E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow by Lisa Lang (2007)

When I was younger my favourite books to borrow from the library, apart from the adventures of my hero, first love and ideal manboy Tintin, were the Cole’s Funny Picture Books. They were full of witticisms, puns, wordplay, visual gags, puzzles and they were deliciously odd. It never occurred to me that they were old-fashioned, at the time I had no idea that these books were first published in the late 1870s. If you ever glanced through a Cole’s, you may remember the illustration of the Whipping Machine for Flogging Naughty Boys. Sounds terribly politically incorrect, and probably would be treated as such now, but it made me laugh myself sick as a kid and stuck with me throughout childhood. Little did I know that the man behind such a cornerstone of my childhood nostalgia was such a varied and interesting figure of Melbourne’s history, and E.W. Cole: Chasing the Rainbow takes a look at the man behind the Funny Picture Books – Edward William Cole and his emporium of exotic treasures and Book Arcade in the heart of Melbourne in the late 19th century.

“Edward claimed to stock over a million books. His titles ranged from poetry to Marxism and sex education. For Edward, books were not just a business but a moral crusade. As one of his slogans proclaimed: ‘The happiness of mankind, the real salvation of the world, must come about by every person in existence being taught to read and induced to think.’

Lang’s biography is a short one, delivered in Arcade Publications‘ signature mini-book size, that takes us through Edward William Cole’s humble beginnings on the fraught goldfields of Victoria, to selling cordial to the goldhunters and even manning a late night meat pie stand until he settled on selling books from a cart on the street. He educated himself in the public libraries of Melbourne and wrote a book about world religions and religious tolerance, which was a difficult sell to publishers of the time. As his book cart grew to a full store at the busy Eastern Market, Cole took to unconventional promotional measures.

The media frenzy that Cole stirred up to promote his newly opened bookstore is ingenious and indicative of a highly media-savvy entrepreneur. In 1873, Cole put a column in the daily newspaper announcing the “Discovery of a Race of Human Beings with Tails” and that more would be revealed in Monday’s paper. Needless to say, Monday’s newspaper sold out. In the following week, Cole listed other traits of the people of the so-called Elocwe (read it backwards for a hint) and incited great anticipation about further revelations. On Saturday of the same week, the final episode was published:

“It invited all tailless inhabitants of Melbourne to go to Cole’s Cheap Book Store at the Eastern Market, where they would find for sale a great variety of TALES.”

Okay, I know you probably just rolled your eyes and it does seem a little quaint now, but it was clever. Viral marketing existed as early as 1873! It proved to be a great success. People turned up in droves to his book stall. Later, Cole was forced to move and bought out the arcade which would go on to become his famous Book Arcade, painting the façade white and emblazoned with the trademark rainbow.

Cole encouraged customers to sit down and read for as long as they wished (bliss!), as well as expanding the bookstore to an eclectic mix of a lending library, a tea salon, and selling “perfume, musical instruments, confectionery, and ornaments.” Including a room of monkeys. Monkeys! Eventually, his store expanded so much that it took up a whole city block. Cole’s Book Arcade was an amalgam of his varied interests. Cole’s Funny Picture Books were released in 1879 – a sort of scrapbook of things Cole had found and written – and were a publishing sensation, as literature aimed at children was sparse and the Funny Picture Books were relatively cheap.

Not only was Cole an impressive businessman, publisher and bookseller, but he was an inspired intellectual with a Utopian vision. He shunned the rampant racism evident in Australia, he wrote extensively against the White Australia policy and he advocated literacy and education for all. Cole’s is not a sensational biography, well, perhaps apart from the monkeys and his pet marmoset, but Lang shows us an eccentric man with strong ideals and business acumen who was a pioneer of his time.

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I do love compiling a brief list of links related to the Melbourne history books I’ve been reading, and E.W. Cole doesn’t escape this.

• Imre Salusinszky wrote an article for the Australian in 2008 about the nostalgia for Cole’s Funny Picture Books and Cole himself.
• Lisa Lang is interviewed about Cole’s early years.
• Lisa Lang also won the 2009 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript for Utopian Man, a fictionalized account of E.W. Cole and there is a very short excerpt available online.
• The Melbourne Museum have a few photos and a short video about Cole’s Little Men which stood at the entrance of the Book Arcade and displayed messages of Cole’s beliefs.
• The Book Arcade was demolished about ten years after Cole’s death, but the glass from the arcade remains in Howey Place, a few photographs of the Arcade in its prime are online, the ground floor in 1900, and a view of the main arcade in the same year.