Wattle Grove Press was a small publishing house established in ...

Wattle Grove Press was a small publishing house established
in Launceston by Professor Rolf Hennequel in 1958. The
business was similar to many founded worldwide around that
time, as a response to the domination of large publishers who
were unwilling to print less mainstream titles.
Rolf Hennequel, writing in 1965, stated that the Press was
founded:
. . . for printing unusual literature, which could not possibly be
launched commercially. This was—and is—our only purpose,
which also includes the desire to assist young writers. Our sole
self-imposed condition was that the venture should support itself.
This, with the help of devoted staff, it has done up to date. Our
books have been made without any assistance, governmental or
otherwise, and this was possible only through the faithful
support of a number of librarians and collectors, and a handful
of bookshops, all united in what we call: ‘The Friends of the
Wattle Grove Press.
Wattle Grove Press published 22 titles of limited edition books
between 1958 and 1968. They included works of Australian and
Tasmanian poetry, Australian fiction, and Mexican and German
poetry. Authors published included Pat Flower, Rodney Hall,
Dorothy Hewett, Wilhelm Heiner and Marguerite Harris. As well as
publishing works by avant-garde and young authors, it enabled the
publication of ten of Hennequel’s own writings under the name of
Albin Eiger, and three in the name of Rolf Hennequel.
It was an innovative local industry, using experimental printing
and binding techniques to publish the work of young and
emerging writers. Hennequel used a 100-year-old platen press to
produce books which often had a distinctive, and very often, bold
appearance. Hennequel did not, however, believe that the printing
and binding were more important than the content. It does appear
that Wattle Grove Press’ overseas buyers were more complimentary
about its books than were the Australian collectors and libraries.
The name, Wattle Grove Press, was inspired by the wattles which
grew on Hennequel’s property at Newnham. The Press ceased
operation in 1968 as Hennequel’s poor health prevented him from
continuing.
Rolf Hennequel in Calcutta,1951
Photo: Tasmaniana Library

The Professor in Afghanistan
Caricature drawn by Abdullah
Breshna (one of Hennequel’s
students)
Kabul,c.1950
Photo: Tasmaniana Library
ROLF HENNEQUEL (Henkl)
Born in Vienna in 1895, Hennequel moved to Launceston in 1952
where he lived and worked at the home he built at Newnham.
Hennequel,who was of French descent, studied and taught the
science of language (philology) and linguistics, Latin, French and
art. He had a strong interest in the languages and cultures of
Europe and Asia and studied in the USA, Cairo and Athens. He
lived and worked in Tokyo, India, Afghanistan and finally
Tasmania. He was a strong man with a passion for languages. This
led him to become fluent in French, German, Italian and Russian,
with some knowledge of Japanese.
He was deeply influenced by his time in Afghanistan, with many of
his teachings in Tasmania containing photographs of artefacts and
places,taken during his stay in that country. Many of his art
history lectures drew heavily on this material.
He published a number of titles on philology and linguistics, along
with papers on the sculpture and architecture of Afghanistan,
antiquities, and even extended to sport and the art of fencing.
While in Launceston Hennequel taught at Scotch College,
Launceston Church Grammar School and with the Adult
Education program. He painted and sculpted and participated in
local art exhibitions.
Hennequel died in 1971, after a period of ill-health.

‘Eastward. A Pilgrimage—This collection of free verse,
winnowed from a harvest of forty years is the author’s life work
and message:a record of his undaunted wanderings through
Europe and Asia, and of his approach to the ideals of the East,set
against the background of India and China, Japan and
Afghanistan. Only a few copies remain of a limited edition of fifty.
In flexible cover. £5.0.0: also in a leather folder, bound in silk cord
in the style of the Imperial Ming manuscripts.£10, and the same,
illustrated by numerous drawings (originals) and photographs,
£20.’
Source: Advertising flyer for Wattle Grove Press

‘Paris. An essay—A causerie on features of life in this most
cultivated and cultured of all cities, witty, profound and even
sentimental: “a rhapsody in praise, dispraise and illumination of that
enigmatic city . . . not a guidebook, but a fairly comprehensive
impression . . . with one memory crowding upon another. Eiger conveys
an illusion of swift and exciting movement” (Douglas Stewart in The
Bulletin, Sydney). Suitable as a gift.2gns.’
Source: Advertising flyer for Wattle Grove Press

