will make of it. Back then,
in 1968, we were entranced with identifying
the real-life people who gave Tom the
models for his novels characters. Even the
locale was identifiable as that Irish Gothic
pile on the headland looming over Manly
beach St Patricks seminary, for wouldbe priests. (No longer so, it has become
a hospitality college; founded to educate
the sons of publicans, it now educates
publicans).
At the centre of Keneallys story, blazing
on every page and threatening to pull the
novel out of shape, is one of the professors,
Dr Costello. A meaty man with a leonine
head, he has a trademark adenoidal snort, a
sinusitic rumble as Keneally calls it, meant
to sound male and harsh and mastering.
Costello is a masterful man, self-confident
and sure of himself, whether he is talking
about modern art, or bullying an intellectual
nun, or disparaging psychiatry.
To anyone who was there, the model for
Costello was our professor of theology,
Thomas Muldoon. A big man, florid and
purse-lipped, he had a fruity accent that he
picked up as a student in Rome. Self-doubt

was foreign to him and he had negative

opinions on much of the 20th century. As
a lecturer, he was robust and theatrical, a
style he transferred to his ministry when he
became, inevitably, a bishop. Now forgotten,
his image is preserved in Keneallys Dr
Costello.
Todays readers of this novel may find more
interesting another of the Manly professors,
Dr Maurice Egan. A petite, milky-faced,
short-back-and-sides man with precise
enunciation and finical hand gestures, he
is modelled on a real-life canon lawyer,
Thomas Connolly. A bit of a eunuch, Maurice
Egan is swept up into catastrophe when
he falls in love. Not that he is a philanderer;
but the experience transforms him into a
complex personality, the most compelling
in the book.
In falling from grace,
Egan pulls down with
him the man who
is formally at the
centre of the novel,
James Maitland,
history professor. A
cardboard radical,
Maitland does
not seem to have
been based on anyone at Manly,
but once or twice Keneally identified me
as his partial model. For me, the oddest
thing about Maitland is that although he
gives seven lectures a week in his first year
teaching at Manly, he never needs to spend
time preparing them. A fortunate life! Well,
it is a novel, remember, not a biographical
dictionary.

29

40 Memories
A New Era in Bookselling
by Michael Wilding
The opening of Abbeys was the opening
of an era. 1968. I returned to Australia to
find that Abbeys was the place that all
the writers were talking about. Amidst the
inadequate sameness of the old colonial
bookstores, Abbeys was a site of excitement
and discovery. Suddenly there it was, with
a range of hitherto inaccessible literary
treasures recent American avant-garde
remainders, direct imports from the United
Kingdom of the rarer literary titles, smallpress treasures, the exotic and esoteric. It
attracted the poets like wasps to a sugar
press, not something Ron or Eve Abbey
always appreciated. Ron once rang up the
books editor of the Sydney Morning Herald
to complain that one of their reviewers
had been stealing books and had run out
of the shop when they tried to apprehend
him. That was Martin Johnston, in dispute
with his publisher, stealing copies of his
own book of poems to present to friends,
or maybe to supply to reviewers. Martin,
of course, was a literary treasure in himself,
the son of the writers George Johnston
and Charmian Clift, and a character in an
Elizabeth Jane Howard novel set on Hydra.

30

Abbeys not only had splendid literary

stock and splendid literary customers,
they also employed some splendid literary
figures. One of them was Vicki Vidikas, who
could be fearsome. Once some wretched
academic approached her and asked
Do yougive a discount on purchases to
university teachers? She fixed him with a
contemptuous eye and a scathing tongue:
I think lecturers get away with enough
already without giving them discounts as
well.
Buying books and literary journals from
bookshops is one thing; trying to sell
books and journals is something else
again. It is a gruelling task, but it produced
some memorable moments. Eve Abbey
recently reminded me of one such episode
involving the journal Tabloid Story. I seem
to remember both you and Frank coming
in to Abbeys in the Queen Victoria Building
and persuading us to take copies. I was very
enthusiastic at the time as I really liked short
stories and they seemed to be disappearing.
If short stories seemed to be disappearing
then, now they are close to vanishing
altogether as the journals that used to
publish them have closed down or cut
back on the space they offer them. Tabloid
Story was an experiment in producing a
magazine that appeared as a supplement
to existing magazines and taking advantage
of their established circulations. But we
also tried to sell the supplement separately
through bookshops. Eve recalled dealing
with Moorhouse and I, but there was a third
editor, Carmel Kelly. The reason Eve makes
no mention of her is that, as we stood
outside Town Hall, slowly summoning up
Ron Abbey, 1977

Our Customers
the courage to sell our wares, Carmel had
a sudden and what seemed to us very
convenient panic attack.
I really dont feel well, she said. I dont think
I can do it. Ill just have to go home. Dont
worry, Ill get a bus. And she was gone. She
did what we all would like to do, said Frank.
Shes amazing. She just walked away.
We stood in George Street wondering could
we just walk away too? But we had the
magazine, bundles of it. We had to get it
into the shops, we had to charm or cajole,
beg, expose ourselves to the booksellers
acid assessments, appeal to the lost
categories of art and innovation, literature.
Lets get it over with, I remember saying.
The puritan way of life. Suffer, endure, delay
fulfilment.
We can have a drink as soon as were
finished.

Woolley and I started Wild & Woolley, these

were the rounds we made. In the end, we
realised we were not especially good at it.
Haranguing booksellers on their wickedness
in not stocking your titles was not the way
to go, though Pat was developing quite a
powerful tirade. I am sure Eve was relieved
when we got ourselves a rep, Minos Poulos,
who took our books around in a cool,
relaxed sort of way.
Dont worry if they dont sell, think of them
as furnishings, he told the booksellers. See
them as providing a literary dcor, he said
of our new Australian writing and imported
American avant-garde lists. It gives a touch
of quality.
Once the books got into the shops and
displayed, people did indeed buy them.
We were very grateful that Abbeys was
one of those bookshops that bought our
furnishings.

We stood there still stunned at Carmels

disappearance. Envying the simplicity of her
refusal. The way she just said no. Where did
she get the strength?
But pride demanded we went through with
our self-appointed trials. We breathed in
deeply and entered Abbeys.
In those days, it was still possible to start a
magazine or a small press and go around
the bookshops and appeal to booksellers
decency, love of literature, altruism or
anything else that came to mind until, often
no doubt in desperation to get you to leave,
they agreed to order copies. When Pat

People say that life

is the thing, but
I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith,

Afterthoughts

31

40 Memories
Books Where Ideas Grow
by Ian M Johnstone
I have been browsing and buying at
Abbeys, on and on, for about its whole life.
It remains a remarkably good bookshop. It
is remarkable for its sustained enterprising
spirit, changing locations and constantly
expanding stock. It has never slacked or
slowed. No buoy is more reliably buoyant
than Eve and her loyal staff. Abbeys is
notable for stocking not only the latest
books, but the best of the whole stock of
books, insofar as one bookshop can do
this and not become as big as the British
Museum! It shuns the ephemeral and
does its best to maintain the availability of
lasting, worthwhile, quality literature. If you
are looking for a good book, Abbeys are
pretty sure to have it; whether it is about
chasing a whale (Herman Melvilles Moby
Dick, 1851), catching and losing a big fish
(Ernest Hemingways The Old Man and the
Sea, 1952), fishing and contemplating (Izaac
Waltons The Compleat Angler, 1653), walking
with a walrus (Lewis Carrolls In the Looking
Glass, 1871) or simply going to sea in a
pea-green boat with an owl and a pussy cat
(Edward Lears A Book of Nonsense, 1846).

32

What do we really want from books? We

want to be entertained, informed and
inspired and, if possible, all three of these
at once. We want more than facts, we want
our thinking and imagination stimulated so
we can create our own vivid realities and
carry them with us like well-toned muscles.
Abbeys is a gymnasium for the mind and
its books are personal trainers to motivate
us to think and imagine for ourselves. A
good book is like a good friend who helps
us become what we want to be. At the 2007
Sydney Writers Festival, Inga Clendinnen
whimsically observed on a panel on essay
writing that an essayist says Come for a

walk with me, we can share our thoughts

and together make some progress with
our thinking. The novelist says Im telling a
story. Catch me if you can.
We need books to help us to see things
weve been ignoring and to understand
the unexpected significance of things;
their potential uses as examples, emblems,
archetypes, analogies, allegories and so on.
The good Samaritan started as a routine
roadside rescue report, was universalised
to a parable, and is now almost a miracle!
We hear and apprehend only what we
already half know. (Thoreau). It is a nice
reminder of how much a reader contributes
to reading, much as lovers do to loving, and
friends to friendships. We need books to
help us enter into the lives of others so our
empathies are enlarged and to escape, even
briefly, our own narrow, pedestrian, selfobsessed confines. We need books to open
ourselves to the influence of the mind and
experiences of another person, someone
possibly cleverer than we are, who thinks
more flexibly, imagines more vigorously and
lives more intensely. Provided we make the
required effort of understanding the writer,
words can change our minds and transform
relationships; what seem to some to be just
words can for others be a powerful force for
good in their life.

Our Customers
Beware of Abbeys Books
Ian M Johnstone

They might restore your empathies; bring on inconvenient tears,

Give your optimism insomnia; give your life new frontiers.
Their new ways of saying; disturbing sharply-fresh views,
May excite you for projects, give you insights you can use.
Travelogues may transport you, risk-free, to an unfamiliar zone,
Stories of swooning romances, you can enjoy uninhibitedly alone!
Their inspiring idealism could make you carelessly sympathetic;
Release imprisoned energies, make you iconoclastically enthusiastic.
Delightful distinctions, eye-opening articulations, sublime sentiments,
Mind-enlarging metaphors, immature imaginings;
all complacency impediments.
So if you want to read dangerously, from Animal Farm to Aesop,
Ask, browse and buy, at intoxicatingly enticing Abbeys Bookshop.

33

40 Memories
Ulysses in the Antipodes
by Ken Shadbolt
Chairman, DNA Review Panel
Leopold Bloom, five foot nine and a half
inches, cosmopolitan, 11 stone 4 pounds in
avoir dupois measure, sailed north by north
east along York Street. Markets to the right
of him, Abbeys to the left of him, Town Hall
behind him. Blooms soul scarred by many
turpitudes, made shiny by sins innumerable,
lack of moral fibre no grip, soles less than
one coefficient of friction, worn by walking
the granite pavements no grip, slipped into
Abbeys.
He sang: voglio guardare solo.
Passed the Scylla of the tills, past the
Charybdis of the computers. Hard to port,
around the whirlpool of the non-fiction.
Hard to starboard, between the shallows
of Australian poetry and the shoals of
philosophy.
I will not buy: wax to the ears.
But there is Eve behind the biography with
bald, portly barrister-at-law servant of all
but of none doing four masters servant to
four masters, piles of books to the blue bag.
Have you read this one?
But I

The siren song. Too many books. Barrister

overburdened, his heavy fardels bear. L4/L5
grinding greatly damnified to the till.
Softly Past Professor Footle, dapper dipping
into Lawrence, T E, aircraftsman Shaw, not
D H rough mining lad.
Bloom becalmed by police procedurals.
Students squatting, orbs displayed, pink
mercury, drifted towards biography, livid
lives lived keeping watch on the squatter
as she turned the page and her body, into
calm waters by mastery over mystery, Eve
back to him, turns suddenly and sees him.
Leopold, Poldy, have you seen this one?
Youll love it.
Wax falls from ears. Earwigwax. Sounds roar
around him, waves crash, boat draws on
sand sucking slowing to a halt aground.
Take this one the siren song.
Buy this one.
Voglio guardare solo.
L M F his song hangs
in the air dies in the
air falls from the air
whispers away.

Ill put it under your arm.

Yes, Yes, I will, I will.
But I
Trieste - Zurich - Paris - Manly (1968 2008)
Youll really love this one
But I

34

Our Customers
Theres Nothing Like Having a Friend in the Business
by Elaine D Cooke
A certain charismatic Managing Director of
the ABC was well-known amongst other
things for his shouting.
After one such verbal barrage had landed
around my secretarial ears, a concerned
colleague (Jean by name) came to my desk
and pressed a slim, green pen into my hands
in the hope that it would help matters.
Abbeys Bookshop was printed along the
pens clip.
But thats my favourite bookshop! I said,
thanking her. How did you know?
She didnt know, as it happened. And I
hadnt made the connection before: her
surname was Abbey.

