Andrew Fabinyi was a Hungarian-born Australian publisher and bookseller, working first with Frank Cheshire, Melbourne and then Pergamon Press, Sydney.
14 Facts About Andrew Fabinyi
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Andrew Fabinyi strove for an increased public interest in Australian society and civilisation and a broad internationalism in culture and politics.
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Andrew Fabinyi became "extremely influential in the literary community of Australia" and was awarded an Order of the British Empire "in recognition of his work for Australian literature".
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Andrew Fabinyi's parents were Imre Fabinyi, a lawyer, and his wife Margit, nee Nagel.
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Andrew Fabinyi studied at the Mintagimnazium and the Pazmany Peter Catholic University.
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Andrew Fabinyi made his first entry into the booktrade by joining the Budapest bookshop and publisher, Lauffer, and then in 1932 by starting an agency distributing British books in Hungary and representing Oxford University Press.
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Andrew Fabinyi published Peter Coleman's Australian Civilisation, a symposium on the state of Australia at the start of a "new and promising decade" with essays from Australian intellectuals such as Vincent Buckley, Max Harris, Sol Encel, Donald Horne and Robert Hughes.
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Part of his new job included becoming Director of Maxwell's British Book Centre in New York, which Andrew Fabinyi viewed as "offering splendid opportunities for Australian books".
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Andrew Fabinyi saw his new appointment with Pergamon as a way to "build up Australian book publishing over a period" with "substantial financial backing".
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Andrew Fabinyi introduced the Australian Book Week, inspired by the popular Hungarian Book Days that he had experienced during his youth.
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Andrew Fabinyi was Chairman of the Australian International Book Year Committee with the same organisation.
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Andrew Fabinyi was for several years President of both the Victorian and New South Wales branches of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and from 1960 was a member of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
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Andrew Fabinyi married Elisabeth Clare Robinson, an administrative officer and librarian, in the Presbyterian Church in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak on 26 October 1940.
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Andrew Fabinyi died suddenly of cardiovascular disease on 25 July 1978 in Hornsby, New South Wales.