Dustjacket synopsis:
"In 1886, a young Scot called George Robertson purchased for £15.0.0 a half share in David Angus's tiny bookshop in Market Street, Sydney. When the Angus & Robertson shingle went up, Australia's leading publishing house was born.

"Dear Robertson is a selection of letters culled from nearly forty years' correspondence between George Robertson - described variously as that "black Calvinist" by Norman Lindsay in one of his more intemperate moments, and as a "wise and generous" autocrat by C. E. W. Bean - and the novelists, poets, essayists, artists and other people connected with the publishing activities of Angus & Robertson. "Banjo" Paterson, Henry Lawson, Christopher Brennan, Miles Franklin, Norman Lindsay, May Gibbs, C. J. Dennis, Katharine Susannah Prichard - these are just some of the legendary names that spring to vivid life in these pages. Terse, witty, cajoling, generous, pleading, brusque, kindly, encouraging, the letters that went back and forth down the years convey a fascinating, informal history of the beginnings of Australian literature, and a revealing portrait both of the man who became the founding father of Australian publishing and of his correspondents.

"The letters are linked by a lively narrative text, and illustrated with photographs of the period."

First Paragraph from the Preface:

Long before he died, George Robertson realized that the correspondence files and other publishing records of the firm that he and D. M. Angus had founded would become a valuable literary archive. Ultimately, he felt, they should be housed in the Mitchell Library, which he himself had played a part in establishing. With this object in mind, he took the first opportunity to start going through the files from the firm's beginnings, culling and sorting the letters. This was in 1917, when extensive renovations to the firm's premises forced him to take temporary refuge in work elsewhere. From then on, every few years the current files were culled and sorted in with the earlier letters. In 1932, realizing that he might not have a lot longer to live, Robertson made arrangements with the Mitchell Library to buy the material.

Although Robertson had discarded what he considered unimportant - "trade" letters and such (something that causes librarians to despair) - and some papers and correspondence had been destroyed in a fire before the turn of the century, the remaining material was still considerable. It represented nearly forty years' correspondence with authors, artists, and other people connected with the publication of A & R books, plus any other item Robertson considered of interest. In addition, there was a collection of manuscripts and artwork. In 1978 the Mitchell Library rounded off the collection with the acquisition of the publishing and business records covering the period from 1932 to 1970. The combined Angus & Robertson collection now occupies more than a hundred metres of shelf space in the library.

From the Angus & Robertson hardback edition, 1982.