Ray was once John’s publishing mentor. Ray was in the Reed company from 1936 to 1977 – excluding four war years as a Fleet Air Arm pilot. Now a heart problem means that he can only fly short distances, so he could not attend John’s funeral. His eulogy was read by Phil Reed.
Ray has kindly made his eulogy available to me so that it might be shared within the wider book community.
John Reed was the last of a century-long dynasty of Reeds who were book publishers, and who revolutionised book publishing in New Zealand.
A H Reed, later to become Sir Alfred Reed, set up a bookselling business with his wife Isabel in Dunedin in 1907, which specialised in religious supplies. A W Reed was his nephew, who lost his parson father in childhood, grew up in Auckland with his mother and joined the family business in Dunedin as a teenager. A.W. was known in the family as Clif and John was his second son. His brother Selwyn died some years ago. Young Clif and Heather are the surviving siblings. In 1932 the two Reeds published their first significant book, THE LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF SAMUEL MARSDEN, then the business moved to Wellington, and for the next 50 years the company grew and grew. When it was taken over it had published 3500 books, which sold millions of copies. After the emotional and sacrificial years of World War 2, these books captured the hearts of New Zealand readers, providing national pride as well as good reading and good profit, initiating what has been called the Golden Age of New Zealand Publishing, which continues to this day.
In Australia, when John and I had established the publishing branch of A H & A W Reed Australia in 1964, popular and ironical book trade gossip was of The New Zealand Publishing Invasion. Our timing could not have been better. The series of full-colour New Zealand books Reeds had published were translated into Australian full colour books that covered similar genre; natural history, Aborigines and the Australian landscape and cities. These were all large format books that had not previously been available in such abundance of colour illustrations and at relatively modest retail prices. In Wellington John had been production manager of our book publishing. In Sydney he was managing director of the brand-new company and I was his chairman. I commissioned the first Reed list of Australian titles and John looked after warehousing and marketing, before taking over the commissioning and publicity. In all our years together we never had a disagreement.
In the 1980s the overall Reed company ran into financial difficulty. We had out-grown our financial backing, and were facing stronger competition from television, radio and UK-based publishers. Such an unhappy ending overtook all the locally financed book publishers of Australia and New Zealand, including the wonderful Angus & Robertson. We once proposed to A & R’s top man, George Ferguson, that they might be interested in a merger but George already had as many survival problems as us.
In the breakup of the Reed company – at the time it had five office-warehouses and over100 employees – John was the one who suffered most, for the downfall that he was not personally responsible for.
I had resigned before the fall. I was free to start my own business. The same for John. He now had Inga beside him, as I had Barbara – a coincidence we are all proud of. 
John had immense gifts, which he passed on to his children, a multitude of friends and to his publishing business. He had courage, endurance and generosity – just weigh these words as you think about John, Courage, Endurance, and Generosity.
He was everybody’s best friend. An understanding loving father - to Don, Phil, Jill and Becky.
A devoted partner to Inga. She was his strong right hand.
A special tribute to Becky, whose support and strength have impressed many of us, and taken much of the present load off Inga’s shoulders. John went too soon, which is an injustice. He had lived a very full life and probably strained his physical core by hard work.
I return to my beginning. The publishing century that linked Alfred, Clif and John Reed has ended – and brave to the end was John Reed, whom we honour and love todayAnd we grieve with the proud and loving Inga,
No comments:
Post a Comment