Sun Books was an Australian publisher of paperback books, founded in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
in 1965 by
Geoffrey Dutton
Geoffrey 'Geppie' Piers Henry Dutton AO (2 August 192217 September 1998) was an Australian author and historian.
Biography
Dutton was born into a prominent pastoralist family of Anlaby Station near Kapunda, South Australia in 1922. His grandfat ...
, Max Harris and Brian Stonier. Sun's three founders were all former employees of
Penguin Australia
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year. and a platform for local literary talent. Prior to its acquisition by
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
in 1981, Sun had published over 330 titles, of which 187 were first editions.
Sun’s non-fiction collection was wide-ranging, encompassing
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
,
sport
Sport pertains to any form of Competition, competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and Skill, skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to specta ...
,
the environment
The natural environment or natural world encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally, meaning in this case not artificial. The term is most often applied to the Earth or some parts of Earth. This environment encompasses t ...
,
travel
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...
,
social justice
Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fu ...
,
gender politics
Identity politics is a political approach wherein people of a particular race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, social class, or other identifying factors develop political agendas that are based upon these id ...
,
aboriginal mythology
Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across Australia in their ceremonies. Aboriginal spirituality includes ...
,
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
, and
homelessness
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and adequate housing. People can be categorized as homeless if they are:
* living on the streets, also kn ...
. However, as evinced by the prominence in the catalogue of parochial satirists and cultural commentators like
Donald Horne
Donald Richmond Horne (26 December 1921 – 8 September 2005) was an Australian journalist, writer, social critic, and academic who became one of Australia's best known public intellectuals, from the 1960s until his death.
Horne was a proli ...
and
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film prod ...
, this diversity was subsumed by a unifying (and self-consciously indigenous) cultural agenda,as summarised by John Arnold in commentary accompanying a 2005
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university has a ...
retrospective:
''The
Menzies
Menzies is a Scottish surname, with Gaelic forms being Méinnearach and Méinn, and other variant forms being Menigees, Mennes, Mengzes, Menzeys, Mengies, and Minges.
Derivation and history
The name and its Gaelic form are probably derived f ...
era was coming to an end, and there was a questioning of established values… Sun Books was both a product of, and a contributing player, to the sixties movement to change and reform Australian society.''”
Among Sun’s most successful original non-fiction first editions was
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...
’s classic interpretive history of
colonial Australia
The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia.
People first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and penetrated to all part ...
, The Tyranny of Distance first published by Sun in 1966, and still in publication by 2001
Sun’s literary ventures included the acquisition (and subsequent repeated reissue) of
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel ''Schindler's Ark'', the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, wh ...
’s
Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...
-winning
Bring Larks and Heroes
''Bring Larks and Heroes'' is a 1967 novel by Australian author Thomas Keneally which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1967.
Plot summary
The novel is set in an unidentified Penal colony in the South Pacific, which bears a superficial resembla ...
,
Christina Stead
Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a mem ...
’s
House of All Nations
''House of All Nations'' (1938) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead
Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological chara ...
, as well as Australian verse, including works by
Judith Wright
Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 191525 June 2000) was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.
Biography
Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New Sou ...
, and the transgressive ''Drug Poems'' of
Michael Dransfield
Michael Dransfield (12 September 1948 – 20 April 1973) was an Australian poet active in the 1960s and early 1970s who wrote close to 1,000 poems.
.
A selection of Sun’s epochal cover designs (including those by Brian Sandgrove, who also adapted the publisher’s colophon from
Lawrence Daws
Lawrence Daws (born 1927) is an Australian painter and printmaker, who works in the media of oil, watercolour, drawing, screenprints, etchings and monotypes.
In the 1980s he started making computer prints, and was possibly the first establi ...
’ reproduction of a cave painting of the
Wandjina
The Wandjina, also written Wanjina and Wondjina and also known as Gulingi, are cloud and rain spirits from Australian Aboriginal mythology that are depicted prominently in rock art in Australia. Some of the artwork in the Kimberley region of W ...
) are preserved and curated online by the Australian Book Designers Association, and in print in ''Paperback Pioneers, Sun Books 1965–8'' by Dominic Hostede.