Paul's Book Arcade Ltd : Records

The collection centres round Blackwwod Paul, his concern for highest standards of bookselling in New Zealand and involvement in issues affecting the service provided by booksellers to the New Zealand public. Includes correspondence, reports, etc of D Blackwood Paul, bookseller and publisher, reflecting activities in Associated Booksellers of New Zealand (1946-1965), book selling courses (1946-1947), Indecent Publication Act (1954-1963), Trade Practises (1962-1963) etc; papers of Paul's Book Arcade, including New Zealand books in print, booklists (1946-1970), office procedures, and newspaper clippings; personal papers of D B Paul; articles, correspondence, notes, etc.

Paul's Book Arcade was founded in Hamilton in 1901 by William Henry Paul (1879-1962) and in 1933 his son D Blackwood Paul took over the management. The book shop covered a wide range of bookselling with a considerable interest in the field of educational books. In 1955 Paul's Book Arcade opened in Auckland taking over a well-known second-hand bookshop, Keeleys, on Shortland Street and the second shop there in High Street, as in Victoria Street, Hamilton, was designed by Ernst Plischke, later to become Professor of Architecture in Vienna. In 1970 Paul's Junior Book Centre was opened in Hamilton as was a Penguin Bookshop, one of only three in New Zealand at the time. In 1949 Sir Stanley Unwin named Paul's as one of the two best in New Zealand and among the best in the world. Blackwood Paul's `thorough training of staff and his vision of the function of a good bookshop... continued to sustain Paul's Book Arcade'. In 1945 Blackwood and Janet Paul entered the publishing field and at the time of his death in 1965 more than 100 works by New Zealand writers had been published under the imprint of Blackwood and Janet Paul Ltd and continued under the direction of Mrs Janet Paul until 1968 when the Longman group of publishers joined the enterprise under the imprint of Longman Paul.

Quantity: 36 folder(s). 0.36 Linear Metres.

Physical Description: Mss, typescript, printed matter

Finding Aids: Paper inventory previously available in the reading room was removed on 1 December 2014, as it contained no further information. A copy is available in the staff backfile..