One of lifes wonderful serendipities!

In the years since then, ordering and
buying books from Abbeys has remained
an essential and pleasurable experience for
me. Contact with the friendly, helpful and
professional staff, and a chat along the way
before taking those precious purchases
home, add flavouring to any visit to the city.
Where else in Sydney, I remember saying
to Eve Abbey once, can you walk into a
shop and be known by name?
I still have that slim, green pen, by the way,
and Jean and I always exchange Christmas
cards. Abbeys Advocate is a looked-for item
in my mail box each month and Abbeys, of
course, remains my favourite bookshop.

My brother is Ron, she said.

Janis Brown adding final touches, 1993

35

40 Memories
Turning Fiction to Fact
by Graham Sullivan
My reminiscences of Abbeys are many
and pleasant, but three curious matters
predominate. As an epileptic, I sometimes
have turns which cause temporary
memory loss and lack of awareness of my
circumstances. I had such a turn several
years ago in Abbeys and was well attended
to by concerned staff. When asked how I
would get home, I mumbled bus to Dee
Why Heights, which was mis-heard as
bus to Dover Heights. A staff member
walked me several blocks to the bus stop,
put me on the bus, and I was off-loaded by
the driver at the terminus. Still appearing
obviously ill, a kind lady drove me to the
nearest police station where, in response to
the desk sergeants questions, I was unable
to recall my name, address, telephone
number or wifes name. He examined my
wallet, found these particulars, and rang
my wife to explain that I was resting quietly
in cell number 3, but was shaking and
sweating, and was bewildered, disoriented
and incoherent. My wife later told me
that she had informed the sergeant that
I had been bewildered, disoriented and
incoherent for all of the 45 years she had
known me. Nevertheless, she did pick me
up. Several weeks later, I returned to Abbeys
to thank the young lady who had helped
me, but she had since resigned.

36

Soon after, I was extolling to two Abbeys

staff the literary merits of a book of fiction
I had just finished reading, suggesting it
deserved a Highly Recommended tag. I
was bemused by their lack of interest in my
opinion, but thought no more about it. I did
some shopping elsewhere, had lunch and
returned to Abbeys to pick up some earlier
purchases. I checked the Fiction bookshelf

and not only did my highly recommended

book not have the Highly Recommended
tag, it had been removed from the shelf
altogether. Curious indeed! I have often
been tempted to bad-mouth a book to
see if, perversely, it gets awarded a Highly
Recommended tag.
For some years, Eve thought I was a Catholic
priest and treated me with due deference,
even calling me Father. I rather liked being
thought of as a holy man of the cloth and
let her continue in this vein until Dave
found out and dumped on me. He advised
I was a broken-down, nondescript, balding,
unhealthy, grumpy, retired academic,
more given over to sinfulness in all its
manifestations than prayer. All Eves hopes
in me thus dashed, I was revealed as a fraud
and an impostor.
Sic Semper Vita. I may not be a priest, but I
do know my Latin.

Read the best

books first, or you
might not have
a chance to read
them at all.

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord
and Merrimack Rivers,
1849

Our Customers
Meet the Authors at Abbeys
by Joanna Quinn
Zonta Club of Sydney Inc
On the last Wednesday in November,
since 1982, Eve and her staff have been
kind enough to allocate an evening in the
bookshop for a fundraiser for the Zonta Club
of Sydney Inc (of which Eve was a member
for many years until her retirement). At an
Abbeys Meet the Authors evening, Club
members, their friends, other supporters of
Zonta and anyone else can for $5 (which
also goes to our service projects) enjoy
a glass of wine or orange juice (courtesy
of Abbeys) accompanied by nibbles and
sandwiches (catered by the Club) and
purchase Christmas presents (or books for
oneself ) with 10% of sales going to our
service projects.

These evenings started before I became a

member of the Club, but Abbeys Bookshop
soon wove its magic on my friends and I,
who look forward to the occasion every
year.
An amazing array of authors have been
present over the years including many
women authors (our organisations mission
statement is to advance the status of
women through service) such as Jessica
Anderson, Barbara Jefferis, Sandra Hall,
Blanche DAlpuget, Elizabeth Ridell, Fay
Zwicky, Lucinda Holdforth, Glenda Adams,
Kate Grenville and the Zonta Club of
Sydneys own Hilarie Lindsay. Amongst the
male authors have been Gerard Windsor,
Gough (and Margaret) Whitlam, Tim
Bowden, Malcolm Knox, David Ireland, Chris
Puplick and Michael Wilding.
The biggest problem for me has actually
been to find the time to purchase books on
the night with so many interesting people
to talk to!
Over $20,000 has been raised for our
projects at home and abroad from this
event. Eve has continued to be supportive
and on Wednesday 26 November 2008,
6-8pm, in celebration of Abbeys Bookshops
40th anniversary, the 25th occasion of
our event and the 41st year of our Club,
there will be yet another Meet the Authors
Evening. Please note your diaries now!
Thank you Abbeys.

Eve at the 1990 Zonta evening

37

40 Memories
Hold that Book!
by Lucinda Holdforth
My husband and I were convinced we were
Abbeys biggest customers the year we
bought The Oxford English Dictionary on CDROM.

namedropping their reading lists as they

smeared cheese on their crackers; so did I. A
famous author patronised me; I patronised
him back.

I imagine Syd and I are Abbeys best

customers, I confided happily to a friend.

Towards the end of the night, I set down

a Phryne Fisher detective story by Kerry
Greenwood on the counter alongside
the last shelf copy of H D Kittos classic
The Greeks, permitting myself a small,
self-congratulatory smile on my literary
eclecticism. But before I could pull out my
card to pay for the books, a fierce old lady
picked up the titles, studied them and
stowed them in her basket.

Rubbish, she said. Damien and I are. Always

have been.
No wonder I love Abbeys its one of the
few places left in Australia where erudition is
not only welcome, its a competitive sport.
Syd and I are quite new to the Abbeys
family we have only been devoted
customers for 12 years. Abbeys has helped
me launch my books, supported my
research, promoted my writing and given
Syd and I many, many hours of enjoyment,
education and inspiration.
And its not just about the books either. Each
month, Abbeys Advocate is a delightful event
in itself. Eve Abbey has been a big supporter
and introduced me to the amazing women
of Zonta through her annual fundraiser.
David Hall has been a kindly benefactor in
my writing life. We met a very nice wine
merchant at an Abbeys event and still enjoy
the odd cheeky red from his range.
But in the end, of course, it really IS about
the books, and how many of them you read.
Which is why the Abbeys annual event for
its most loyal customers complete with
discounts is an occasion not to be missed.

38

The last one was certainly eventful enough.

I overheard customers shamelessly

Excuse me, I said, Actually those are my

books.
Nonsense, she said severely, Ive been
wanting that Kitto for ages.
She slammed down some cash, ignored my
feeble protests and carted my books out the
door.
Ah, Abbeys

A bookstore is one
of the only pieces of
evidence we have
that people are
still thinking.

Jerry Seinfeld

Our Customers
Many Magical Moments at Abbeys
by Chris Puplick
Theres something special about a
bookshop, isnt there? Something seductive,
something alluring: that little internal
voice that keeps telling you that in here,
somewhere, is the answer to that question
that keeps you awake at nights, that never
quite leaves you, never quite gets answered,
but about which you know there is, there
must be, an answer. And that answer is in
here somewhere.
To wander around Abbeys, even venturing
to take that mystical tour to the first floor,
reminds me, every time, that there are even
more questions than are dreamt of in my
philosophy.

I have a very special bookshelf at home. It

contains my very first book, Enid Blytons
The Flying Goat, my first Bible (King James,
of course) given to me by my grandmother,
the first Bible (again King James) on which
I took my oath of office in the Senate, The
Little Prince (from my first girlfriend), The
Paston Letters (from the clerk and staff of the
Senate when I left) and Wuthering Heights
(the one novel I cant live without). These
books led me into all sorts of other journeys
undertaken in Abbeys and many magical
moments enjoyed there.

Its one of those infinite blessings of a free

society that youre not limited to only one
eureka moment in a lifetime of Abbeys
adventures.
Here I found A D Nuttalls Shakespeare the
Thinker and for the first time in over 50 years
of reading had that utterly vainglorious
feeling that I might, at last, be just starting to
understand the genius of the greatest mind
and most transcendent spirit of Western
culture. It was here that I met Naguib
Mahfouz (and am now just finishing the
33rd of his works), who transported me into
a dark metropolis that Dickens would have
recognised, but whose mores would have
made no sense to him.

And some guilty moments! There is nothing

more wickedly thrilling than being in a
bookshop and finding a volume you have
authored, or lighting on the latest book on
Australian politics and having a sneaky look
in the index to see if your name is there
before you decide whether to purchase or
just browse.

It was through here that I had my eureka

moments in poetry, when I found the
mystical works of Emily Bronte; in science,
when Stephen J Gould was presented to me;
and to the art of biography, when I found
Antonia Frasers Cromwell: Our Chief of Men.

Ive been thrilled in art galleries and

museums across the world, by spectacular
vistas and magical archaeological spots, in
concert halls and theatres, but there have
been more consistently magical moments
in Abbeys than I could ever have imagined.

Dulcie Stretton, Bunter, Lord Peter and Peter Milne

at the Dorothy L Sayers centenary

39

40 Memories
A Habit for Hobbits?
by Geoff Lindsay
Lets choose to call it a Rhythm of Life.
Probably its just habit. Every year, almost
involuntarily, a sequence of dates comes
to mind: The Fourth of the Fourth, The Fifth
of the Fifth, The Sixth of the Sixth. Those
dates resonate in much the same way as
the Eleventh of the Eleventh. In date order,
they are the anniversary of the death of
Ned Kelly (1880), Armistice Day (1918), the
only expulsion by the Australian Parliament
of one of its elected members (1920) and
Australias Constitutional crisis of 1975. Such
is the life of a mind with an historical bent.
On 4 April, Martin Luther King Jnr met his
fate (1968). On 5 May, Ben Hall (1855). On
6 June, Bobby Kennedy (1968). Why these
anniversaries come to mind is too big a
question ever to be asked, or fully answered,
by that mind. They just do. Whatever the
temptation, dont over-analyse! Dont go
there, is sound advice. Was it an insight
of Horace that there is no accounting for
taste? In prudence, it might be best to leave
it at that! So it can be with habit. There is no
accounting for much of it.

Abbeys is a habit for many bibliophiles

of Sydney: a habit formed, in a constant
state of formation. Centrally located in the
city, the shop is far enough away from the
precincts of the Botanic Gardens, Domain
and Hyde Park to justify a walk for those
whose work finds them there, wanting to
be elsewhere. Go for a walk in the park or
around the block doesnt do it for everyman
or everywoman. No incentive there for a
bibliophile. On the other hand, Go for a
walk to Abbeys - that does it every time!
PS. For any more talk of hobbits than these
passing references, Abbeys will refer you to
Galaxy Bookshop, part of the Family.

Happily, that is not universally true.

Sometimes it is given to us to see even to
enjoy a habit in formation. 1968 was a big
year. Two of the dates mentioned above fell
within its grasp. It was a pivotal year in other
respects as well. On the 40th anniversary of
Abbeys Bookshop (1968-2008), we can, in
celebration, add that to the list of notable
events of 68. And that brings us back to
the rhythms of life, the habits of everyday
hobbits.
Artwork at the entrance of Galaxy Bookshop

40

Our Customers
Read But Never Red
by Andr Louw

I grew up in a country without TV.

And in an era without electronic games.
So, I read. But only what the government
allowed her citizenry to read.
I came to Australia as a young man and
worked in Market Street.
Bored with work one Sunday, I wandered
around my new environs and stumbled on
Abbeys.
There I found a biography by Alexander on
Paton, an author from my country of origin.

There are worse

crimes than burning
books. One of them
is not reading them.

Joseph Brodsky,
1991

At the front counter, I presented it to an

engaging woman who introduced herself as
Eve and asked Have you read his book on
Plomer? Rhymes with rumour.
I had never heard of Plomer. Soon I was
reading about him.
I have been back many Sundays to Abbeys
and learned more from its shelves about my
country of origin than I ever did whilst living
there.
All thanks to Abbeys.

