Fabricating a National Canon: The Role of Richard Bentley and George Robertson in Developing and Marketing the Australian Library

Abstract

Richard Bentley and Son was a prominent publishing house (1829–98) that produced fiction, travel and history bestsellers and series for the British market that ‘would flood the bookstores for three to six months and then disappear from the shelves’ (Gettmann 1960: 23).¹ The firm only sporadically sold editions overseas before 1860 because Richard Bentley was initially reluctant to risk capital to manufacture books specifically for colonial and foreign markets. He preferred to sell higher-priced British editions to foreign and colonial wholesalers. In the 1860s and 1870s, Bentley, his son George and his grandson Richard gambled that working directly with American and colonial booksellers would financially benefit the firm. Relying solely on the British market limited the quantity of books the London publisher could sell in an already crowded and competitive business. In 1876, George Bentley, who by then was running the family firm, partnered with colonial distributor and bookseller George Robertson to distribute and sell Bentley publications in the Australian colonies.