Walter W. Stone

Walter William Stone (24 June 1910 – 29 August 1981), known as Wal Stone, was a noted Australian book publisher, book collector and passionate supporter of Australian literature.

Walter was born in Orange, New South Wales. He spent the first 14 years of his life in Orange, before moving to Auburn, a western Sydney suburb, where his father wound down his career as a bookmaker. After completing his education at the Parramatta Boys High School, he was articled to a solicitor, but after the solicitor's death he held a number of depression-era jobs such as rent collector and door-to-door salesman. Partial deafness kept him out of the military during the Second World War. He worked as a clerk for General Electric and continued that occupation with another company after the war until 1956.

Acting on his interest in book production, he bought an Adano press in 1951. During the next decade, as Talkarra Press (an Aboriginal word for "stone"), he produced ten innovative limited editions, including Dulcie Deamer's poem "Blue Centaur" (1953), P. R. Stephensen's "Kookaburra's and Satyrs" (1954) and R. D. FitzGerald's poem of a convict-flogging, "The Wind at Your Door" (1959). In 1956, he re-established the bankrupt Wentworth Press. From successive premises in Sydney, Surry Hills and Marrickville - and trading as Wentworth Books - he published about 120 books, mostly Australian history, literature and poetry.

Walter Stone, a bibliophile from an early age, was a founding member of the Book Collectors Society of Australia (BCSA) in 1944, and was its major supporter for all his life. He edited and printed the organ of the society, Biblionews, from 1947 until his death in 1981, whence he was succeeded by John Edward Fletcher. He also printed and was general editor of the BCSA series "Studies in Australian Bibliography" (1954-1978), which recorded the publications of such writers as Henry Lawson, Joseph Furphy, John Shaw Neilson, Rolf Boldrewood, Christopher Brennan, Hugh McCrae, Marcus Clarke and several members of the Lindsay family.

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