Eve and Alan at Abbeys 30th Birthday Party

41

Our Customers
Thankfully Some Things Never Change
by Bill Hunt
The first bookshop I visited as a
representative of Penguin Books in 1971 was
Abbeys in Sydneys Queen Victoria Building.
I accompanied the then NSW manager
and we were there to complain to Peter
Milne about their alleged importation of US
science fiction titles to which Penguin had
Australian rights.

rock behind the scenes. I was a guest at

Eves farewell picnic near Mrs Macquaries
Chair in 1991. I dont think anyone, least of
all Eve, really thought she would retire, and
it was not long before she was back at the
main York Street shop for a couple of days a
week, where she may be found to this day,
her energy undiminished.

Life went on. Abbeys is still there and Peter

Milne is still there too.
I first met Jack Winning when Abbeys
Penguin Bookshop was being set up in King
Street in 1977. The shop (managed by Jack,
also still with Abbeys, and their Managing
Director for the past couple of decades)
proudly stocked every Penguin, Pelican,
Peregrine and Puffin available in Australia.
After nine successful years, the Penguin
Bookshop moved holus-bolus with
the complete ranges from Oxford and
Cambridge to the current York Street shop,
where they joined the somewhat esoteric
general stock and Language Book Centre.
There was always a family feel around
Abbeys city bookshops. Ron, the patriarch,
was a man of very definite opinions who
loved to expound his views on the book
trade and its politics and history. A generous
man, I felt that he wanted to influence
me with his love of books and the book
business. Over time, he gave me a few from
his collection, including a hardcover of
TheTrial of Lady Chatterley, an old copy of The
Penguin Story and others.

42

Rons sister Jean was often at the cash

register and Eve seemed to me to be the

Fred Beck and Gordon Cook from Cambridge

University Press, Eve and Nola Bramble
at Eves retirement picnic
It is a tribute to Abbeys that they have
succeeded in the inner city for so long,
while eschewing many of the popular
bestselling books stocked by the big chain
stores. Abbeys has resisted any temptation
to drop their standards. They have enhanced
the cultural life of the city and their many
loyal customers will be hoping that Eve and
her colleagues may long continue in their
dedicated and individual way for 40 more
years.
PS. Congratulations and happy 40th
Anniversary. Its a real achievement,
particularly in these days of instant
gratification and superficiality.

Our Family
Random Memories
by Jean Abbey
(Rons sister, who was there from the start)
Some of the US servicemen on R&R from
Vietnam came into the Pitt Street shop. An
unassuming young soldier asked for a book
that would help him argue his opinion.
He kept finding himself contradicted or
ridiculed by the other men and it was
getting him down. I come from a small
town and my folks couldnt afford for me
to go to college. I asked him if hed get an
ex-servicemans grant to pay for higher
education, but he thought his father would
need him back, working for him.
I remember Jim Watts coming into the shop
to wait for Ron. Jim was the most successful
remainder specialist and Ron was very
impressed by the intuitive nature of Jims
choice of good books. I assumed he was an
American Army Officer on R&R because of
his expensive clothes.
I was thrilled when, approaching the shop
one morning, I saw a group of people
gathered around the shop window. The
Mining Museum had lent us a load of
exhibits in connection with the launch of
Geoffrey Blaineys book The Rush that Never
Ended and there was intense interest in
the huge variety of minerals to be found
in Australia. Geoffrey Blainey won the Gold
Medal of the Australian Literature Society for
the book.
Shortly after I opened Centrepoint
Bookshop one morning, I was at the back
of the shop behind some bookshelves and
overheard a whispered browbeating from
a mother to her little 9-year-old daughter
in school uniform. After I went back to the
front counter, the little girl hurried past and I
asked what was in her schoolbag. She burst

into tears and pulled out a couple of fiction

books. Her mother then came storming up
saying that she didnt know the child had
taken the books, it wasnt her fault and so
on. I told her she should be ashamed of
herself. I hope the little girl survived the
burden of such a relative!
A more pleasant memory was of the
father of a girl who had gone on to Oxford
University. She had asked her father to call
into Abbeys to thank me for recommending
A J P Taylor for modern British history. She
had done very well academically and it was
warming to see her fathers pride in her.
When we were at Centrepoint, Ron became
President of the Australian Booksellers
Association and, among other things,
inaugurated AirBookService to allow orders
for single copies of books to be dispatched
by air. Sir William Collins was a dominant
force in the UK Publishers Association and
still inclined to regard Australia as a colony.
Rons ambition was to get rid of the closed
market which insisted that American
titles be purchased from the UK publisher,
resulting in the book arriving later and at a
higher price.
David Williamson came
in to the Penguin
Bookshop not long after
it opened. He said he
always felt he should buy
a book whenever he was
in a bookshop, whether
it was new or secondhand. Our leading
playwright is obviously a
good-thinking man.

Alan and Jean Abbey hit the beach in typical British style, 1965

43

40 Memories
Growing Up at Abbeys
by Don Abbey
Like many kids in the late 60s, I was working
in my parents shop from the age of 11. I was
just lucky that my parents were Eve and Ron
Abbey and the shop was Abbeys Bookshop;
I was never short of a bedtime read.
In those days, I worked Saturdays in the
first Abbeys shop in Pitt Street when shops
were only open until midday on Saturday.
I cleaned the ashtrays (yes, in those days,
all bookshops had sand-filled ashtrays that
needed sifting every few days or so), then
dusted the shelves, before shelving the
piles of new stock that always seemed to be
stacked up in the packing room. I would help
out on the counter, bagging the books as
they were sold, or help customers find a book
on the shelves, because shelving soon taught
me where to find every book in the shop.
As time moved on and the shop moved to
the QVB, it started opening all day Saturday
and then Sunday. I moved up to assistant
packer (un-packer really). I remember
coming in to Abbeys in the morning with
a bag of fresh cinnamon donuts (I got off
the train at Wynyard instead of Town Hall to
buy them) to see the aisles full of cartons of
books from England or the United States,
all waiting to be checked, priced, stacked
and shelved. I got pretty good at that too.
By now I was regularly working the counter,
packing and pricing and generally feeling
pretty useful. And I got paid, cash in a pay
envelope. That was when petrol was under
20c a litre. Our family would usually catch the
ferry to the city from Manly, then all pile into
a taxi to get home.

44

Eve and Ron were always happy to employ

young people and many of my friends

worked there over the years. But they

generally hired younger people, or people
with a young attitude, because they felt that
you didnt need to be old and wise to sell
books, you just had to enjoy it. There was
always something going on in the shop it
was a friendly, slightly anarchic shop, where
the staff knew they had a job to do, yet had
some fun along the way. There was certainly
no standing on early 70s formality if it was
important, you just said it and Eve and Ron
orchestrated all this in two opposite styles
that made a better pair. As time moved on
again, I started working Thursday evenings
when late-night shopping was introduced,
catching the ferry in from school to make a
few more dollars to buy that thing I really
needed. Abbeys became a touch point in
my life as I finished school, went overseas,
came back, bummed around, went to uni
at age 30, then finally moved to Perth,
abandoning bookselling to become a
Consulting Surveyor.
Abbeys at the QVB is a special place in my
life. It was filled with friendly and engaging
staff and customers who all made my life
just that much better and richer. It was
where I learnt about responsibility and
commitment, about teamwork and about
enjoying your work, because as Robert
Townsend
(author of Up the
Organisation)
said, If youre
not in business
for fun or profit,
what the hell
are you doing
there?

Our Family
Happiness is an Open Book
by Jane Abbey
As I was looking out onto the rice fields this
morning, I had the idea to just brainstorm
a list of memories about Abbeys, about
my parents as owners of a bookshop, about
how it touched me. I feel I dont have a very
good memory, especially for dates and such
things. To make it harder, I have worked and
lived on the border of Thailand and Burma
with refugees for many years now and urban
bookshop life seems very, very far away.

made sure they knew it. We got the same

good discount as the staff (one-third), but
we always had to pay for any books we
wanted to keep. Of course, we could borrow
anything we wanted and return it, provided
it was in pristine condition. I have read many
paperbacks without breaking the spine,
peering into them half-opened! Even today,
I still do that. Occasionally I stretch a book
wide open and it feels wickedly extravagant.

I worked at one of the Abbeys shops from

the age of 11. I remember going to the city
every Saturday morning with mum and dad
and my older brother Donald and younger
brother Alan in a taxi from Manly. We never
owned a car. I was so grateful I didnt have
to work at Woolworths or in a supermarket,
as many of my school friends did. Thursday
night and Saturday morning was a phrase
we all said a lot. And I felt blessed that I had
an interesting job and a reliable source of
income to satisfy my teenage desires.

We always had a lot of books at home. My

father was a serious collector. My mum has
a lot of books now, but I dont remember
where she kept her books when I was child.
My father read constantly. I have often
exclaimed that he even read at half-time at
the pictures! We went to the pictures a lot in
Manly in the 70s. We didnt have TV and dad
usually took a book. It always strikes me as
odd when I go into a house and there are no
books. Or when I see sets like that in movies.
It looks to me like something essential
is missing. Like a roof or something. And
nobody is mentioning it. There are almost
no books in the homes in the refugee camp
of the Karen people I work with, but they are
great oral storytellers, so I dont notice the
absence of books so much. And they have
great leaf roofs.

I shelved books, worked the cash register,

bagged books, helped customers find titles,
cashed up at the end of the day. I dont think
I was really very good at it, when I come
to think of it now not a good bookseller,
as one should be but I was polite and
friendly.
My friends and
acquaintances
always assumed
that, as the child
of booksellers,
I must get free
books all the
time. This wasnt
the case and I

The best thing about having parents

who were big readers and who owned a
bookshop is that it made me a booklover
too. I cant in any way describe the huge
benefit this has brought to my life. But if
youre reading this, Im guessing you will
know what I mean.

45

Our Family
The House of Books
by Alan Abbey
I was seven when mum and dad opened
Abbeys Bookshop. The counter of that
first store was elevated and I remember
looking up to see mum and dad behind
the counter and being very impressed with
their importance. As reflected in some of the
memories in this commemorative booklet,
Ron and Eve and Abbeys Bookshop
ultimately became important in the lives
of lots of other people too.
Ive heard many flattering terms used to
describe Abbeys over the years, words such
as iconic, landmark and an institution.
Certainly most people in Sydney who
are serious about books are familiar with
Abbeys. Last week a friend of mine was
reading the court transcript of a case
involving an accident that occurred while
travelling from the Sydney Hilton to Alliance
Franaise. At one point the judge impatiently
provided directions for this journey: Oh for
Gods sake, you just go through the QVB
and down the lane next to Abbeys. Surely
you know where Abbeys is, dont you?
Obviously a very well read judge
Since 1968, we have had many shops in
many locations, but when I recall the old
days I always think of the shop in the QVB,
with its seagrass matting and huge table of
remainders the size of a dozen pool tables,
or so it seemed. And the constant shelving,
tidying, arranging of books, always trying to
squeeze one more book onto a shelf already
crammed to overflowing. (Some things
never change!)

46

I cant imagine anyone loving books more

than my dad. Not just for the reading
pleasure, but for the pleasure of handling

them. Ron took up bookbinding in his

twilight years, spending hours in his bindery
lovingly caressing soft leathers, trimming
marbled endpapers and carefully applying
gilt lettering. But it was reading he loved
above all. Im sure he would have read in the
shower if he could. When he passed away
in July 2005, apart from mourning him, you
couldnt help but mourn the loss of the
gigantic reservoir of knowledge that went
with him! But Im sure hes sharing it all with
a little clique of angels
While dad was simply obsessed with books,
it was mum who really nurtured our love of
books and reading, patiently reading to us
at night and encouraging us to endlessly
explore encyclopedias (we had nine
different sets!) while researching school
projects. Eve sometimes got so carried away
she just did the research for us.
Strangers who came to our front door at
home would gawk, mouths agape, at our
hallway lined from floor to ceiling with
thousands upon thousands of books. And
they didnt even know about the spare
room, which gradually became solid with
books, totally bricked in with stockpiled
tomes, as if we were guarding against
some bleak, book-less future. The Abbeys
would always have
something to read.

