Wild And Woolley: A Publishing Memoir

Wild & Woolley: A Publishing Memoir is Michael Wilding's rollicking account of those heady bohemian years in the 1970s and 80s, charting the growth, the experiments, and the development of this innovative small press against a background of social upheaval and cultural change in Australia. It is a tale of anarchic energy, peppered with irreverent anecdotes and details - including publication of the best-selling manual All About Grass, the purchase of the decommissioned panel vans for 'urgent book deliveries' and accounts of long and boozy book launches; and offers vivid portraits of some of the most important literary figures of the time.

More importantly, the book is an insider's view on small-press publishing in Australia, and on the industries and economics in which it operates. It offers insight into the forces - government agenices, bookseller databases, warehouses -that a small operator must negotiate, and the political and activist potential of publishers that work outside of the mainstream. It's also a madcap tale of running a small business and of learning on the wing, from the perspective of one of Australia's most distinctive and distinguished novelists and critcs.

Michael Wilding is emeritus professor at the University of Sydney. He was a founding editor of the UQP's Asian and Pacific Writing series, of the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, and co-founder of publishers Wild & Woolley, and Paperback Press. He has also been a milkman, postman, newspaper columnist, apple-picker, Cosmopolitan 'Bachelor of the Month', and Chair of the New South Wales Writers' Centre. He has published twenty four works of fiction and books of criticism on Milton, Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson. He has been translated and published in over twenty countries.