Reed & Harris
Reed & Harris was the Melbourne publishing company of John Reed and Max Harris. Their quest, of course, was to give opportunity and exposure to Australian writers.
Not that Reed & Harris stopped at Australians. There were grand international plans and strong links with America and England.
Harris was possessed of a prodigious creative generosity, a quickness to appreciate talent in others and to encourage it. He sought to nourish creative impulses and intellectual sensibilities - thus advancing his concept for a better world. Reed was similarly enthusiastic and supportive, albeit with more practical restraint. He was the financier, after all. Their small, progressive company at 360 Collins Street, Melbourne, published a wealth of poetry, novels, short stories, political and scientific papers and even a book on ballet and one of Aboriginal legends. Artist Sidney Nolan was very much a part of the Reed & Harris team, producing cover illustrations for many of the books.
One of Reed & Harris's bold ventures was the commissioning of an autobiography by Roy Rene, the popular comedian most famously known as Mo, pictured above. Harris did substantial ghosting for this work, but refused to give himself a credit when the book came to publication. Mo's Memoirs, now a very rare book, remains the definitive record of one of Australia's great comic talents. Among the Reed & Harris publications were:
Excellent Stranger by Alister Kershaw ; with preface by A.R. Chisholm.
The second book of verse by Kershaw , a poet with a cosmopolitan style.
The darkening ecliptic by Ern Malley. Illustration by Sidney Nolan. Introduction by Max Harris.
Ern Malley poems.
Night flight and sunrise by Geoffrey Dutton; introductory statements by Max Harris. Cover by Sidney Nolan.
This was Dutton's first book of poetry, much encouraged by Harris.
1891- Murder the murderer; an excursus on war from "The
air-conditioned nightmare." Henry Miller. 1944
Valentin Zeglovsky's Ballet Crusade. Reprint, 1945. Hardcover . Illustrated.
A popular ballet book of the period.
The Vegetative Eye by Max Harris, cover Sidney Nolan.
First novel of an Australian poet giving a personal apocalypse against an allegorical background of the Australian scene.
The Bunyip and Other Mythical Monsters and Legends by Charles R. Campbell, naturalist-author. Illustrated.
A study of Australian mythical beasts from Aboriginal folklore and legend.
Described by the prescient publishers as "a most valuable social document relating to the Australian aboriginee (sic), whose life is so interwoven with the compulsions of these legends".
Lucky Alphonse, Cynthia Reed. Semi-novel form account of the life of an Australian girl who trains as a nurse in overseas hospitals.
Immigration by Caldwell, Arthur
ALP Pamphlet , 1945
A second summary, Harry Roskolenko. Introduction Henry Treece.
The well-known American poet's third book of verse.
The Effluence of Leontine, Brian Elliot
A first novelette by leading Adelaide academic.
Eyes Left! Dr Reg S. Ellery
Book-pamphlet on the Soviet Union and the Post-War World.
The Socialist Order and Freedom, Bruce Williams
Schizophrenia, The Cinderella of Psychiatry. Dr Reg. S. Ellery.
Re-publication of a successful discussion of a major illness.
Reed & Harris had a Sydney representative in the form of one Elizabeth Lambert and a New York office at 1788 10th St. Brooklyn, manned by the American poet Harry Roskolenko.
Reed & Harris acted as an agency for New Directions books, Geo. Wittenborn & Coy. specialist art publishers, and The Wind and the Rain, an English quarterly, Interim, an American quarterly.