British born adventurer, journalist , poet and author , Frank Morton , who wrote the above futuristic novel had an impact on journalism, newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Tasman, mentioned in this blog in bygone years .
By Peter Simon
A prolific writer , with a vivid imagination , his book , published by Atlas Press, Melbourne in 1909, 99 pages, with some advertisements, limited to 3oo copies , is set in the year 1960 in the New Zealand capital of Wellington where the survivor of an earthquake recounts his experiences and rescue .
The book includes a short story, The Joy of Arcady , set in the afterlife. This copy, listed for $350 in the latest acquisitions by Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne , includes manuscript corrections in pen by the author.
Morton , brought to Sydney by his parents when he was 16, travelled to Singapore where he worked on the Straits Times as a journalist . In India, where he also reported , he covered the expedition by the British India Foreign Secretary ,Sir Mortimer Durand, which drew up the contentious border between India and Afghanistan .
Returning to Sydney in 1894, he contributed to The Bulletin magazine,went to Queensland ,Tasmania and New Zealand .
In NZ he worked on several papers and then became the assistant editor to the feared editor of the controversial magazine ,The Triad, Charles Nalder Baeyertz, a Belgian, described as the critic from Hell.
Baeyertz's reviews in Triad were said to verge on the brutal . Morton, also said to have enjoyed making people squirm , wrote many columns under a variety of pseudonyms , covered French writers.
Started in l893 in Dunedin by Baeyertz, , The Triad , 60 pages devoted to the arts, music ,literature and science, moved to Sydney in WWl and went into competition against The Bulletin , with the help of Morton .
It was said that the Triad was a better wrtten publication which broke down the parochialism of a false Australian setiment portrayed in the Bulletin
Some 75 years after they were written , in Abra-Card-Dabra Roycroft Booksellers , Melbourne , I had the extreme good luck to find letters from Baeyertz . One discussed the death of Morton, who died of acute nephritis on December 15,1923.
Baeyertz, a cigar choping editor , who wore pince nez , said the death of "poor Morton " and a fire had added to the work load on Triad.
He lost control of the publication , with a circulation of more than 23,000, and left to take up the editorship of a new Sydney Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times.
The magazine changed hands several times , was modernised , became the New Triad , but folded in July 1928.
