Gareth Powell

Gareth Powell (26 May 1934 – 16 September 2016) was a Welsh-born Australian publisher, journalist, author, and editor.

During the 1960s, Powell was managing director of two London publishing houses, Mayflower Books and then the New English Library, and achieved a measure of notoriety for publishing Fanny Hill for the former and The Carpetbaggers for the latter. In 1967 he and his family emigrated to Australia. There he published magazines (including men's magazine Chance International and women's magazine POL) and books (including bestseller Now You'll Think I'm Awful), introducing new standards of production quality to the Australian market.

After problems with the importation of Chance — an issue was barred by Australian Customs on the grounds of obscenity and upheld by court order — Powell moved his business to Hong Kong where his magazines were printed . He continued, however, to write and publish books, copy, and magazines for Australian and international personal computing and travel markets. During the 1980s and 1990s he also wrote columns for the Sydney Morning Herald, becoming their computer/technology editor and later travel editor and supplements editor. He left the Herald after a September 1994 Media Watch episode identified allegedly plagiarised material under his byline, insertions which, according to Powell, had been made by a junior colleague while he was on leave.

After leaving the Herald, he continued to write books on personal computing, motoring and travel, as well as columns for a range of old and new media.

Biography

Early life and career

Gareth Powell was born in Caerwys, North Wales on 26 May 1934. He was the seventh child Police raided G. Gold & Son's Magic Shop in London, seized 171 copies, and charged the retailers under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, which allowed for trial without jury. Mayflower decided to cover Gold's legal costs, and asked that as publisher of the work they be charged under Section 2 of the Act, which as in the case of the 1960 trial for Lady Chatterley's Lover, would have required a jury trial. This request was denied on the grounds that "it would be less oppressive to the publishers" Irving Wardle, the English writer and theatre critic, noted in the New York Times Book Review: If the [British publishing] boom is ending, one can date it to the departure for Australia this year of Gareth Powell. He paid huge advances on the assumption that it only needed spectacular salesmanship to achieve an even vaster readership. He largely supplied the salesmanship himself with the aid of a Rolls-Royce and a helicopter. And he stood for no nonsense about literature: Marketing books was no different from marketing a can of beans. Told by his American employer, "You're not in show business, Gareth," he replied. "Well, we bloody well ought to be." Powell was not a popular figure among the old-style bookmen, and terms ranging from "whizz-kid" to "lout" were freely bandied about in print (He was a working-class boy, which made it worse). Chance also published the work of some of Australia's best young photographers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Rennie Ellis, a founding co-editor of underground magazine Oz. POL was both the first major Australian women's magazine to use colour offset printing, and the first to have its issues printed overseas; this was done by the Hong Kong branch of Dai Nippon Printing before issues were air-freighted to Australia. and contained articles from Midget Farrelly, Bob McTavish, and Nat Young. Powell reported: "I tried to buy Surfing World but they asked too high a price for it, so I said I'll start my own".

1980s to 1990s

Computer magazines In the 1980s Powell began publishing computer magazines, including Australian Apple Review (which launched in 1983 with Graeme Philipson as its first editor) and The Australian Commodore Review (which launched in 1984 ).

He also wrote for a variety of Australian and international periodicals including the Hong Kong Standard and the China Economic Review (for which he was also associate publisher), In 2009 he joined Blorge, then a technology blog network, as an editor and author.

Death and legacy

Powell died on 16 September 2016 in Darlinghurst, New South Wales