List of titles published by Wattle Grove Press 1958-68
1958 The young god Antinous. A
study in portraiture. Albin
Eiger. 12 copies numbered
and initialled.
1958 Antinous the young god.
Albin Eiger.
65 copies numbered and
initialled.
1958 Eastward. A travelogue in
verse. Albin Eiger.
16 copies numbered and
initialled.
1959 Eastward. Collected poems.
Albin Eiger.
50 copies numbered and
initialled.
1960 The swallow flower: poems.
Albin Eiger.
30 copies numbered and
initialled.
1960 Paris. Albin Eiger.
300 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.1)
1960 Vox Populi. A collection of
praise and slander...(A
publicity pamphlet which
was reprinted at intervals.)
1961 The young god Antinous.
Albin Eiger.
50 copies numbered and
initialled. Second printing.
1961 Solitaries. Albin Eiger.
1000 copies.
(see book no.2)
1961 Red on purple. A dream of
the ancient world.
Albin Eiger
300 numbered and
initialled copies.
(see book no.3)
1962 A short history of the Wattle
Grove Press.
Rolf Hennequel.
1962 Three Aegyptian stories.
Albin Eiger.
100 numbered and
initialled copies.
(see book no.4)
1962 Encounter with
Hofmannsthal.
Rolf Hennequel.
50 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.5)
1963 In Capricornia. Pointless
exotic ballads. Albin Eiger.
205 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.6)
1963 Forty beads on a hangman’s
rope. Fragments of
memory. Rodney Hall.
220 numbered and signed
copies.(see book no.7)
1963 Pistils for two. Pat Flower.
220 copies numbered and
signed.(see book no.8)

1964 Narcissus and Echo.
Rolf Hennequel.
35 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.9)
1964 On the ruins of Babylon
with Tiresias. Marcanthony
Montes de Oca.
100 copies numbered and
initialled.
1964 Eastward. (Revised ed.)
Albin Eiger.
100 copies numbered and
intialled. (see book no.10)
1964 Four tales from Byzantium.
Howard Mitcham.
150 copies numbered.
(see book no.11)
1964 Stella Matutina. A cycle of
twenty-one poems by
Albin Eiger.
60 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.12)
1965 Symbols and book
decorations of the Wattle
Grove Press.
50 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.13)
1965 The risk of the vine. Poems
by Marguerite Harris.
150 copies numbered and
initialled.
1966 South Africa. A cycle of
thirty poems by
Wilhelm Hiener
100 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.14)
1966 Petra. Rolf Hennequel.
100 numbered and
initialled copies.
1966 Ambigamus. “The logic
box”. Ed. by Philip Ward.
21 copies numbered and
signed.
1967 Eastward. A pilgrimage in
68 cantos. Albin Eiger.
150 copies numbered and
initialled.
1967 Hidden journey. Poems.
Dorothy Hewett.
100 numbered and signed
copies.(see book no.15)
1968 Nippon. A poem.
Albin Eiger.
65 copies numbered and
initialled. (see book no.16)
1968 Late night bulletin.
Dorothy Hewett.
100 numbered and signed
copies.(see book no.17)

‘Solitaries—A collection of stories describing extraordinary
“lives”—the inflexible ascetic from Thebaid and the visionary
escapist dwelling under a Roman arch on African soil; the saint on
the column and Mussolini with his double; the stuffed Caesar and
the bewildered foreigner in Afghanistan;a caricature of Tokyo;
and bewitched identical twins. All the tragedies and glories of
these “lives” were not only invented, but also lived.’
Source: Advertising flyer for Wattle Grove Press

‘Red on Purple—A Dream of the Ancient world. This is a
vision, horrible, but elating, of the exceptional circumstances
which offered a scholarly young Roman, Narcissus of Clusium the
opportunity to take revenge on the tyrant who had persecuted his
house. This story is set in the period of twilight,when old and new
creeds fused and coexisted. The beauties and the cruelties of the
classical world pass before the eyes of the reader, in an atmosphere
of profound irony,—often like in a play, presided over by both the
pink and the iron masks.’
1962.RED ON PURPLE.A Dream of the Ancient world
Mary Renaud (a Friend of WGP, author of The King Must Die),
says about RED ON PURPLE: This richly decorated, ingenious
fantasy of the Roman world has a remarkable, almost narcotic
quality which sends one to De Quincey or Salammbo in search of
its affinities. It is a book whose scenes and images recur long
afterwards in the mind.”
Source: Advertising flyer for Wattle Grove Press

‘Solitaries
These eight stories by ALBIN EIGER, collected in a volume handprinted
at the Wattle Grove Press, Newnham, Tasmania, have been
described as “Symbolist”,“Existentialist”,“Surrealist”,
“Experimentalist”,“Avant-gardist”, and also as “Dream Stories”,
“fantasies”,“Scholarly Subtle Comedies”,“Sophisticated Satires”,
and “Delightfully Witty”.’
‘WHAT ARE THEY?
[P. R. Stephenson, in a critique included in the volume, states]:
“Albin Eiger’s stories present stylistic innovations, and an
originality of conceptual context,which make them a wide
departure from the norms of admass culture . . . His visions of
antiquity come through with the vividness of a dream walking . . .
The verisimilitude is startling. This, with his Gallic wit and
philological precision of phrase, put these SOLITARIES in a class
by themselves, as the expression of an individualistic,
unregimented, and venturesome mind”.’
Source: Advertising flyer for Wattle Grove Press

