Addison and Steele and Other Good Metajournalists—Colin Talbot's Greatest Hits

Abstract

Colin Talbot, Greatest Hits. Wild & Woolley, Sydney, 1977. 237 pp. $4.95.

It happened that on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, about the eleventh hour of the evening, I finished re-reading Colin Talbot's Greatest Hits and fell to musing on the considerable pleasures afforded to the reader of good Australian journalism. As I rummaged, there tumbled from the bookshelf a second-hand collection of Addison's Tat/er essays, and the thought came that very likely the level-headed founder of English journalism, comprehending with eighteenth century comprehensiveness the changes in literary conventions between the reigns of Queens Anne and Elizabeth II, would have bestowed considerable approval on Mr Talbot.