BooksBarbecue
Back Acting on Impulse Save as PDF
Contents ( 80)
  1. CONTENTS
  2. ACTING ON IMPULSE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. INTRODUCTION
  5. “A PROPOSAL TO CICELY”
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. A PROPOSAL TO CICELY
  8. THE END
  9. READING “A PROPOSAL TO CICELY”
  10. “THE LITTLE LADY”
  11. INTRODUCTION
  12. THE LITTLE LADY
  13. I.
  14. II.
  15. III.
  16. THE END
  17. READING “THE LITTLE LADY”
  18. “LINCKES’ GREAT CASE”
  19. INTRODUCTION
  20. LINCKES’ GREAT CASE
  21. I.
  22. II.
  23. III.
  24. IV.
  25. V.
  26. VI.
  27. VII.
  28. THE END
  29. READING “LINCKES’ GREAT CASE”
  30. “THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST”
  31. INTRODUCTION
  32. THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST
  33. THE END
  34. READING “THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST”
  35. “ACTING ON IMPULSE”
  36. INTRODUCTION
  37. ACTING ON IMPULSE
  38. I.
  39. II.
  40. III.
  41. IV.
  42. THE END
  43. READING “ACTING ON IMPULSE”
  44. “WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?”
  45. INTRODUCTION
  46. WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?
  47. THE END
  48. READING “WHOSE FAULT WAS IT?”
  49. “THE CHINESE SHAWL”
  50. INTRODUCTION
  51. CONT
  52. THE CHINESE SHAWL
  53. I.
  54. II.
  55. III.
  56. IV.
  57. V.
  58. VI.
  59. VII.
  60. VIII.
  61. THE END
  62. READING “THE CHINESE SHAWL”
  63. “THE OLD MAID”
  64. INTRODUCTION
  65. THE OLD MAID
  66. THE END
  67. READING “THE OLD MAID”
  68. “LOVE”
  69. INTRODUCTION
  70. LOVE
  71. I.
  72. II.
  73. III.
  74. THE END
  75. READING “LOVE”
  76. THE SEARCH FOR “ON SUCH A NIGHT”
  77. GEORGETTE HEYER’S BIBLIOGRAPHY
  78. FURTHER READING
  79. COMING SOON!
  80. OCTOBER 29, 2019

The problem with all this was, once I had rechecked the Women’s Weekly and its well-known competitors – many of which were now digitized on Trove – I was at something of a loss of where to look next. What I needed was some kind of listing of all the likely publications that would have been in print at the time. A concordance of women’s and literary magazines, that would have done nicely. In vain did I search, until I at last had the happy notion of asking a librarian for help.

I know. I’m a genius.

“Excuse me,” I said to one of the experts at the help desk. “I’m not sure how to find this, but I’m looking for a listing of all the women’s… and I guess also literary,” I remembered The Quiver, “magazines that might have been published in Australia in the mid- to late-1930s.”

She got a deer in the headlights expression. “I… you know, I think we used to have a list like that.” She turned to her colleague. “Martin, do you remember that list of literary magazines we had? I think it’ll be in the Australian literary magazines file.”

Martin went off to dig it out, and Kirsty – for such was her name – began an extensive catalogue search for what I was after. “We have so many directories of so many magazines, but I just don’t know if we have…” Her eyes opened wide, as she had a sudden realization. “You know, we have a… there’s a kind of book for advertisers… I can’t recall the title, but it was something like the Newspaper and Magazine Guide…” Feverishly, she began a new search, while Martin proudly handed me a grimy manila folder, slim and dispirited looking with a hand-written label that read “Literary Magazines – Australia.” Not terribly hopeful, I looked inside to find several tissue paper-thin requests that dated back to the 1970s, from the National Library of Australia to assorted institutions asking to know their holdings in the genre, most of which did not seem to have received a reply. A list starkly labelled INCOMPLETE also stared back at me, as did a note about If Revived, a magazine that was issued fourteen times from 1949 – 1959, and the first editor of which was Rupert Murdoch.

This research was turning up all kinds of fascinating ephemera.

“The Press Directory!” a triumphant whisper-shout came from Kirsty at her desk, and I ran over to find her requesting the volumes from 1935 and 1938 for me, to be viewed the following day. “It’s a pretty complete listing of the magazines and newspapers in print back then,” she said sunnily. “Good luck!”

RETURNING the next day, I collected my Press Directory booty and painstakingly copied down the titles of each viable journal that I thought might conceivably play host to a lost Georgette Heyer story. I still couldn’t quite understand why she might have sold the story to a magazine other than the Women’s Weekly, her usual haunt on this side of the world, but she manifestly had not, so it had to be elsewhere.