Our Staff
Fond Memories of Abbeys
by Anne Imber
This story is best
started with that
well-known clich:
when I was a
young girlcause
back in 1968, I
was just 18 years
old and the new
recruit in what
would become an iconic Sydney book
retailer. But of course 40 years ago, who
would have known that Abbeys would
become such an institution?
In the 1960s, you didnt need a resume or
have to apply online to seek a job, since
there were no computers. My knowledge
of books was zero, but my will to learn
was incredibly strong, and I was fortunate
enough to be given an opportunity to
develop and learn new skills.
My learning process developed and my
knowledge increased, and before long I had
been promoted to 2IC in Abbeys George
Street shop. What a feeling! I learned a lot
in this role and as my knowledge improved,
my confidence also grew, but my shyness
was still there. When I turned 21, my wages
went up $100 a week. I was rich!

Australia and worked for ages. And Dallas,

who came for a couple of months and
stayed for years. (She did eventually have
her Australian holiday).
The generosity of the Abbeys was much
appreciated with theatre tickets for staff,
birthday parties and Christmas gifts. We
were like family and part of a team.
I will never forget chasing a shoplifter out of
the QVB shop. After reaching him (you run
fast at that age), he assaulted me in trying to
escape. However, the irony was that he was
an author known to all of us (Abbeys was
even selling his book), so the police just had
to knock on his door!
My last three years with Abbeys was
spent managing the Penguin Bookshop in
King Street, and I finally said goodbye to
Abbeys in June 1981 after 13 years of fun.
Had it not been for the impending birth
of my daughter and the responsibilities
of motherhood, Id probably still be there
today! I can honestly look back now and
say how much I enjoyed every minute at
Abbeys.

Back in 1968, because of his seafaring

background, I affectionately called Ron
Abbey the Captain. If he wasnt around, you
could always find him in the Bowlers Club!
Many of our travelling staff only intended
to work for a couple of months to earn a
little extra pocket money, but would end
up staying for a year or more. There was
Peter our American, who came over to see

47

40 Memories
Light on Cash But Never Short of a Good Read
by Geoffrey Evans, BA LLB
It was at the Pitt Street Abbeys that I first
met Ron and Eve. They later gave me a
much-needed job for three half-days a week
while I was a student. Unbookish as my
late father was, hed been a Master Mariner,
as Ron had been, and he knew Ron from
shipping, so knew hed be just the bloke for
me to meet in books.
For me, the 1969 Abbeys in the Queen
Victoria Building was the iconic bookshop.
Enthusiastically competing with traditional
heavyweights Angus & Robertson and
Dymocks, as well as a host of well-stocked,
smaller bookshops, Abbeys was primus
inter pares. The older bookshops ultimately
became less interesting.
In 1969, book vouchers did not exist, but
Ron staff-discounted all my book purchases
by 33%. Irresistible. Narcotics to the addict.
I took home more books than money. Ron
and Eve stocked absolutely the finest range
of Australian poetry anywhere in Sydney, an
attribute still in evidence.
A vivid recollection from that year is the
student demonstrations the Moratorium
Against the War pouring north along
George Street, overflowing the roadway,
while I leant in the doorway of the shop,
anonymous to my contemporaries as a
mere white-collar worker, high as they were
on their idealism and afire with untested
certainties. Exactly 30 years later, the
voice of those radicalised lite was to be
heard demanding Australia send the next
generation to war with Indonesia.

48

More vividly perhaps, for me, was Rons

mellifluous delivery, in his Londoners

accent, drolly elevating sentences, redolent

with Chaucerian verbs and adverbs, to
highly amusing conversation. Anglo-Saxon
vulgarities were rolled into sentences of
Homeric word music, an unapologetic
expression of his imaginative and tolerant
view of humans.
With Jean also, Ron and Eve made
bookselling fun. There was, quite naturally,
a complete absence of pretension. The
books and patrons were taken together, as
it were. Some (books and customers) were
intellectually profound; some were dull;
most were anywhere in between. All were
dealt with from a wide and well-educated
knowledge of the entire range, both books
and people.
Ron and Eve knew their books. Among
other services to readers, Abbeys rotated
a box of book selections to the deck and
engine-room officers of Ampol oil-tankers
(as Ron had been an Ampol ships Master in
a previous working life).
I cast my memory back over my time as an
apprentice bookseller with a great reservoir
of affection and amusement. I look at my
library and know it has a quality for which,
without Abbeys, it would be much the
poorer. The habit ingrained with the 33%
discount bears witness.
And without the privilege and pleasure of
knowing and working for Ron and Eve, it is I
who would have been the poorer.
PS from Eve: The reference to Anglo-Saxon
vulgarities means Ron said fuck a lot!

Our Staff
More Than Just Good Books
by Dallas Edwards
As a teenager from the suburbs, I applied
for a sales job at Abbeys as a fill-in for two
weeks before a holiday in Queensland. After
a few days, I discovered this was more than
just any old shop; it was filled with so much
character, not like Grace Bros at all.
Ron, captain of the good ship Abbeys,
always had a little surprise for morning tea,
or if you had a sniffle, a handful of Vitamin C
in anything you were drinking. A kind piss
off to any customer he thought could be
a potential thief. Eve was the crew, and if
not for her, the ship would never have left
the dock, always supporting and caring for
everyone. Peter with such knowledge and
enthusiasm, Ann who kept things shipshape
at all times, and all the other staff, too
many to mention, who all made Abbeys so
special.

and caring people, who over the years have

supported myself and so many displaced
souls. They have given not only lots of moral
support, but financial support as well, and
without a second thought.
Danielle, my daughter, has also been part of
the Abbeys legacy, working in accounts and
on the shop floor, as have many other staff
members offspring over the years.
Yes, my memories of Abbeys are rather
sentimental, but they are my special
memories and I am very grateful for them.

The shop itself seemed to have a soul of its

own in the QVB, the sea grass matting, the
sound it made when it rained.
Lots of events happening at that time.
During the Vietnam War, I recall one of
the leaders of the anti-war march coming
into Abbeys and stealing a book that
was an inspiring memory. Chairman Maos
little red book we kept hidden under the
counter. The badge we all wore, Its Time,
was a great campaign for Gough Whitlam.
The Hare Krishnas with their tambourines
forever passing by outside the shop. Such an
exciting time in the 70s.
Lots of knowledge is acquired in bookshops.
It is the nature of books, but the most
valuable lessons learned were that people
like Ron and Eve existed. Generous, kind

Dallas and Danielle Edwards, 1975

49

40 Memories
Is the Pope a Catholic?
by Angus Bishop
Did I work at Abbeys in the mid-70s?
You could ask me: Who rode in Erik Von
Danikens chariots? Is Man going up or
down according to Mr Bronowski? Did Mr
Castanada drive or was he car-less? What did
David Niven say the moon was? Is it a good
idea to read The French Lieutenants Magus in
one sitting? Or who wrote Linda Goodmans
Sun Signs?
More particularly, you could ask me what
my dollar buys at Abbeys? (more). Who
was the lovely Swiss girl who worked at the
LBC with the lovely Jacqueline and Hanni?
(Madelene). Was the groups Australian
bookshop in the Hilton called Yabbies? (no).
Had Peter Milne begun his collection of
books on Byzantine history? (yes). Where did
Brian Turner go on his holidays and what
did he do? (out west, wool-classing). Was
the staff book-borrowing book the greatest
invention ever for keeping people like me
happy and honest? (absolutely). What was
the mark-up on indented Dover books? (ask
Don). Or what was that terrible stuff Ron
insisted on buying us at the end of dinner at
the Angus Steak Cave? (Irish Coffee, I think).
Do I still proudly proclaim and exaggerate
my ancient connection with Sydneys
foremost literary bookshop? (most
definitely). Am I amazed and delighted
that Eve has not only kept in touch, but is
a major friend of my small family? (totally).
Do I still buy books from Abbeys? (by God
yes, most recently, Against Religion by Tamas
Pataki, Scribe Short Books, Melbourne). Do
I think that good bookshops run by good
booksellers are a lot of fun, as well as hugely
valuable? (whadayareckon?)

50

Ron entertaining at the Angus Steak Cave,

1971

Everyone
probably thinks
that Im a raving
nymphomaniac,
and that I have an
insatiable sexual
appetite, when the
truth is Id rather
read a book.

Madonna,
1991

Our Staff
Home for All Souls
by Cheryl Creatrix
One of my most cherished times as a book
lover was the opportunity to be a bookseller
and that was working for the Abbeys from
the mid-70s to the 80s. Those huge green
and yellow double-decker buses still ran
and stopped just a few metres from the
bookshop door on George Street in the old
Queen Victoria Building, right in the thick of
the noise, the crowds and the traffic.
The friendly and helpful staff were treated
like family, as were the customers, the
books, the authors, the crazy people and
the homeless who occasionally rushed in
from the train station. We all felt comfortable
with each other. Have you ever noticed that
whackos and eccentrics seem to be drawn
to bookshops? Ive often wondered if its
because of all the knowledge and wisdom
humanity in all its glory that is crammed
within the pages of those thousands of
books that we almost had to lubricate
with K-Y jelly to cram onto the shelves. A
traumatised Vietnam vet, rigged out in
army fatigues, would stride through the
store, head down, and stop for an hour or
so to stare at the shelves of Military History,
anxiously tapping his foot and breathing
very fast. The little man with the grey
goatee wearing a snappy khaki suit and cap
who wore a sandwich board proclaiming
Psychiatry is Evil and other marks I couldnt
decipher, who would stand at the cash
register, right in your face, and shout
You Must Stop Wearing Lipstick, You are
Wrong, Stop Now. There was the homeless
photojournalist who kept all his worldly
possessions out the back of the store and
occasionally came in to forage through his
bags. He always wore his collar up and his
hat pulled down.

Incredible as it seems now, it was common

in those days to have smokers browsing in
the shop, possibly particularly in the Poetry
and Philosophy sections. Abbeys were
thoughtful enough to provide ashtrays
here and there. Ultimately, these had to be
removed to deter a phantom piddler who
regularly found themselves caught short
when becoming completely absorbed in
the latest releases. Even the wild tripper who
came screaming in one day brandishing a
machete seemed to be one of the family.
This is a bookshop where all people are
welcome to take comfort in the clean well-lit
place for books.

Cheryl helping out at a book launch, 1977

51

40 Memories
A Great Bookshop in Any Language
by Hanni Baaske
When Ron Abbey
offered me the
job of starting a
Language Book
Centre in 1975, it
took me a long
time to consider
this proposition.
I had a good job
at Angus and
Robertson since 1950 and had been in
charge of the Foreign Books department
there for the last 10 years. Id thought I
would stay there till my retirement.
But I started at Abbeys in 1976 and,
although the first few months were not a
financial success, it became better once new
stock arrived and we became better known.
As it turned out, it proved one of the best
decisions I ever made in my professional life.
I enjoyed working at LBC, first at 129 York
Street (in the space taken over from Mrs
Iroms E F & G shop) and then at 131 York
Street on the first floor above Abbeys.
The success and good turnover of LBC,
now one of the most important language
bookshops in the country, is also due to the
many good booksellers who worked with
me. To mention just a few: Ariel Marguin,
an extraordinary, highly intelligent person;
Nola Bramble, who visited the schools and
help build up that part of the business; Rita
Briguglio; and last but not least, my good
friend Jacqueline Rychner, who is now
manager of a much larger Language Book
Centre.

52

We had a variety of difficult and pleasant

customers, including lots of regulars. We
looked forward to the good ones, while
dreading the difficult ones. One incident
comes to mind when a slightly intoxicated
German gentleman appeared half an hour
before closing on Christmas Eve, asking for
a German novel as a present for his wife.
I asked him what she liked to read and
he replied: A love story, something like
the Moonlight Sonata. (Beethovens piano
sonata #14).
We served many famous customers,
including Professor Leonie Kramer, Ronnie
Barker, George Munster, Gough Whitlam, Jim
Cairns and Andrew Peacock (with Shirley
Maclaine) to name but a few.
I enjoyed every minute of my time at
Abbeys and of course the book-buying trips
to see our main suppliers and to find new
ones in London, Paris, Florence, Hamburg
and Barcelona and the visits to the Frankfurt
Book Fair, which all sounds very glamorous,
but was indeed hard work.
I always had the full support of
management, especially Jack Winning and
Eve Abbey, always understanding and good
at problem-solving. I stayed at the helm of
LBC until 1991 and after that worked parttime until July 1997, when I finally retired.
There are not many excellent bookshops like
Abbeys in the world. I wish them all the very
best for their 40-year celebrations.

