The Austral Collection: 75 years of culture in your pocket (1937-2012)

Abstract

The emblematic Austral Collection, a pioneer in pocket books, is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2012, after having progressed from being a collection to a proper publishing company within the Planeta Group. Planeta acquired Austral when it took over the Espasa publishing company in the decade of the nineties. The goal of this article is to analyze Austral's significance, evolution and development since its creation in 1937 up to date, within the framework of the history of its publication, considering both the contents and the design. The methodology used has been that of studying the bibliography on the subject and in particular the collection itself in all of its models. A data base has been prepared with authors' names, titles and publication dates, for which it was necessary to consult several collections in public and private libraries in order to review all the volumes. Research was also carried out on all the variations found in the collection and six different models were found. The conclusion is that the Austral Collection can be considered a paradigm of pocket books and a leading promotional agent for culture in Latin America; a project which would be very difficult to repeat