THE CLIMB IN CIRCULATION


The covers of Aussie – and much of the cover art can be traced to New Zealand artists, as they were called – back Lawlor’s boasting of the climb in circulation to a total of 21,000 by 1925 from a starting point of just 3,500 per month.

For one Xmas issue, which was always the November issue, he cites written proof from the New Zealand manager of Gordon and Gotch that the circulation rocketed to 36,000.

This was most probably 1925 also, a year in which Lawlor notes in his diary that he is amazed by the number of people calling on his offices seeking advice about the success of his new enterprise. Printing and publishing he wrote was challenging the “land agency business for popularity”.

Magazines are easily consigned to a category of incidental ephemera, and certainly by comparison with the bibliographic bedrock of our book culture, a robust knowledge base about the rich history of periodicals in Australia and New Zealand can be extremely hard to retrieve, even in comparison to newspapers.

I am still researching the print culture surrounding Aussie, and highly recommend Richard Wolfe's book Fronting Up: Classic New Zealand Magazine Covers, as a point of departure and a visual feast. As Wolfe notes in his introduction the market for magazines in New Zealand in the 1920s was showing signs of increased specialisation with magazines for just about every interest. His selection from that decade includes the New Zealand National Review, Meat and Wool, New Zealand Theatre and Motion Picture ("Read by 17,000 New Zealanders Monthly"), The Kiwi, The Dominion Joker, New Zealand Tit-Bits, The Scotsman and New Zealand Home Life.