Our Staff
Learning Before Earning
by Philip Emery
What we see and what we seem are but a
dream within a dream.
- Miranda in Picnic at Hanging Rock
In the late 1970s, we liked to think of
ourselves as an elite, handpicked cadre of
stocktakers summoned by Ron and Eve
Abbey each year to the book count for end
of financial year reconciliation stuff.
Very clever, Ron would do the stentorian
managerial stuff, barking instructions to
the workers, the supervisory bits. Id do the
counting of my assigned sections, half afraid
of Rons stevedorian prowlings and huffings.
It was in the sections I coveted that I would
run into trouble. In history, in poetry, thrillers,
travel, anthologies of any hue, itd be one
for Abbeys, one for Philip, so by the end of
the day Id have done my work and curated
a pile of about 30 books in a corner that Id
quickly review and diminish by a few. Across
maybe four days of stocktaking, Id have
a final pile of 40 or so that Id take to the
cashier, who would punch them through.
Most years that I did the stocktake (or was
it the stockbuy?), Id earn about $120, but
always spend more than I earned and end
up having a balance to pay Ron or Eve, who
must have been thinking of ways they could
run a year-round stocktake, much like Harry
Truman proposed continual warfare. Other
stocktakers had similar problems, running an
overall deficit. Luckily I had Lakeside Service
Station at Narrabeen on Saturdays to pay for
rent and food.

Ron Abbey 1977

53

40 Memories
A Career for Life
by Ron Serdiuk
Last night I dreamt I went to Abbeys. It all
came about because Jean Abbey took pity
on me
When I went to see her about working at
my favourite Sydney bookshop Galaxy, the
science fiction specialist, then in Bathurst
Street I was the same age as her nephew
Alan. I had similar coloured hair (I had hair
then!) and a very pleasing school certificate
result. On the downside, I was very shy and
daggy a walking science fiction fan cliche!
and ridiculously nave about pretty much
anything outside my suburban upbringing.
There werent any positions available at
Galaxy, but they were opening the Bargain
Bookshop and needed a hand schlepping
cartons for a few days. If I was interested, it
could possibly lead to something more?

That pretty much sums up my time at

Abbeys. I had an extraordinary bunch of
co-workers (to say nothing of our customers!)
and I spent my 10 years there more
challenged and nurtured than I had ever
been at school.
Im 47 next birthday; I started work with
Abbeys when I was 16. In the 30-odd years
since then, Ive hardly strayed from the book
trade and now own my own bookshop, Pulp
Fiction, in Brisbane, specialising in fantasy
and science fiction, crime and mystery. In
my time at Abbeys, I discovered something
truly precious: job satisfaction. I found
something I have sincerely loved doing ever
since.

Nave as I was, I knew this was my chance.

I worked harder than Id ever done before,
or possibly ever since. It seemed like we
worked 15-hour days preparing for the big
opening though Im sure in reality it was
half that and my tenacity with alphabetical
order and ability to move bulk stock
efficiently must have impressed someone.
Crucially, I also kept my mouth shut, while
everyone around me had so much to say!
This wasnt strategy or common sense on
my part so much as being out of my depth. I
was surrounded by bright, outgoing people
full of strong opinions about Important
Things I had hardly ever thought about
before.

54

Ron Serdiuk held captive by Jacks kids,

David and Angela, 1991

Our Staff
Books Make the Perfect Gift
by Jan Idle
In 1992, just before the birth of my first
child, Eve came to visit. She had a gift. In
fact, it turned out, she had many gifts. I had
stopped working at Abbeys the previous
year. Inside the package was a collection of
hand-knitted booties. Two pairs and three
single, mismatching, misshapen ones. Eve
held the odd ones up and said Darling,
these are the ones I made. Then I went to
the Red Cross shop and bought these.
Eves gift was more with books!
Jane, Eves daughter, had suggested I try
Abbeys, when she found out I was looking
for work. I could speak Japanese, but my
experience of books was limited. The only
books in the small country towns where I
grew up were protected by fierce and neat
librarians. Just before the Christmas rush,
I began casual work at Abbeys. It was the
summer of Stephen Hawkings A Brief History
of Time and men in business suits with
briefcases would rush in on their way home
from work to buy it, or shabby teenagers
would saunter up to the counter to check if
we had it in stock. I handled it many times,
but never managed to read it, though being
at Abbeys reignited my interest in reading
and books.

It was when a hand-made bomb was

sent into the front window of the shop,
protesting the sale of Rushdies The Satanic
Verses, I began to realise or even think
about the power and importance of what
a bookshop can be. Many bookshops in
Sydney had refused to stock Rushdies book,
and the fatwa like ambush marketing, the
book selling as soon as it arrived. The staff
vehemently supported the bookshops
position. You can still buy The Satanic Verses
at Abbeys in English or French!
Mostly I worked upstairs in the Language
Book Centre with Nola and Hanni, helping
WEA students find their texts, packaging
school orders and checking out the
Japanese dictionaries and tapes. Sometimes
I wandered into the smoky crime shelves,
where it seemed Peter knew everything one
could possibly know about crime fiction.
Now 20 years on, Abbeys has become a
place for my family to rendezvous, especially
near birthdays and often around Christmas,
the kids eagerly clutching their vouchers.
It is a landmark, a valuable place for the
imagination and the mind, a gift. Eve has
talked (jokingly?) about having an ice cream
van on the beach,
instead of selling
books, and I
wonder if that
would be a bit like
the booties. Better
for us instead,
perhaps, that we
celebrate Abbeys
Bookshops 40
years.
Eve, Alan and Jean
beach antics,
1965

55

40 Memories
A Character All of Its Own
by Elizabeth Brownlee
Eve has asked me to reminisce about my
happy time on Abbeys staff as one of the
Abbey family. I have memories of shared
hard work, laughter and of some of the
odd and eccentric customers who clearly
found the welcoming Abbeys atmosphere
congenial. Bookshops can be a mecca for
these lost souls, but the original Abbeys
shop in the old Queen Victoria Building
seemed to appeal to a particularly colourful
lot. We treated them gently.
What words can be used to describe
Abbeys co-founder, the late Ron Abbey?
Well, they should include literate,
articulate, impatient, funny, witty, irritating,
argumentative, clever, irascible, opinionated
and very interesting. Others, like serene and
easygoing, dont apply.
A bookman through and through, Ron
was a thorn in the side of the then rather
stuffy Sydney book trade. His fresh ideas
and outspokenness were not appreciated.
However, these same qualities, and his
sound instincts for books and bookselling,
were the basis from which the Abbey group
grew. But its now 40-year-long success would
have been impossible without the equally
inspired Eve Abbey, whose determination
and dedication to excellence in bookselling
is supported by her devoted staff.

56

Two major strands in Ron Abbeys life were

books new and antiquarian and the sea.
A Master Mariner, he had an abiding love
for, and a vast knowledge of, all things
maritime. For some years, spare moments
were spent researching and writing about
the mutiny on The Bounty. When this labour
of love was nearing completion, Ron asked

me to read the manuscript and give him a

frank opinion. Now, Ron could write, and I
was delighted by the request. It was good
stuff, as expected, but really two separate
books in one, and therefore in need of some
reshaping. He kept veering away from the
Bounty story into detailed, fascinating, but
only marginally relevant information about
the harsh, glory days of British seafaring.
This observation formed the gist of my frank
opinion, offered with some trepidation, not
quite knowing what the reaction would be.
Here it is, verbatim: Well, now Im going out
to buy a dozen donuts and Ill eat them all
and Ill get fat and youll be sorry.
I remember, too, a letter from Ron when
he was in Italy. Far from being a travellers
tale type of missive, this, in its entirety, was
a hilarious tour de force describing his
experiences in that countrys post offices
whenever he attempted to buy a stamp. I
still laugh when I think of it.
So you see, Abbeys is not just another
business that happens to sell books. It has
developed a character all of its own that
reflects the personalities of its two founders
and of the bookloving staff they have always
attracted.

Our Staff
A Ball Crusher of a Tale
by Tony Howe
My more unusual memories of working in
some of the Abbey bookshops might not be
as dramatic as incidents found in the crime
section, but some Perils of the Trade stand
out.

embarrassed to discuss it, he just made an

excuse and slunk away. In the lunchtime
rush, I was too busy to think about it again,
so never did look it up. I then forgot all
about it.

One day in Abbeys King Street shop, when

there was no one nearby, a nervous wisp of
a man came over to me at the counter. In a
hushed, confidential tone, he asked for my
assistance. I was pleased to help and asked
what he wanted. Rather tongue-tied and
uncertain, he quickly muttered the title: Ball
Crushers. I wasnt even sure Id heard him
correctly and had never heard of anything
like it. The odd title
was puzzling; it gave
no clue of its subject
matter. My mind
went into auto-pilot
as I instantly tried to
weigh up whether
it was fiction, such
as a grisly murder,
or technical, say on
industrial plant, or
perhaps even winning
at ten pin bowls.
Clueless, I simply
had no idea where it
might be shelved.

Many months later, when browsing in the

muddled books of a remainder store, to
my amazement I saw the book! A modest
paperback, so I had to have a look. It was
a US pop psychology book about women
who emasculate men. Judging from his
awkward, almost guilty request, I could only
guess this hapless customer must have
been a victim himself!

Another time, Abbeys

had David Brin, a young
science fiction author,
doing a book signing at
Galaxy Bookshop, but
after the lunch rush,
not many people were
turning up. As Id been
president of several
science fiction clubs, I
was sent over from one
of the other shops to
ask him to sign a book.
But I had then not heard
of him. Indeed, it was
more like a visit to Adyar
Bookshop as he greeted
To narrow the search,
Galaxy Bookshop in Clarence Street, 1994
me by saying I had an
I immediately, but
aura. I dont know what he saw! He was
naively, asked whats it about? Having
possibly psychic, as his novels set on Venus
summoned the nerve to speak to me
and other places have telepathic dolphins
at all, his courage deserted him and he
in them. I must have asked him something
sagged under my questioning gaze, which
about it, but in amongst the idle chatter,
I now suspect he took to be censorious
now have no memory of what. Perhaps he
disapproval from the local vicar. I offered
had seen the ghosts of guilty book buyers?
to look it up, but deflated, and far too

57

40 Memories
The Bookshop with a Difference
by James Murray
I first experienced Abbeys as a casual
assistant decades ago. I was impressed
by the perspicacity of both Ron and Eve,
counting how many people passed the
shop, and being innovative in all sorts
of arresting ways. Not that Ron always
commended himself. He could be a bit
authoritarian when it suited his mood. I
recall one Sunday afternoon when the shop
was in the Queen Victoria Building and
Ron arrived with a gaggle of admirers. He
demanded coffee for all of them and I had
to balance the mugs on top of the sunken
safe which dominated what served as a sort
of staff room. Big and brassy, its sloping top
made the coffee hazardous. I was entirely
ignored, as if a servant on domestic duty.
I recall, too, Elizabeth Brownlee doing a sort
of Lady Macbeth impersonation from the
upstairs balcony, cutting the air with her
incisive voice and commentary.
There were dramas aplenty, not least the
objections of the Scientologists about a
book by Volper on their English operations.
It was hardly complimentary and Ron had
made a display of copies in the George
Street window. He was suitably incensed
and defiant at their demands for the book to
be withdrawn from sale. But on consultation
with some solicitors, upon learning that he
would need at least $20,000 to mount a
defence, he did capitulate.

58

Ron had a few fetishes too, the exact

placement of books one of them. He would
arrive all smiles, but suddenly complain
that some books were sticking out on the
shelves and he would go along aligning
their edges waspishly.

Eve and Ron made a formidable duo at

that time and had the respect of many
distinguished literati. After all, they were
both great readers themselves, and we were
all expected to know what was in the books
we recommended to customers.
Long before other bookshops held book
launches, Abbeys introduced new writers
to the public. Many years later, in the new
shop in York Street, I was to experience the
excitement of signing my own first memoirs
while a bevy of the curious sheltered
between the stacks of books.
Greatest of all its features, Abbeys was likely
to have books no one else was stocking. I
remember one book about the finches of
the lower Himalayas, an Oxford University
Press publication with a print run as small as
the birds themselves.

I never travel
without my diary.
One should always
have something
sensational to
read on the train.

