Re: RARA-AVIS: Was Spillane ever banned in Australia?

From: Rene Ribic ( reneribic@bigpond.com)
Date: 05 Mar 2004


Spillane was banned in Britain which meant that most likely his books would have been unavailable in Australia in the 50's. US paperbacks were kept out of Australia by legislation designed to protect the homegrown publishing industry while UK paperbacks were freely available. I would think that the New English Library (who published any Signet books in the UK) held all the rights to British Commonwealth publication. If the books were banned in the UK it may be that they didn't consider it financially worthwhile to publish the books just for the small Aussie market. So, I don't think Spillane was ever officially banned (I could be wrong but I've found no evidence of Spillane being banned). It may be that the Australian authorities of the time, who were by no means averse to banning books, didn't consider it an issue as there was no local publisher of the books.

> I'm passing along a question from Dr. Toni Margaret Johnson-Woods
> < t.johnsonwoods@uq.edu.au> of the University of Queensland in
Australia.
>
> | I wanted to know if Mickey Spillane was banned in Australia? I know
_V
> | is M_ was banned in New Zealand but can't seem to find anything
about
> | Australia. (I am writing an article on Australian hard boiled
ficiton
> | of the 1950s.
>
> If you know, please drop her a note, or reply to the list and copy her
so
> we all know.
>

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