Last updated: November 27, 2015

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Veteran journalist Samela Harris remembers a childhood spent inside the iconic Mary Martin Bookshop

Mary Martin bookshop

Author poet Max Harris (l) with Adelaide bookshop proprietor Mary Martin. Picture: Supplied Source: adelaidenow

Sarita and Justin Chadwick

Sarita and Justin Chadwick, owners of Mary Martin bookshop, the oldest bookshop in Adelaide, in happier times back in 2006. Picture: Tait Schmaal Source: adelaidenow

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SAMELA Harris reminisces on a childhood brought up around Mary Martin Bookshop and reflects on what its loss means for her - and Adelaide.

The closing of Mary Martin Bookshop has sent waves of grief through the city of Adelaide.

MMs was an institution in the lives of many.

In various hands, it had been trading 67 years.

For me, it is a loss of family and childhood and, in a way, like the second passing of my father, Max Harris AO.

Not that he had been involved even remotely with MMs for a long time.

He sold it to Macmillans in the '70s.

By that time, he had built quite an empire with Mary Martin bookshops in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Now only Melbourne remains, thriving under the ownership of Grahame Brooks, who says he and his wife trade in the spirit of the original Mary Martin's - diversified with assorted quality goods as well as books.

That's how Mary Martin's was when I was growing up in it.

It imported not just books but ethnographica, Aboriginal art, textiles, antiquities, even tea.

Mary opened the original tiny shop behind the Stock Exchange in 1945 as an arty shop - with classic arts prints and art books.

Max joined her a year later.

He had been her best friend at university where she was known to steer him through the streets while he walked about reading books.

She worked as business secretary for his literary journal Angry Penguin.

They were a good team from the outset. It was Max's imagination and acumen which took the business on - to Rundle St and then Grenfell St.

Among other things, Mary remained the art specialist until she fell in love with India in the '50s.

Max, poet, columnist and intellectual, was the literary expert who made it his mission to access cheaper and better books for the Australian market and to fight literary censorship.

As a child, I was given responsibilities in the children's book section - reading copiously, my recommendations included in the monthly Mary's Own Paper which went to customers throughout Australia and the Pacific.

MMs was like the amazon.com of its time.

My school holidays were spent working up string blisters in the packing room or addressing envelopes for the booklists.

Theatre and Adelaide's cultural life also was covered in MOP and, as an only child, I was in the thick of it.

I was seven when my first theatre review was published.

Mary was quite shy - a pretty woman who wore her hair in a long dark plait and dressed in beautiful Madras cottons.

She was an anchor to the Indian Columbo Plan students in Adelaide - which is how it came to pass that my babysitter was a Sikh.

We all loved Mary which is why Max would never change the shop's name.

Now Mary is gone, Max is gone and the bookshop is gone.


For more news on the east and inner-south, pick up a copy of the Eastern Courier Messenger, read our digital edition online, or become a fan of our Facebook page.



 

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