Oscar Wilde,
Gwendolen Fairfax
in The Importance of
Being Earnest

Our Staff
Recollections of Abbeys
by Ian Hoskins
Historian at North Sydney Council
Abbeys gave me my first proper job. I joined
in 1981, just after finishing the HSC, and
worked for the most part in the main shop,
which was located in an unrestored and
very dowdy Queen Victoria Building. It took
a long time to conquer the unease when
confronted by an unfamiliar author and an
unpleasant customer: Charles Bukowski?
Uh, lets look in self-help therapy? The
Abbeys were nurturing first employers. I
received an Oxford Concise Dictionary as a
gift that first Christmas; everyone else got a
bottle of alcohol. The dictionary is still with
me.
I dont recall what I blew my first pay
on, but I do remember spending far too
much money over the next two years on
remaindered history texts and photography
books, several of which are still on my
shelves. I would lump these books back
to the family home in Richmond on the
western outskirts of Sydney. The commuting
added four hours to my working day. On the
first and last legs of the trip, I sat in a rickety

carriage c.1920 with tiny and quite useless

wrought iron luggage racks perched above
overstuffed seats. Most of the trip, however,
was spent standing in a crowded red rattler
that would have been familiar to Jack Lang.
In summer, passengers sat on the floor with
their legs dangling out the doors.
In 1982, it was decided to have a staff cricket
match. In todays management-speak, this
would be called team building, but then
it was simply a social get-together. I had
long since given away the game of cricket,
falling into the class of choker (someone
who performs well during practice, but
goes to pieces under the pressure of
competition). At the Abbeys staff cricket
game, however, I was in the zone, bowling,
batting and fielding with uncanny precision.
My father, who was umpiring the match,
was less impressed. Ever watchful for signs
of hubris in his son, he pointed out that
clean bowling a 10-year-old wasnt all that
commendable.

Jacqui Rychner,
manager of Language Book Centre,
circa 1979

59

40 Memories
Shelving Harry Flashman
by Brian Turner
When floor manager at Abbeys in 1982, I
was sometimes reproached by customers
for shelving George MacDonald Frasers
Flashman series in Fiction instead of
Biography. Flashmans rediscovered
memoirs had a popular following, akin to
Patrick OBrians man-of-war tales today,
except that, unlike Aubrey-Maturin, British
army officer Harry Flashman was a coward,
reprobate, charmer, seducer and scoundrel.
Take, for example, his part in the Light
Brigades charge in the Crimea. The cowardly
Flashman attempts to desert, but his equally
terrified horse with Flashy screaming
in terror and bowels trumpeting in fear
instead joins in the catastrophic charge.
He survives by feigning death, covering
himself with the blood of the wounded. As
a British relief column arrives, he grasps the
regimental colours from the dead hands of
its bearer. Flashy is decorated and acclaimed
a hero of Balaclava.

60

foreigners liquor chit, he brought a small

bottle of warm local beer. The Gentlemens
swimming pool was full of turgid, pea
soup water, but from the walled Ladies and
Childrens pool came the sound of splashing
and laughter. But what, I wondered, could
veiled Pakistani ladies wear while swimming?
Should I try to peek and take a photograph?
No, what would Robyn, my darling girlfriend
at Abbeys (now my wife), think if I was
arrested and charged by the people in the
sinister-looking building opposite?
The next day at breakfast, two policemen sat
at a table munching Eggs Biriyani with their
despondent-looking prisoner squatting
chained to the table leg. It made me glad I
didnt try for swimming pool photographs,
but I left Flashmans Hotel none the wiser
about its name.

In June 1982, I travelled to Pakistan to

photograph Afghan refugee camps at a
time when the Mujahideen were the good
guys and the invading Russians the baddies.
While in the Kiplingesque city of Peshawar, I
visited the Saeed Book Bank, bought a copy
of Flashman at the Great Game, and chatted
with the owner, Mr Akbar Saeed, who has
a prodigious memory, but could throw no
light on the origins of Flashman.

Years later, at the London Book Fair, I met

Mr Akbar Saeed again, an imposing figure
in traditional Pathan costume. Yes, he did
remember me and hed garnered some
information on that cad and scoundrel,
Harry Flashman. It seems George
MacDonald Fraser may have based Flashy
on an equally notorious British Indian Army
officer, Lieutenant Hobson, with whom no
fellow-officers wife, nor any regimental
mess funds, were safe; but unlike Flashy, he
was no coward and was formidably deadly
in a duel or on the battlefield.

When I arrived back in Rawalpindi, opposite

the bus station I saw a familiar name
Flashmans Hotel. Were the Abbeys
customers correct? Did a Harry Flashman
actually exist? I decided to stay, at least
overnight. A grumpy clerk showed me
to a dusty bungalow and, after buying a

George MacDonald Fraser died recently;

his obituaries mentioned his Flashman
papers, but none speculated on Harrys
caddish prototype. All seemed to agree that
Flashman is now far too politically incorrect
for todays readership, but hes still selling in
the Fiction section at Abbeys.

Our Staff
Hooked on Books
by Rodney Sangwell
I remember the impact on Abbeys of a
radical social change the almost universal
extension of the prohibition of smoking.
Before that enlightened moment, the
air was at times so thick that the view of
the back of the shop from the counter
was blurred. Parading up and down the
shelves were, as one colleague put it, those
smoking and farting academics! Just
browsing, browsing, browsing.
The smoking was not confined to
customers in the shop. Our offices too
were asphyxiating and the conditions for
unimpeded breathing were even worse
than in the shop. The wall of a small office
behind me was gradually turning yellow. But
finally, and looking back, it seems, suddenly,
it all came to an end. We passive smokers
could at last kick the habit!
One thing that dealing with customers
revealed to me was the difference between
ones internal view of oneself and the way
one is viewed by some customers. The first
such occasion for me was a bit of a shock. I
was being, I thought, extremely helpful, but
was getting no response from the customer.
Finally she left and went into the Penguin
Shop next door where I heard her say quite
audibly, That man in there is no help at all;
hes so conceited! Am I, by many others too,
thought to be conceited? I wondered. No
one was going to tell me.
One very good customer we nicknamed
The Jane Austen Lady. She had a loud
voice and her discourse commenced even
before she got through the door. She
was an authority on 19th century English
literature. While grateful for her custom, we
dreaded her entrance, for she addressed

copiously and voluminously the first staff

member she met. As she wandered on,
she accosted various others in her path,
but it was clear she didnt aim to really
communicate for she never looked you in
the eye. Nevertheless, if in ones discomfort
one managed to think up some brief reply
(to maintain the pretence of a dialogue),
she did, to my surprise, really hear it and
replied appropriately in turn. Sometimes
one unexpectedly encountered a ghost-like
apparition in the rows. Then hardly a word
emerged. There was barely even a thank
you as she paid for her purchases. So for
some reason there was a transition from
logorhoea to aphasia!
In my experience I have known that book
buying can be an addiction (the addicts
being the opposite extreme to the browsers,
for whom they indeed make up). I myself
will die leaving behind many unread books.
But as a bookseller, I have observed cases far
worse than me.

Rodney Sangwell,
manager of Oxford & Cambridge Bookshop,
circa 1985

61

40 Memories
An Ode to Abbeys Bookshop
from Barry Willoughbys book of bad verse

In the year of eighty-four

As Orwell had predicted
A great life change then came about
In which I was accepted
To start a job at Abbeys shop
The prospect rather daunting
Until I met with Eve and Jack
Who set my mind relaxing
And so began a new career
In Oxford and in Cambridge
The greatest books youll ever read
On subjects deep and changing
The years rolled by, the business grew
And friendships became stronger.
Lets drink a toast to Abbeys crew
And may it progress longer.

Barry Willoughby and

the Bishop of Sydney
at Oxford and Cambridge Bookshop,
1986

62

Our Staff
My Family of Booksellers
by Colleen Pearson
My first job, straight after the HSC, was as a
bookseller at Abbeys, and it lasted for eight
years. Over this time, I matured into young
adulthood, living in Sydney during the late
80s and early 90s - my era of asymmetrical
hairstyles, nightclubs and underground
dance parties. Whatever was happening in
my personal life, no matter how little sleep
or money I had, Abbeys was the constant
foundation that grounded me. Simply put, I
loved books and I loved working there. I felt
like I belonged.
When I started at Abbeys 22 years ago,
there were no computers. Everything
was done with index cards, catalogues,
microfiche and memory. I was trained
the good old-fashioned way in the art of
bookselling and it wasnt long before it felt
like I was part of a family. There was Eve,
the matriarch and heart of Abbeys, who
saw something in me as a young woman
that I didnt recognise myself. I learned a
lot from Eve, especially about customer
service and how to run a business, and I still
practice these things today. There was Ron,
larger than life with a deep, gruff voice that
frightened me. I felt so privileged when Ron
spoke to me, a man of such huge renown,
but was rendered almost speechless in his
presence.
In my first year, Eve and Rons son Donald
would visit from WA and help in the shop.
He taught me how to package books for
postage by constructing a perfectly-sized
box from cardboard and tape. I still parcel
books that way, teaching my own staff the
same technique. I confess I had my first
teenage crush on Donald, and I confess that
crush was later transferred to his younger

brother Alan. There was

also daughter Jane, who
inspired me with her
adventurous travels.
My family of booksellers
extended to those who
didnt share the surname
Abbey. There was Janis
Brown, who introduced
me to frozen margaritas
and the fun of eating out
with friends. And Jack
Winning, who helped
steer the Abbeys ship and introduced me
to the financial side of things. And Peter
Milne, who would astound me with his
enthusiasm and patience when talking with
his passionate crime-reading customers.
Most of the staff were much older than me
and seemed almost like grandparents, but
I was inspired by what they taught me and
felt honoured by their friendship. Barry was
always the perfect gentleman, and Rodney
delighted me with his naughty sense of
humour. There was Adelaide, who always
wore a cardigan and was quiet as a mouse,
but notoriously hard-working. And who
could forget Hanni Baaske? She was the first
person I ever encountered who had a real
foreign accent!
There were of course many other staff, but
the aforementioned became my bookseller
family and I was tucked under many
caring and protective wings. I have many
great memories of that magical time of
bookselling, but when I think about Abbeys,
it is the people I remember, and with an
enduring fondness.

63

40 Memories
Wonderful Days
by Michael French

64

Oh, it must be so wonderful to work in a

bookshop, all those lovely books to read!

now, Im sure. It was hard work, but fun too,

sharing ones enthusiasms.

But bookshop assistants do not read. They

dont have the time. Of course, they do read
when theyre not in the bookshop, when
theyre being themselves, but in the shop,
no, theyre too busy working. And its hard
work too. Eve Abbey promised me, when
she took me on, late in 1989, that we work
hard here, but we have fun too. And I knew
she meant it.

There were encounters with the great and

the famous. I phoned to leave a message
with Gough Whitlams office about a
new Penguin Latin translation, but to my
alarm his secretary put me through to
the comrade classicist himself. He happily
embarked on a mini-lecture on Virgil and
the merits of his 17th century translator, the
former Poet Laureate, oh whats his name,
you know whom I mean, and of course,
as youll undoubtedly be aware, etc, etc...
No, I didnt, to my shame. (It was, of course,
Dryden).

For the next four years, there was a lot of

hard work. And yes, there was much fun.
Was it wonderful? Well, I know that I joined
a team a small family, really of wonderful
people. The staff was an eclectic, regularly
changing group that included long-term
loyalists, some wise and creative minds
among them; some bright and beautiful
young things, with one or two fiercely
intelligent writers; and interesting visitors
from abroad. It was a colourful palette
Abbeys had, and has, no type, except
insofar as they know their books. Abbeys
anchored my life in Sydney. I felt at home
there. I still have friends from those days,
and of those with whom Ive lost touch I still
think fondly. People left and others joined
us, but there remained a reliable core, and as
much alongside as above us was Eve Abbey,
our Akela of the Books, our den mother.
She kept a lookout for us and encouraged
us; she was interested in our enthusiasms
and supported us in our times of pain. She
became a friend. There were some trying
times when Eve handed over to me, briefly,
the job of compiling the monthly Abbeys
Advocate. It was such a laborious process
to assemble those issues then; much easier

Naturally, a bookshop holds authors in

special esteem and it was a thrill to serve
writers who were particular favourites of
mine, such as Jessica Anderson.
I remember the Abbeys mid-morning
muffins and coffee. And the birthday cakes
ablaze carried aloft through the store. I
remember the long days of stocktaking
that seemed like theyd never end. There
were little tempests, but mostly we just got
on with it. There were always new books
coming in. Always more to do. But there
were so many good and special people
to be among. You know, those really were
wonderful days.
Dear Eve, and Peter, and Jack, and the
present and past staff of Abbeys
happy 40th!

