Before leaving Lawlor and delving next more firmly into the story of Aussie magazine, I wanted to throw one other light on the bibliophile side of Lawlor's persona and personality as literally illustrated by these two bookplates which effectively 'book end’the Aussie years.

Bookplates were another Lawlor passion to which he gave – through the inauguration of the New Zealand Ex Libris Society – a considerable amount of his time and energy, and to which he attached much of his own identity and strongly-held bookish thinking.

First there is the Lawlor of 1916, portrayed by his black and white artist friend Tom Glover with a touch of the self-described bohemian, and generously provided by Tom for the price of one beer. Second there is the identity that Lawlor adopted as his favoured pen-name during the Aussie years, that of “Shibli Bagarag”, a character in a George Meredith novel, portrayed here in a bookplate of 1929 by the subsequently famous newspaper linesman Gordon Minhinnick.

Lawlor eventually owned seven bookplates and I'll close my talk with a reference to that idiosyncratic and motif-like aspect of his life.