The above sentiment expressed by Robert Haupt in 1988 about the presence of British publishers in Australia and, by implication, overseas or imported texts in the local book trade, echoes other sentiments recorded decades earlier and equivalent complaints are heard today. Legally and commercially across the course of the twentieth century, British trading rights pertained to exclusive English-language rights throughout the former empire.2 Within this framework Australia was the largest export (or ‘run-on’)3 market for British books to 1959, valued at its peak to be worth £4,387,810 sterling in export turnover for British publishers;4 this value was a significant increase over Australia's estimated purchases of British books of £1.5 million sterling in 19485 and the second largest market for British books behind the United States after that time.6 During this period Australian booksellers, among whom the Australian firm Angus & Robertson doubled as publishers, were able to negotiate concessions from the peak organisation, the Publishers Association of Great Britain,7 prompting Hector MacQuarrie, managing director of Angus & Robertson's London office, to claim in 1949 that