What's old is new with the reissue of classic books

REMEMBER the Hooked on Classics records that did so well in the 1980s? Today Australian publishers are singing a similar tune.

Thomas Keneally

REMEMBER the Hooked on Classics records that did so well in the 1980s? You had snippets from celebrated compositions by Wolfgang, Ludwig and the rest of the gang arranged against a disco or rock backbeat.

While some purists pouted, the albums were a commercial success and their promoters were able to say they were introducing classical music to a new generation.

Today Australian publishers are singing a similar tune. Text boss Michael Heyward has made the running on this during the past few years, attracting a lot of attention with his punchy marketing of the Text Classics series, which will extend to more than 50 titles in July with the reissue of nine more books, including David Ireland's magnificent The Unknown Industrial Prisoner.

Text also plans a YA Classics series, starting with four books: Ivan Southhall's Hills End, Joan Phipson's The Watcher in the Garden, Patricia Wrightson's I Own the Racecourse and Nan Chauncy's They Found a Cave. Due in June, all will come with new introductions - Margo Lanagan on the Phipson, for example - and sell for $12.95, the same price as the grown-up classics.

HarperCollins became the latest publisher to go old school this month with the release of a dozen "Australian Classics" under the Angus & Robertson imprint (too bad the bookshops are no longer with us!) and priced at $14.99. These include my favourite Australian novel, George Johnston's My Brother Jack, Jon Cleary's The Sundowners, Kylie Tennant's The Battlers and Eleanor Dark's The Timeless Land. The publisher plans to release eight to 10 new titles, fiction and nonfiction, every few months.

The highlight of the first batch, for me, is Tom Keneally's author's note to The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, in which he apologies for the book, 40 years after it was first published. "To an extent, and far more than the notorious Schindler book, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith has proved something of a chain around my neck," Keneally writes.

"Might I say, that a chain which connects one to a large number of the Australian populace is a lucky chain to have imposed on a writer. Nonetheless, in my view, I have written many more technically accomplished novels, which Australian opinion hasn't valued as much as this old, old work of mine. So perhaps I should start by apologising for the flaws of this book."

You make me smile, Mr Keneally.

AMID all this local canon fire it's worth remembering non-Australian writers have produced the odd classic or two. Over at Random House, the long-running Vintage Classics series continues on its attractive way, with 38 titles slated for release this year, including several works by Christopher Isherwood. So, which classics are people buying?

Text's top five so far are: Patrick White's first novel, Happy Valley, Elizabeth Harrower's The Watch Tower, Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, Madeleine St John's The Women in Black and the book Peter Craven argued devalued the classics coin, Nino Culotta's They're a Weird Mob.

The bestselling Vintage Classic of 2012 was Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, followed by Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

Quote of the week: "Maybe that time already came and I lived it already: at any rate, I see no choice." Our own Nicolas Rothwell, responding to the question "If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?", in Australian Book Review's regular Open Page interview.

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