The Dictionary of Sydney was archived in 2021.
Search the blogs
Jack Mundey and the Green Bans
Jack Mundy, Builders Labourers Federation, 1973 by Rennie Ellis © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive Can you imagine Sydney without The Rocks? or what if we didn't have the Centennial Parklands or the State Theatre? These are just some of the iconic…
Kathy Mexted, Australian Women Pilots: Amazing true stories of women in the air
Kathy Mexted, Australian Women Pilots: Amazing true stories of women in the air NewSouth Books, November 2020, p/bk, 272pp, ISBN: 9781742236971, RRP: AUD$34.99 Thanks to the determination, grit, and spunk of the ten women Kathy Mexted chronicles in her first book Australian…
Kathryn Harkup, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts
Kathryn Harkup, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts Bloomsbury, July 2020, 340 pp. (plus an appendix, bibliography, acknowledgements and index), ISBN: 9781472958211, p/bk, AUS$29.99 The great Bard is well known for his plays and his poetry. He is also a…
A story of escape: a terrible true tale or fake news?
Traveller's engraved horn, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (LR 23) One of the most perplexing tales to come out of Norfolk Island in the nineteenth century is the story of Bennett and Balsto. A story that beautifully illustrates both the…
Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters
Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters NewSouth Books, 2018, 204 pp. (plus notes and index), ISBN: 9781742235806, h/bk, AUS$49.99 Harriet Scott (Morgan) (1830–1907) and Helena Scott (Forde) (1832–1910) were, as natural history artists, without peer…
Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia
Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia New South Books, 2018, 448pp, ISBN: 9781742235530 (p/b), RRP: $34.99 In 1986 Patrick O’Farrell published The Irish in Australia. At the time, the book was both feted and criticised…
Philippa Sandall, Seafurrers: the Ships' Cats Who Lapped and Mapped the World
Philippa Sandall, Seafurrers: the Ships' Cats Who Lapped and Mapped the World Affirm Press, 2017, 244pp., ISBN: 9781925712155, h/bk, AUS $24.99 Matthew Flinders was onto something when he wrote his little treatise about his faithful cat Trim. He could not have foreseen that cats would…
The Penrith Museum of Printing
Albion Printing press, c1860 at the Museum of Printing, photo by Alison Wishart The Penrith Museum of Printing Sydney is lucky to have one of the few operational printing museums in the world. Yes, all the old printing presses in this museum actually…
Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life
Jacqueline Kent, A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life (Second Edition) NewSouth Books, 347 pp., ISBN: 9781742236025, p/bk, AUS$34.99 Award-winning writer Jacqueline Kent’s highly-acclaimed work A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life (2018) is now available in an updated second…
Gideon Haigh, A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie Dean
Gideon Haigh, A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie Dean Penguin / Hamish Hamilton, 310 pp., ISBN: 9780143789574, p/bk, AUS$32.99 Journalist Gideon Haigh is well-known for his engaging full-length works on cricket, business histories and, more recently, his histories…