In 1975 editor Hilary McPhee changed Australian publishing forever

The name Hilary McPhee is etched in huge and luminous letters on the history of the Australian book world and the memory of her will forever burn with a steady flame.

In 1975, when publishing here was run by men and was largely a reflection of British publishing, Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble set up their own small operation, calling it simply McPhee Gribble.

Hilary had had broad experience in publishing by this time, some of it at Penguin and some at Heinemann.

McPhee Gribble's first venture was attached to Penguin and was a very successful children's series called Practical Puffins.

When they turned their attention to adult writing the men in the industry warned them of failure, suggesting they confine their product to pornography or books on horses or ballet.

With her energy, tiny physique, steady gaze, swift jaunty step, throaty chuckle, perky tilt of the chin and seductive husky voice, she was a commanding presence.

I often used to think she sounded as if she had a bit of melted chocolate on her tongue.

And yet her encyclopedic knowledge, her sharp mental clarity, sparkling wit, profound understanding and empathy gave her the bright edge of a sort of loving sprite with an assassin's weapon in her pocket.

That weapon was in fact a 2B pencil with which she, as editor, marked her writers' manuscripts.

The marks were indicators of matters to be discussed, face to face, with the writer. She also had a supply of erasers.

McPhee Gribble published four of my books in the 1980s, and I would go to the old converted sewing factory at 66 Cecil Street, Fitzroy, climb the stairs to Hilary's office and sit on a little couch at a low table with Hilary while we went through the manuscript. 

We drank coffee.

She was, need I say, a brilliant editor. Legendary.

A storied career

The publishing house lasted from 1975 to 1989 when it was sold to Penguin.

They were 14 glory years in Australian writing, when Hilary and Di published, among many others, the all-time stand-out favourites Helen Garner and Tim Winton. 

They were keen to promote the issues and writing of women, as well as the flavour and history of Australia.

McPhee Gribble gained a reputation as a "feminist" publisher. They also broke new ground when, in 1984, they published An Aboriginal Mother Tells of the Old and the New by First Nations woman Elsie Labumore.

After Penguin took over McPhee Gribble, Hilary ran the Picador imprint at Pan Macmillan Australia until 1994 where she published The First Stone by Helen Garner and The Riders by Tim Winton.

While Hilary's rural childhood was particularly characterised by books and reading, her first real contact with editing and publishing was in the early 1960s when she was a history student at the University of Melbourne and was working for the literary journal Meanjin.

In 2015, she was invited to be a guest editor to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

During the intervening years she had achieved many and varied milestones within Australian publishing, and from 1994 to 1997 she became the first woman chair of the Australia Council for the Arts.

From 1997 to 2004 she was inaugural Vice-Chancellor's fellow at the University of Melbourne. And in 2001 she was awarded an Order of Australia for her service to literature and the arts in general.

A treasured friend

These are such highly distinguished achievements for the sprite with the 2B pencil, and, having listed them, I rush back to thoughts of the sewing factory in Fitzroy.

One day as Hilary and I were crossing busy Brunswick Street on our way to Cecil Street, she turned to me as we negotiated the traffic and suggested I write a book about writing. From this minute conversation, my book Dear Writer was born. 

This was the swiftest publishing contract ever.

They used to throw big Christmas parties in Cecil Street. The hullabaloo of a bewildering cross-section of the literary who's who rose to the heavens on this, one of the most exciting nights of a writer's year.

At other times there were gatherings at Hilary's house in Fitzroy and indeed, over time, she became a treasured personal friend.

If the image of the powerful woman publisher suggests a thoroughly tough individual, be assured there were vast other dimensions to her.

I recall an afternoon when she rang me to ask if she could come over to my house. She was in tears. A writer whose novel she had published long ago before the existence of McPhee Gribble had spoken publicly at a literary event in Melbourne, fiercely criticising her editing.

She was inconsolable, so fragile, having had no inkling for years that he harboured these feelings which he took pleasure in parading in public.

Unfailing courage

In her private life there were, as well as times of great joy, tormenting moments of tears, sorrow, heartache, and even serious illness.

Now that I think about it all, I have realised that courage is a word that comes forward in matters of both her professional and private self.

In 1964, she married Peter Freeman and had two children, Sara and Rupert, and in 1975, she married John Michie and had a son, James. In 2009, her marriage of 1986 to Don Watson ended.

Not until I read her second memoir, Other People's Houses, in 2019 did I know anything about the death of the first child. He was the two day-old son from her first marriage.

About the baby she writes: "I sat by his humidicrib and stroked his little red limbs, and he gripped my finger."

This tragic event was a vivid part of the complex emotional fabric concealed within the polished public exterior.

The title of the memoir echoes that of Other People's Words from 2001. It is interesting that these two personal books seem to point the reader away from the author.

Other People's Words is one of my favourite books, and for one thing it is evidence of the fact that Hilary was a superb writer of a prose that sings in the heart as well as a profoundly serious researcher.

Archaeology was her favourite kind of history, and she sometimes compared writing itself to a kind of archaeology.

She must have known, as an editor, how good her own writing was.

I see her reading it over and smiling as she looks up at the yellow Mermaid roses blooming in her Fitzroy garden.

Early in Other People's Words she tells of how, in the 60s, she started writing a novel, but abandoned it because she could not trust herself to write as herself. She kept imitating things she had read.

The memoir is pure, authentic and mature McPhee. Here she finds, as she says, "the words that ring true for me, which is the best I can do".

In 2025, Melbourne University Press re-issued the book with a new final chapter titled Twenty-five Years On. This fascinating piece might be the last thing Hilary would ever publish.

It is essentially a meditation on the phenomenon of artificial intelligence and its effect on writing, reading, knowing, imagining and being. She writes tenderly of her children and grandchildren, and their world.

Yes, Hilary, publishing today is a long, long way from Cecil Street in 1975. You have left a boundless legacy and a broad, indelible mark on literature and lives.

Carmel Bird is the author of numerous novels and short story collections and the winner of the Patrick White Award.