David Syme: Man of the Age (Biography)

In Australia, from Victoria's goldrush of the 1850s to Melbourne's boom of the 1880s and bust-to-recovery of the 1890s, newspapers dominated the Australian publishing scene. Uniquely, they provided local, intercolonial, and international news; magazine content from the popular to the intellectual; and the latest literature, especially novels in serial installments. By the 1870s, the Melbourne Age newspaper dominated the journalistic stage. In the 1880s, its circulation was far in excess of any other daily throughout all British colonial possessions. Its proprietor, the driven and talented immigrant Scotsman David Syme, was acknowledged as the leader of the Australian press. For the influence that he and his newspapers exercised, Syme became a legend in his lifetime and for several generations after his death in 1908. Making use of family and business records, as well as the massive 19th-century newspaper archive now accessible through digitization, this biography of a powerful man goes behind the legend and rounds out the story of David Syme's life - primarily as a press 'baron,' but also as a theorist, author, financier, farmer, property developer, and, not least, family man. (Series: Biography)