Angus & Robertson

About Angus & Robertson

Angus & Robertson is a Sydney bookselling and publishing house, founded in 1886, that first published many of the foundational works of Australian literature, including Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses (1895). David Mackenzie Angus opened a secondhand bookshop in Market Street, Sydney, in 1884, and in January 1886 George Robertson, born in Halstead, Essex, to Scottish parents, bought a half-share in it.

The imprint first appeared in 1888 on H. Peden Steel's A Crown of Wattle, but regular publishing began with Paterson in 1895. Henry Lawson's In the Days When the World Was Wide and While the Billy Boils followed in 1896, and the firm later issued The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, The Magic Pudding and the Australian Encyclopaedia. It also published Norman Lindsay, Ion Idriess, Arthur Upfield and May Gibbs. Angus retired through ill health in 1899 (Wikipedia gives 1900), the partnership became the public company Angus & Robertson Ltd in 1907, and in 1929 Robertson bought the Eagle Press and renamed it Halstead Press, after his birthplace. He died in 1933.

After control passed to Gordon Barton's IPEC in 1970 and 1971, the publishing arm was sold to News Limited in 1981 and became part of HarperCollins in 1989, which still uses the Angus & Robertson imprint. The bookshop chain went through several owners, collapsed with REDgroup in 2011, and survives as an online shop run by Booktopia.