Hilary McPhee, who turned a converted factory in Melbourne's Fitzroy into one of the country's most influential publishing houses, died on Thursday at 85. She started with little more than a partner, a plan and a belief that Australian readers wanted Australian books.
That partner was Diana Gribble. Together they founded McPhee Gribble in 1975, 51 years ago. The list they built included Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, Helen Garner's Monkey Grip and Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey. Other authors included Dorothy Hewett, Kaz Cooke, Drusilla Modjeska, Jennifer Dabbs and John Misto.
Building a Business in a Closed Market
McPhee and Gribble entered an industry that didn't welcome them. In her 2019 memoir Other People's Words, McPhee recalled how the established men of the trade treated her: “The strong men in publishing liked to call in the late afternoons with bottles of wine and kindly advice: stick to packaging, do horse books or ballet books … put together some recipes … get a good-looking, famous sheila to front them for you …”
They ignored the advice. Nikki Christer, a publisher who inherited Picador from McPhee, described the market they walked into. “When she and Di created McPhee Gribble, it was largely dominated by overseas publishers and imported books,” Christer said. “And so she helped create a publishing culture that put Australian writers and therefore Australian stories at the centre.”
The early years needed commercial ballast, and a licensing arrangement with Penguin supplied it. The children's series Practical Puffins sold three million copies worldwide and carried the company while it promoted young Australian writers. McPhee Gribble went on to publish hundreds of titles, including books by young Indigenous authors, and helped train editors and publishers such as Sophie Cunningham and Sue Hines.
The firm also dealt practically with the demands of running a business as young mothers. Its Fitzroy offices included a crèche, unusual at the time. Children sometimes came to the office, McPhee said; they had a nursery where they could sleep and “a marvellous woman who'd raised six children looking after them.”
Recession, Sale and Public Service
Good books didn't shield the company from the economy. After recession hit Australian publishing in the 1980s, McPhee and Gribble signed a co-publishing deal with Penguin. They sold McPhee Gribble outright to Penguin in 1989.
McPhee stayed a few years, then moved to Pan Macmillan, where she ran the Picador imprint until 1994. That year, then prime minister Paul Keating headhunted her to become the first female chair of the Australian Arts Council. She led a controversial restructuring during a turbulent period, according to the record. After John Howard won the prime ministership in 1996, he tried to close the council. McPhee later said the episode embarrassed her terribly when she received an Order of Australia for services to literature in 2003.
The Writers' Verdict
The first tributes came from the authors she backed. “I published my first four books with McPhee Gribble. Hilary was a fine editor. I'll always be grateful for that,” Garner said.
Winton was 24 when he first walked into the Fitzroy offices, after literary agent Caroline Lurie referred him. His first publishers, Allen & Unwin, hadn't wanted him to write a short-story collection. Much of their decades-long partnership took place through letters while he worked from Western Australia. “Her handwriting is very familiar to me, it was always pencil on the page, and she was a sensitive and canny editor,” Winton said. “She knew when to push, and she was someone you could trust.”
Christer remembered a formidable presence. “She had that way of looking at you where she would close her eyes and lift her chin, and you would know that you'd said something stupid. She didn't suffer fools.”
McPhee is survived by her children Sara, Rupert and John. Gribble died in 2011.
Why This Matters: McPhee's career shows what private initiative can do when it meets an underserved market. Two women with no institutional backing built a company that put Australian writers ahead of imported lists. They survived on a commercial licensing deal, not a grant. When recession hit, they made a business decision and sold to a larger house. Her later years at the Australian Arts Council tell a different story: restructuring, political fights and an attempt to shut the body down. Readers can weigh the two chapters themselves. Perspective suggests the first, built on commercial discipline and an editor's eye for talent, left the more durable list of books.