SOLITARIES
Albin Eiger calls his SOLITARIES jokingly “exotic pointless
stories”. Exotic they are* and the points do not obtrude, though
one finds them,rather as one finds the lost needle in the chair
seat.
SOLITARIES have the inevitability, the logic of a dream from
which one wakes laughing. Subtle, witty, wry, surrealist comments
on the absurdity of human behaviour, they are shot through with
flashes of recognition—swift, sure-fingered imagery that evokes
the atmosphere of a country, the essence of its people. The fruitand-drink
seller moving between the kneeling worshippers in
medieval France,a frosty Roman moon glinting on icicles on the
Trevi fountain,a trail of sun-glassed, camera-hung tourists on the
Piazza in Capri—even a modest globe-trotter will recognise these
with nostalgia. But more tenacious in the memory will be the
pictures of a hermit in the African desert,a mound of chewinggum
wads beside him, and a flutter of pink “veneration-tickets”
floating down on the Imperial Palace of an Eastern Capital.
There is no category into which Albin Eiger’s writing can be
placed automatically. Each of these stories is individual; each has
its own validity and integrity. They are rewarding always;some of
them are pure delight.
DOROTHY BLEWETT
(Melbourne)
* seen from the West; but the author maintains that Australia is
even more exotic, and life (anywhere) even more pointless than his
stories! (W.G.P.)

‘All books from our press are limited, illustrated
and bound by hand, and exhibit the advantages—
and also disadvantages—which work of this kind
is thought to possess in the machine age . . .’

1963. Rodney Hall (Brisbane): FORTY BEADS ON
A HANGMAN’S ROPE. Fragments of memory
(Poems).
Rodney Hall’s poems are of a kind which grow on us: perfected
like sculptures in the round, each with a surprisingly and
unmistakably individualistic turn, never sentimental and always
of cultural depth. They are autobiographical: the “rope” is a
symbol of life, of the noose slipped over our heads by society.

PAT FLOWER: Pistils for Two.
“These trivial verses are straight out of the author’s deep unconsciousness.
It is only because her mind is so shallow that the
verses are not even deeper. Experience teaches us all something;
perhaps one day it will teach the author of PISTILS FOR TWO that
she has no stamen power. Pat’s jingles look light, but they are read
complaints against the dire fate of modern man who has not
evolved a satisfactory formula for living—except in poetry!”

1963. Albin Eiger (Tasmania): IN CAPRICORNIA.
Pointless Exotic Ballads.
A “Friend of the WGP” says: “In Capricornia” is sub-titled:
“Pointless Exotic Ballads”. The polygot nature of the verse,ranging
over a wide section of world civilization,might account for the
word “exotic”, but pointless the book certainly is not. Here we have
a high-spirited attack on Australian complacency: The collection
starts with a magic view of the land (“the holy striated plain”),
dousing it with cold reflection (“here where I built my home /
Without ever having handled tools before”). Other poems deal
with: Aboriginal magic (the “singing to death”); with the latest
Melbourne Saint, the inventor of the espresso machine; with social
inertia in Australia,“underprivileged in things that matter”.

John Carter, The ABC of Book Collecting, p. 155
‘Private Press:A Private Press is one whose owner or operator
prints what he likes, how he likes, not what a publisher pays him
to print. He may, and usually does,sell his products to the public,
whether directly, or through subscribers, or through booksellers.
But he is out to make a fine book rather than a profit. He may
employ a printer, or conduct the press himself, but he decides what
to print and how it shall be printed.
As generally understood, the term “Private Press” would be
applied only to a shop where the work was hand-set and handprinted.
Its editions are likely to be strictly limited in size.
“Privately printed” can refer to the product of a “Private Press”;
but it is generally used of something . . . privately circulated, or
distributed by other than the usual commercial methods.
This need not imply that the book was necessarily given away.
Indeed, the announcement that something has been “privately
printed” or is to be “printed for private circulation” was found, at
least as early as the 18th century, to attract collectors, and it still
does.
Books or pamphlets produced for genuine private distribution
are apt to be genuinely scarce,even if they were not, as often,
printed in a very small number.’
THE WATTLE GROVE PRESS
NEWNHAM, TASMANIA