British publisher George G. Harrap once said about the Australasian Publishing Company he helped set up in Sydney that ‘it is not easy to command success for ventures of the sort in another country where much has to be learned of local customs and conditions’. It can be, he concluded, an ‘uphill task’.

With evidence of the many uphill tasks that an Australian publisher had to overcome in order to show profit in domestic and export markets, this book has traced the material conditions of Angus & Robertson's London office when selecting works for publication, distribution and sale to British audiences.