A rare copy of Gregory O’Brien’s gorgeous book Hotere – out the black window (Godwit 1997) was given to me for my birthday by Chris last week. So it was with a strange delight, as they say, that I found that Auckland University Press had seen fit at the same time to celebrate its 500th publication with the launch of The Desire of the Line: The Figurative Works of Ralph Hotere (right, $49.99) by art historian Kriselle Baker. Big ups to AUP from leafsalon for reaching this fantastic milestone (and choosing my favourite artist to do it with).

Of the 500, twenty-two have won major national book awards and three are international award-winners. 20 have been co-published with overseas publishers. There are three dictionaries, three anthologies and three series.

There have been major works of NZ history (Patricia Grimshaw’s Women's Suffrage in New Zealand (1972), The New Zealand Wars (1986) by James Belich, Auckland (2002) by RCJ Stone) and biography (Barry Gustafson’s masterly biography of Muldoon, Judith Binney’s study of Te Kooti, Philip Temple’s recent multi-biography of the Wakefields and of course the massive five volumes of The New Zealand Dictionary of Biography, acquired in midstream and completed in 2000).

The poetry department is solidly satisfying: Flying to Palmerston by Kendrick Smithyman (1967) began the list; he was to be joined by Allen Curnow, C K Stead, former Poet Laureate Elizabeth Smither, Albert Wendt, Ian Wedde, Michele Leggott, Anne French, Robert Sullivan, Kapka Kassabova, Chris Price and Sonja Yelich.

There is an impressive and scholarly Maori listing at the Press, including the Maori biographies from The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in te reo Maori, the scholarly studies of Maori carving and painted houses by Roger Neich, books on Maori music and Maori schools, and Nga Iwi o Tainui (Biggs and Jones). There have also been books published on Tongan, Samoan and Polynesian music, on Samoan medicine and also two important anthologies of Pacific Island writing in English.

The arts have also done well: a book on Frances Hodgkins co-published with Thames and Hudson was the first of many successful books of art history, among the best known of which are Michael Dunn’s New Zealand Sculpture and New Zealand Painting, Damian Skinner’s study of Auckland painter Don Binney and of course Gregory O'Brien’s multiple prize-winning introduction to art for children, Welcome to the South Seas.

All this with (today) two permanent staff and three part-timers who publish about 25 books a year, with the assistance of some contract editors and designers. They obviously know how to keep their staff too, as current Director, Elizabeth Caffin, is only the second head of the Press since inaugural Editor Dennis McEldowney was appointed in 1966.

Further reading? Yup – Dennis McEldowney wrote about the history of AUP in A Press Achieved: The Emergence of Auckland University Press Contact Christine O’Brien at c.obrien@auckland.ac.nz if you’d interested.