Our Staff
Memories of the Professor
by Emeritus Professor Trevor Cope
My sister and I met Evelyn Holden by
chance in London in 1952 as students in Mrs
Morsers boarding house in Leinster Square,
Bayswater.
My sister also met her future husband there
like Evelyn, a Kiwi and forsaking all others
(her parents and three brothers in South
Africa) and keeping only unto him, went
out to marry him in New Zealand, with
Evelyn as her bridesmaid. Evelyn Holden
subsequently married Ron Abbey and, after
various vicissitudes and enterprises, became
the Eve Abbey of Abbeys Bookshop whom
we know today.
We kept in touch rather remotely and
spasmodically over the years until 1986,
when I arrived in Sydney as a migrant. Eve
offered me employment in the Oxford and
Cambridge section of the bookshop (as
it was then). As a retired professor, she no
doubt thought I might be of some use.
And indeed on one occasion I was. A client
wanted the poem about Horatio on the
bridge. None of the permanent staff were
able to enlighten, so Eve brought the client
to me in the university section. Oh yes,
I said, Macaulays Lays of Ancient Rome:
Lars Porsena of Clusium by the nine gods
he swore, That the great house of Tarquin
should suffer wrong no more. Lord Macaulay
was in stock, and so we had a sale!
When not attending to customers, I
patrolled the bookshelves with a feather
duster, thereby adding to the art of
selling books the skill of dusting them. My
employment at Abbeys was not only a new
experience for me, but a step towards my
Peter Milne, circa 1988

orientation to the new country, for which I

shall always be grateful to Eve. I also made
some new friends, like Rodney Sangwell,
Barry Willoughby, Adelaide Vieser and Peter
Milne, who is still on the staff after almost
40 years. I also met some very interesting
people, authors like Tom Keneally and
Gerard Windsor and Elizabeth Jolley, who
became a friend.
On one occasion, I was sent to deliver a
letter to Victoria Glendinning, who was
autographing copies of her excellent
biographies. Who are you doing next?, I
asked. Anthony Trollope, she replied. Oh,
was all I could say. After such fascinating
females as Edith Sitwell and Vita SackvilleWest, how could she choose a dull male
who spent his life in post offices and whose
main contribution to civilisation was the
invention of the red pillar-box? I have
since heard he was a widely travelled man
and therefore presumably not dull at all.
Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to get
Victoria to autograph my copy of her life of
Rebecca West.

65

40 Memories
Have You Read that One?
by Ann Leahy
I started as a manager at Abbeys in 1994.
I had previously worked in a small shop,
Hunter Street Books in Newcastle, as well
as the Co-op at Macquarie University, but
most recently I had been manager of the
Building Bookshop in the then Sydney
Building Information Centre. I was used to
being an expert on books and information
in a relatively small field, so when I started
at Abbeys which has so many specialist
fields it was a bit of a shock at first. As I was
loading books onto the New Titles stands,
customers would ask me Have you read
that one? It took some time to become an
expert again. I guess its somewhat like the
knowledge that a London cabbie has to
master.
Then it was on to all the hard work of
modernising the shop and overhauling the
systems. Im not sure how many customers
remember the days when we had to write
all special orders onto cards in triplicate, and
then file them in three different places! I still
remember some addresses by heart, I wrote
them out so many times.

66

Eventually we installed a new computer

system which indicated stock levels and
we could now enter orders straight onto
the system. In a shop as large as Abbeys,
trying to manage the stock inventory is
all-consuming. We simply cannot stock
every book on every subject all the time.
I remember one instance of a customer
being shocked that we didnt have Lady
Chatterleys Lover by D H Lawrence on the
shelf at the time, which was because it
took nearly two years to sell one copy! We
now have it in stock in various editions, but
of course we can place a special order for

anything not in stock, which often arrives

within a few days, depending on availability.
At the time, I remember we were doing over
1,500 special orders for customers every
month.
We also undertook major shop renovations
at the time and I remember lots of meetings
discussing the colour of the fittings and
the layout for the renovations, which we all
referred to as the new shop. I suggested
the bag stalls at the front of the shop, which
took a bit of getting used to, but now I think
people are pleased not to have to lug all
their heavy shopping bags around while
they browse.
Now I work from home writing much of the
Crime Chronicle and also writing and desktop
publishing the Abbeys Advocate. Im still as
busy as ever, but I do miss our wonderful
customers and staff.

Ann Leahy, David Hall and Eve, circa 1995

Our Staff
The Salman Rushdie Affair
by Peter Milne
In November 1988, Penguin released the
hardcover edition of Salman Rushdies
The Satanic Verses. Sales proceeded at a
steady, if not spectacular, pace and by
early February 1989, we were thinking of
reducing our stock levels of this title. Then
the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa
against Salman Rushdie, claiming the book
was blasphemous. An uproar ensued,
threats were made and all the bookshops
in the CBD, except Abbeys, decided not to
stock the book.

came in. After each report, it always amused

me that the press were here before the
police its called intrepid journalism.

Demand became huge and we ended up

selling around 250 copies per day, trying
valiantly to keep it in stock. It ended up
being our bestselling book of all time,
although I often wondered how many of
the thousands we sold were actually read. To
reward the hardworking staff, we shouted
everyone to a Sydney Dance Company
performance.

Finally it came to a head in May 1989 when

someone took a lead pipe stuffed with
petrol-soaked rags and forced it through the
glass walls at the side of the shop, then lit
it. The fire didnt actually do much damage,
but the water from the sprinklers sure did.
We had to replace most of the fixtures in the
front quarter of the shop, and we replaced
the carpet throughout.

As the Manager of Abbeys at the time,

I became the spokesman on all matters
regarding the book. This included going on
A Current Affair with Jana Wendt, speaking
on radio and to the press, and going on a
panel discussion, chaired by Jane Singleton,
as one of two booksellers (David Gaunt of
Gleebooks was the other) with a number
of academics and other interested parties.
This was shown on SBS. The Head of Islamic
Studies at Sydney University praised Abbeys
for our excellent Islamic Studies section.

An eventful time, to say the least it. It just

shows that bookselling is never dull.

As the spokesman, I took all the phone calls,

many of which were personal death threats,
as well as threats against the shop. I had
my own Special Branch detective sergeant
on call and I had to report each threat as it

My home phone became an unlisted

number and regular police patrols cruised
down our narrow street in Randwick, which
intrigued my neighbours, although I never
told them why we had them. The special
branch man was very reassuring: he said if
they really wanted to kill me, there wasnt
much the police could do about it.

67

Eve Abbey

68

Collected Short Stories by W Somerset Maugham

Timeless stories from the master.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

19th century classic of womens endurance.

A Tuscan Childhood by Kinta Beevor

Upper-class English artistic dropouts in early 20th century Italy.

A Scandalous Life by Mary Lovell

Biography of Jane Digby, a 19th century romantic adventurer.

The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin

Biography of Charles Dickens secret lover

Joe Cinques Consolation by Helen Garner

Superb, sympathetic reportage of a murder trial.

The Once and Future King by T H White

The longest and best of the King Arthur stories.

The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger

Teenage rebellion in the 60s.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

A classic travel story.

10

Up the Organization by Robert Townsend

The classic book about management and fun in business.

11

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

A vivid novel set during WWI.

12

The Fatal Englishman by Sebastian Faulks

Biography of three little-known English men who died young.

13

The Blue Nile and The White Nile by Alan Moorehead

Great travel writing.

14

Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie

A saga set at the time of the partition of India and Pakistan.

15

Desert in Bohemia by Jill Paton Walsh

Novel set in Eastern Europe during the communist era.

16

The Great World by David Malouf

Two old men compare their ideas of 70 years of Australian life.

17

Auto da Fay by Fay Weldon

Autobiography by the amusing feminist writer.

18

White Butterflies by Colin McPhedran

Autobiography by an Anglo-Burmese who walked out of Burma into India during WWII.

19

Kings in Grass Castles by Mary Durack

The classic story of early colonisation.

20

The Mitford Girls by Mary Lovell

Endlessly entertaining family of eccentrics.

40 Favourites
21

A History of Europe by H A L Fisher

I once had a job in a farm office, with very little to do. I read all of Fisher at work!

22

The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Superb writing about the fall of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia.

23

The Harp in the South and Poor Mans Orange by Ruth Park
The first books I read set in my own country.

24

A Companion Guide to Sydney by Ruth Park

Updated version of an indispensable local history.

25

Akenfield by Ronald Blythe

An oral history of the counties of East Anglia.

26

Round the World in Eighty Dishes by Lesley Blanch

A unique cookbook written by the famous travel writer and historian of the Caucasus.

27

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The classic anti-war novel.

28

Stasiland by Anna Funder

An amazingly frank account of the East German Secret Service.

29

William Morris: His Life, Work and Friends by Philip Henderson

Also because it is such a gorgeous production!

30

Small is Beautiful by E Schumacher

Because I agree with his idea of economics.

31

An Interrupted Life by Donald Horne

Classic Australian autobiography. Contains Education of Young Donald, Confessions of a
New Boy and Portrait of an Optimist.

32

The Art of the Engine Driver,

The Gift of Speed and The Time That We Have Taken by Steven Carroll
The Australian equivalent of John Updikes Rabbit trilogy.

33

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Visionary and unusual Australian novel.

34

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Nostalgic novel of English upper-class, set before WWII.

35

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Part 1 of the classic Border trilogy set in Texas and Mexico.

36

Rabbit Trilogy by John Updike

An ordinary mans life mirrors the changes in 20th century America.

37

Paradise Mislaid by Anne Whitehead

The story of an Australian settlement in Paraguay.

38

The BFG by Roald Dahl

A clever story for all ages about a Big Friendly Giant.

39

A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton by Kate Colquhoun

The biography of one of those marvellous self-educated Victorians.

40

Pears Cyclopedia edited by Chris Cook (latest edition 2008-2009)

Indispensable for crosswords!

69

Jean Abbey

70

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

One of his earliest books, begun when he was only 24.

Listen to the Mocking Bird by S J Perelman

The great American humorist.

For Esm with Love and Squalor (short story by J D Salinger in Nine Stories)
A moving study of a man recovering from battle fatigue.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe

A telling picture of class differences.

Mackerel Plaza by Peter de Vries

An exuberant novel set in small-town America.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

One of his best, set in a university.

Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield

An amusing account of her daily life.

English History 1914-1945 by A J P Taylor

A modern classic.

The Duff Cooper Diaries edited by John Julius Norwich

A fascinating illustration of his work on Anglo-French relations.

10

The Kennedys by Thomas Maier

Full of gems about the Kennedy family.

11

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Amusing story set in the English countryside.

12

The Best of Dear Bill, the Collected Letters of Denis Thatcher

How Private Eye imagined Mrs Thatchers private life.

13

I, Claud by Claud Cockburn

A communist who worked for the London Times.

14

The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

The famous Edwardian classic.

15

My Brother Jack by George Johnston

Semi-autobiographical Australian novel.

16

The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman

The world before WW1.

17

The Smith of Smiths by Hesketh Pearson

A loving biography of Sydney Smith.

18

Tears Before Bedtime by Barbara Skelton

She met all the literary lions and had the time of her life.

19

Journals of Arnold Bennett

Interesting insights into his work.

20

Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby

War experiences of the famous traveller.

40 Favourites
21

Dorothy Parker (Viking Portable Library edition)

A witty series of short stories, poems and reviews.

22

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

A childrens classic.

23

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Another childrens classic.

24

Chambers Biographical Dictionary edited by Magnus Magnusson

An invaluable reference.

25

Leonard Maltins Movie and Video Guide

My indispensable loungeroom guide.

26

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

A moving story set in the trenches of WW1.

27

The Statement by Brian Moore

The remorseless search for a war criminal.

28

The Best of Saki edited by Graham Greene

Succinct, amusing stories.

29

Esprit de Corps by Lawrence Durrell

Witty pieces on the diplomatic life.

30

Let Stalk Strine compiled by Afferbeck Lauder (Alistair Morrison)

Very funny construction of Australian English.

31

The Illustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel

About John Harrison and the chronometer.

32

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The greatest romantic novel.

