Item #131956 Angry Penguins. 1945 [cover title]. Angry Penguins #8, Max HARRIS, John REED.
Angry Penguins. 1945 [cover title]

Angry Penguins. 1945 [cover title]

Melbourne, Reed and Harris, 1945.

Quarto, [i] (contents printed inside front cover), 184, [2] (text on the rear cover) pages with illustrations plus 8 pages of plates (including a 4-page supplement on Arthur Boyd) and a loosely-inserted slip of 'Some Errors and Omissions' (113 × 127 mm).

Wrappers (with a two-colour pictorial front cover by Albert Tucker); foot of the front joint bumped, with the bottom corner of some leaves impacted a little, and a small piece dislodged from the foot of the spine; trifling blemishes to the bottom edge of the front cover; poor-quality text paper uniformly discoloured, with minor chips and creases to the bottom corner of the first three leaves; trifling signs of age and use; overall, an excellent copy of a fragile production.

The eighth (and penultimate) issue, with 'a cover illustration by Albert Tucker depicting a returned digger cast like a broken doll among the refuse of society' (Richard Haese: 'Rebels and Precursors'). Interestingly, the first item on the list of 'Some Errors and Omissions' is 'The cover and culture cartoon (page 166) are by Albert Tucker'. No issue of 'Angry Penguins' may be considered common; although 900 copies of the notorious Ern Malley number - the sixth - were printed and sold, there were only 450 copies of Number 5, and overall the magazine failed to break even. According to Tregenza ('Australian Little Magazines, 1923-1954'), perhaps the most important legacy of the journal, which 'in issue after issue lavishly reproduced individual paintings' by the likes of Nolan, Tucker, Boyd, Counihan, and Perceval, 'artists who were then in the process of founding the Australian renascence in art, [was the way in which it] played an incalculable, but assuredly important role in creating an Australian taste for the new styles and techniques'.

Item #131956

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