This dataset contains historical bibliometric data for the 71 Australian children’s books published by Angus & Robertson from 1897 to 1933. The data was drawn from AustLit, WorldCat, Marcie Muir’s A Bibliography of Australian Children’s Literature (1970), and business records in the Angus & Robertson Archive. Details were corroborated using first editions of the books held by the State Library of New South Wales.
The Historical Bibliometrics dataset can be downloaded here.
Explanation of terms in the dataset:
- Book Title: full title of the book, including any subtitles
- Author: author of the book, as attributed in-text. If a pseudonym was used, the author’s real name is indicated in brackets after the pseudonym
- Author Gender: gender of the author, based on biographical research to avoid misattribution
- Year: date of publication.
- Form: predominant form of written expression in the text (prose or verse).
- Imprint: publishing imprint used for the book (A&R or Cornstalk)
- Format: size of the book’s front cover, measured in inches
- No. Pages: number of pages in the book, excluding unnumbered preliminaries and endpapers
- Words per Page: average number of words per page, calculated from the mean of ten pages selected at random from throughout the book
- Illustrator: illustrator of the book, as attributed in-text. In some instances, the illustrator was not named or was only identifiable by their signature.
- Illustrations: ‘plates’ indicates a full-page illustration with a blank reverse side.
‘Mono’ refers to a monochrome illustration. Unless otherwise specified, normal paper was used for the illustrations - Cover: design of the book cover, including materials used. The State Library of NSW had rebound some books, making it difficult to accurately describe some covers.
- Reprints: the word ‘reprint’ has been used to refer to both ‘editions’ and ‘issues’. Reprints were only counted until 1940.
- Sale Price: original price of the first edition, as offered to the general public. The discounted trade price has not been recorded in this dataset.
- Printer: printing press used, usually indicated in the preliminaries and/or endpapers of the book
