Pinchgut Press was born of such a necessity. It seemed to Marjorie Pizer and her husband Muir Holburn that the poetry of their friend Victor Daley was worthy of a wider readership, and since no publisher seemed interested they decided to do it themselves. The result was the establishment of Pinchgut Press in 1947. Through its publications Daley’s poetry became better known, but in the meantime Muir died, and Pinchgut lapsed into inactivity.

Twenty-seven years after its first publication Pinchgut was revived, this time as a joint venture of Marjorie Pizer and her new partner Anne Spencer Parry. As in the beginning, the concern of the firm was ‘to produce books which the partners considered worthwhile but which were not acceptable to a commercial publisher’, realizing that for the big publishers a title must be capable of returning a profit; there is little margin for slow or unpopular books, no matter how good they may be. Majorie and Anne were both familiar with the sight of returned manuscripts, they both believed they had something worth saying, and they were prepared to put their total capital (which amounted to $500 and a great deal of time and energy) into getting their work published. Their first venture was Tides Flow, actually Marjorie Pizer’s third volume of poetry, the first two having been printed privately during the time when Pinchgut was moribund. The partners in their inexperience made virtually every possible mistake, but eventually Tides Flow appeared in a professional looking edition of 700 copies which actually sold; a reprint of 500 was possible soon after. This was followed a year later by Seasons of Love, with 1600 copies (they were getting bolder) which also sold well. By 1976 they felt ready to tackle a more ambitious project, and in that year published the first of Anne Parry’s novels. The Land Behind the World, in an edition of 3,000 copies. Since then they have published three more novels and two volumes of poetry, all by themselves.

The partners have made a cautious ruling never to get too deeply in debt; they do not become involved in publishing a new title until the last has paid for itself, and they try to price their books so that half the print run will pay the publishing costs (the novels each sell at $4.95 in paperback). To date they have produced 11,200 copies of the four novels and 5,200 copies of the four volumes of poetry. Between themselves the partners combine the duties of writer, editor, typist, proofreader, designer, store woman, packer, delivery-woman, bookkeeper, and general hand. They receive royalties for their books, but pay themselves no wages. But, as Anne points out, ‘for us, money is not what self-publishing is about. We have had a lot of joy and excitement from the enterprise, we have learned a lot, we have gained a tremendous amount of confidence (which has helped the writing side) and, by taking things into our own hands, we have stopped being the victims of circumstance’.

Both Anne and Marjorie are, in addition to their publishing venture, psychotherapists in private practice in the Sydney area. Both are women of wisdom and maturity, with firm views on the relationship of the individual to society and on the interaction of good and evil. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that Pinchgut is really an extension of that same spirit of life-affirmation that has led them by separate paths first into the field of psychotherapy, and thence to literature.

Marjorie Pizer’s poems, in the words of Manning Clark, are ‘hymns of praise to life ... her poetry is a record of how she, who loves life so passionately, also learnt wisdom’. The thirty-four brief poems in Gifts and Remembrances are unrhymed, unconstrained, simple – but not simplistic. They celebrate the beauty of the bush and the sea, or meditate upon the follies of mankind. Reading them I was reminded of Laura Huxley, herself a psychotherapist and philosopher, who would I am sure appreciate:

I have a waste paper basket full of

tears

Wept by my clients.

A pile of scrunched, wet tissues.

All that remains of sorrows present

or past.

Flowing out at last,

Lightening the load.

They have brought their tears and

left them here with me.

I can throw them out

Now they have been shed

And their owners healed.

Anne Parry explores the same subjects through the medium of allegorical fantasy. The four novels of The Land Behind the World series take Bara from her home in Australia to another, magical, world where she finds herself, with Eris and Dov, plunged into a series of high adventures. The confrontations between good and evil continue in The Lost Souls of the Twilight and The Crown of Darkness to finally culminate in the final volume. The Crown of Light. Together they form a complex allegory which inevitably brings to mind C. S. Lewis’ Narnia cycle. Unlike Narnia, however, which Lewis invented as a vehicle for presenting Christian dogma, ‘the land behind the world’ is a place of individual freedom, where the adventuring children meet archetypal characters representing goodness and evil, but where, ultimately, salvation is achieved by the recognition of personal responsibility, and where both the real and fantasy worlds are seen as parts of a greater whole. The stories are a bit rough in spots (Anne admits there are disadvantages in being one’s own editor) but flow more easily as the series progresses, and all are so packed with action and adventure that most young readers (and many adults) will enjoy them at that level; and if some of the underlying philosophy sinks in, well, so much the better.

The attractive covers and occasional line drawings are by Sydney artist Kim Gamble. These novels, like Marjorie’s volumes of poetry, have a pleasant air of competence, with good paper, good print, and good design.