33

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

Life in the upper classes.

34

Untold Stories by Alan Bennett

Observant, witty stories.

35

Many Cargoes by W W Jacobs

Endearing short stories of Englands bargees.

36

Paul Robeson by Marie Seton

One of Americas great artistes.

37

The Shorter Pepys by Robert Latham

Frank accounts of London in the 1660s.

38

The Blue Nile by Alan Moorehead

A great tale of exploration.

39

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A clever novel set in the future.

40

If this is a Man by Primo Levi

Reflections of a Holocaust survivor.

71

Ann Leahy

72

London Fields by Martin Amis

This could be my favourite book of all time!

The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood

Funny and engaging novel about relationships and emotions.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

Not only a gem, but a highly polished diamond.

Therapy by David Lodge

An academic hits mid-life crisis when his wife leaves very entertaining.

Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy by Dimitri Volkogonov

Discover what a thoroughly evil man Stalin was much worse than Hitler.

Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Memories of growing up in Poland during WWII superbly written.

The Galapagos Affair by John Treherne

A German couples attempt to create their personal utopia in the Galapagos.

The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery

Explains why global warming will become mankinds all-consuming future challenge.

High Tide: News from a Warming World by Mark Lynas

The worlds indigenous peoples first-hand account of environmental change.

10

The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock

The phenomenon of the Earth as a self-regulating system.

11

Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami

Now I know why this book was so popular!

12

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Garners best and most memorable.

13

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Set in 1896 New York, a winning combination of history, forensics and murder mystery.

14

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Surreal, yet beautifully real.

15

Breath by Tim Winton

Lyrical and poetic, this could be Wintons best!

16

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

An unusual and mesmerising novel.

17

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford

Denied his chance to kill bad guys in the Gulf War became this teens saving grace.

18

They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James
The chapter on Queen Elizabeths childhood is fascinating.

19

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Instinctive snap judgements can be far more sophisticated than you think.

20

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

A science journalist helps a stranger who later stalks him.

40 Favourites
21

1984 by George Orwell

Wonderful, and even better on re-reading.

22

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

A timeless tale of a tortured soul. Magnificent writing.

23

Crime and Punishment by Fedor Dostoevesky

A sheer delight Porfiry Petrovich is an excellent character.

24

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Emma Bovary seeks to discover the meaning of felicity, passion and rapture in real life.

25

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

Three smart, capable women talking, laughing, living. Very enjoyable.

26

Terra Incognita by Sarah Wheeler

A budding writer spends the winter in Antarctica.

27

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore

A highly amusing tale of Moores personal tour.

28

What Bumosaur is That? by Andy Griffiths

As the mother of an 8-year-old I couldnt breathe for laughing!

29

The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley

Altruism is not as selfless as we may think. Fascinating!

30

The Diversity of Life by Edward O Wilson

The interrelationships of living things, from the man who coined the word biodiversity.

31

Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins

Dawkins explains concepts like the evolution of the eye. Complete with illustrations
from his ex-Dr Who wife, Leyla Ward.

32

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

A compelling account of 3 generations of Chinese women, including life under Mao.

33

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

So original, this is still chilling.

34

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Stranded children revert to the law of the jungle. Very moving.

35

Bliss by Peter Carey

Call me a heretic, but I dont think Carey has really bettered this.

36

Experience by Martin Amis

Amis writes so well about fatherhood.

37

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

His other novels were impenetrable for me, but this is a stand-alone classic.

38

The Collector by John Fowles

Fowles gets inside the mind of a psychopath.

39

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Rattling trams, post-war Germany and an ordinary woman with a dark past brilliant!

40

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

The Greek gods havent vanished they are squatting and squabbling in London!

73

Lindy Jones

74

The Chronicles of Narnia by C S Lewis

Truly magic and some gorgeous imagery.

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

The first book I learnt to read on.

The Charioteer by Mary Renault

Still a compelling account of war and sexuality.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

My great-grandmother gave me this when I was 10 and I still enjoy it.

Red Moon, Black Mountain by Joy Chant

The most glorious fantasy of my teen years.

The Childrens Bach by Helen Garner

Speaks volumes beyond its slim wordcount.

Slaters Field Guide to Australian Birds

The first edition for the accurate colour reproductions.

Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery

And the sequels thanks Nana!

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

And the sequels by her translator. Very special. Thanks Granma.

10

Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox by Victoria Finlay

The best amalgam of information, travel and intelligence.

11

Diaries by Samuel Pepys

This gave me the feeling that we are all at the forefront of time.

12

Loving Daughters by Olga Masters

Unflinching, idiosyncratic, highly observant prose.

13

A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture

by Apperly, Irving & Reynolds
Very informative and easy to use.

14

Harlands Half Acre by David Malouf

The best depiction of the creative obsession.

15

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Always astounding the more you look, the more you see.

16

The Aunts Story by Patrick White

Still one of my favourites in fictional women.

17

The Silver Brumbys Daughter by Elyne Mitchell

Wild horses in an Australian bushland setting my two childhood loves!

18

Green Mountains by Bernard OReilly

In that area in the 60s, he was still considered a hero.

19

Mermaids Singing and Peel Me a Lotus by Charmian Clift

Proving she could write.

20

The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift by Nadia Wheatley

The very model of biographical perfection.

40 Favourites
21

The Australian Road Atlas

What better way of planning holidays and finding towns?

22

Australian Rainforest Plants in the Forest and in the Garden (I-V)

by Nan & Hugh Nicholson
Excellent, practical guides for identification and gardening.

23

The White Earth by Andrew McGahan

Searingly powerful and finely written.

24

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

Ive had a soft spot for otters ever since!

25

One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

Such a wonderful book to read as a child!

26

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin

The moral underpinnings made a huge impression.

27

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

I almost understood the physics

28

Captain Corellis Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

All those narrative voices!

29

City of Women by David Ireland

Brilliant author, corruscating writing.

30

A Descant for Gossips by Thea Astley

Absolutely staggered me when I first read this.

31

Monica Bloom by Nick Earls

His best elegaic and elegant.

32

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

The most lyrical prose a modern fairy tale.

33

Grimms Fairytales
My childhood version illustrated by Rackham.

34

The Macquarie Dictionary

The big fat one! Always good for distractions.

35

Stone Cage by Nicholas Stuart Gray

The first time I realised fairy tales are the basis of story.

36

84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

Just such a lovely slice of life!

37

Tales of the Arabian Nights

Any good adult translation.

38

The Man Who Loved Boxes by Stephen Michael King

Is my sentimental streak showing yet?

39

The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne

And I play poohsticks with my nieces!

40

The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark by Reg Morrison

Geology made fascinating!

75

Greg Waldron

76

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Makes perfect nonsense of the world.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Ignatius J Reilly, the man you love to hate.

The Recognitions by William Gaddis

Study of forgery in art and life. Forerunner to Pynchon and co.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Funny, perceptive take on modern America.

Belle du Seigneur by Albert Cohen

Dissects relationships with a comic, Proustian eye.

Carpenters Gothic by William Gaddis

Scathing indictment of Regan imperialism.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

A great classic tale.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The original and the best.

The Go-Between by L P Harley

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

10

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

Seduction in a monastery, with lustful monks and evil abbesses.

11

Chronicles by Bob Dylan

Depicts certain moments in a remarkable life.

12

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

A disturbing tale on a splintered relationship.

13

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha coming to grips with the youth of the 60s. Disturbing and penetrating.

14

The Magus by John Fowles

Classic philosophical thriller. Read it, then head off to Greece!

15

Revolution in the Head by Ian Macdonald

The story of The Beatles music, told with passion and insight.

16

Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis

Wyndham targets the art world of the 20s.

17

Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

If anyone can catch him, Holmes can. And he does.

18

White Noise by Don DeLillo

America you just couldnt invent it!

19

Gulag by Anne Applebaum

An engaging narrative with detailed research.

20

68: The Year of the Barricade by David Caute

Country-by-country study of a turbulent year.

40 Favourites
21

Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma

The murder of Theo van Gogh and its ramifications.

22

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Release the hounds!

23

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Bloody, gothic telling of the Texas Rangers and the timeless character of the Judge.

24

The Razors Edge by W Somerset Maugham

The father to The Magus.

25

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Pet Cemetery, but with laughs.

26

Fuel-Injected Dreams by James Robert Baker

Drugs, sex and rock n roll. Loosely based on Phil Spector.

27

Theory of War by Joan Brady

A compelling novel about white slavery after the Civil War.

28

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

by Julian Jaynes
The theory of when man first became conscious of himself and his surroundings.

29

The Avignon Quintet by Lawrence Durrell

Like The Da Vinci Code, but with pipes and cocktails.

30

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

Sun, sex and consequences.

31

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Succinct, probing novel set in a country coming to terms with its past.

32

The Outsider by Albert Camus

Is there any greater crime than not crying at your mothers funeral?

33

They Shoot Horses, Dont They? by Horace McCoy

Short and powerful tale of dreamers and losers during the Depression.

34

The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley

A collection of wise and philosophical reveries from a plethora of sources.

35

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The mother of a genre (also see Norman Mailers The Executioners Song).

36

Kensington Gardens by Fresan Rodrigo

Psychedelic retelling of the J M Barrie story.

37

For Esm with Love and Squalor by J D Salinger

Short stories including A Perfect Day for Bannafish.

38

Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg

The thriller that was made into the cult film Cutters Way.

39

Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau

Dark tale of a brother and sister and their mischievous games.

40

Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta

Radical activists on the run. Spiotta is the new Don DeLillo.

77

Peter Milne

78

Watership Down by Richard Adams

You cant help but love the rabbits!

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

The most delightful book Ive read in the last 20 years.

The Tyranny of Distance by Geoffrey Blainey

An excellent view of Australias isolation.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

A grand tour-de-force.

Murder in the Library by Agatha Christie

Enter Miss Marple!

The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts

Purity of plot from the Golden Age.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

My favourite Dickens novel.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A close second.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The master detective.

10

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas

Swashbuckling derring-do.

11

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

An amazing story that never fails to amuse.

12

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell

A marvellous read. Superbly written.

13

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

An extraordinary novel.

14

A History of Europe (2 volumes) by H A L Fisher

A solid and dependable overview.

15

A Certain Doctor Thorndyke by R Austin Freeman

Early 20th century detective series. Brilliant!

16

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

3 or 6 volumes, depending on the edition. Great!

17

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs

An Australian classic.

18

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank & Ernestine Gilbreth

The book is far better than either of the films.

19

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

My favourite of favourites!

20

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

A picaresque and genial tale, elegantly written.

40 Favourites
21

The Castlemaine Murders by Kerry Greenwood

Smart and sassy Phryne Fisher mystery. The whole series is a delight.

22

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

A comic expedition up the Thames.

23

Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

A childhood classic.

24

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The first in a remarkable trilogy completed just before the authors early death.

25

Short Stories by Henry Lawson

A delight to be read over and over again.

26

Heres Luck by Lennie Lower

Another Australian classic.

27

Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

Glorious series of novels in the lead-up to WWII.

28

Collected Short Stories by W Somerset Maugham

A wonderful collection from a master.

29

The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby

Clippers and the sea.

30

The Jack Aubrey series by Patrick OBrian

Accurate and entertaining.

31

Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers

The best Peter Wimsey novel.

32

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Medieval magic.

33

1066 and All That by Sellar & Yeatman

A lighter look at history.

34

Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson

Great adventure!

35

Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout

Nero Wolfe & Archie Goodwin at their best.

36

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

An armchair travellers delight.

37

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The epic 19th century novel.

38

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Wise, witty and wonderful history of 14th century Europe.

39

The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee by Robert Van Gulik

The original Tang dynasty detective story.

40

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Funerals will never be the same!

79

Abbeys advertisement in November 1976 issue of New Poetry

(drawn by Gary Shead, Archibald Prize-Winner 1993)

Current Staff

Current staff of Abbeys Bookshop (top left), Language Book Centre (top right)
Galaxy Bookshop (centre) and Administration (bottom left)

131 York Street, Sydney 2000

Ph (02) 9264 3111
www.abbeys.com.au

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Ph (02) 9267 7222
www.galaxybooks.com.au

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Ph (02) 9267 1397
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Abbeys Book Catalogue Volume 8 Issue 4, November 2008

Published by Abbeys Bookshops Pty Ltd ABN 86 000 650 975