The Anglo-Eastern Publishing Company was established in London around 1912 by William Nicholas Willis (q.v.), an Australian politician, newspaper proprietor and land agent who arrived in England in 1908 or 1909. He also had an interest in the Camden Publishing Company which he may also have created. John Arnold describes the Willis publishing venture in the following terms: 'The staple of the firm was, in the words of critic and Australian literature bibliographer Frederick Macartney, "novelettes [that] relate chiefly to problems of sex, the stage and the underworld." Titles included Coral Pearl, A Woman of Forty, Eve and The Man, The Dancing Girl and The Wife, The Husband and The Lover. The suggestive titles were matched by their colourful illustrated covers.
Most of these novelettes appeared under the pseudonym of 'Bree Narran'. ' Miller notes that 'The advertisements state that 'Bree Narran' is an 'Australian author'. Miller and Macartney report that the Bree Narran novels have been attributed to Willis while Cyril Pearl claims they were written by him. Martha Rutledge suggests they were written by the son, also William Nicholas Willis, who joined the business in 1919. John Arnold states 'further research and correspondence with family members suggests that they were in fact the work of Willis senior.' It is worth noting that the 'Bree' and the 'Narran' were rivers in northern New South Wales in the area that Willis once held as a member of the New South Wales Parliament.
Willis wrote a series of books on prostitution and venereal disease published as a 'Social Science Series' with racy titles such as White Slaves in a Picadilly Flat (1913). His crusade against the white slave trade was allegedly supported by the Bishop of London and other religious dignitaries whom, in an unsigned preface to Should Girls be Told? [1917], are quoted as saying of Willis: 'his untiring and persistent efforts to awaken the national conscience to the system of commercialised vice (with its attendant evil, venereal disease) which thrives in our midst, have succeeded in completely revolutionizing public opinion.' (Preface, vii). Under the pseudonym of Marion Lehane-Willis Willis wrote a novel, The Painted Women, which also warned against the dangers of a sinful life.
In 1914 Willis published The Kaiser and his Barbarians. : An Authoritative Record of the Crimes Committed by the Germans in France and Belgium in the Name of War, Together with the Official Reports of the Commission of Enquiry Appointed by King Albert of Belgium. He also produced translations of risque French literature which were not published until the early 1930s and a 'Sexual Science Series'. In 1920 Willis published Wedded Love or Married Misery which horrified Marie Stopes by implying she was encouraging immorality. Despite claims that the 'Bree Narran' novels sold over three million volumes, Willis died penniless. The Anglo-Eastern Publishing Company was wound up in late 1932 but the 'Bree Narran' novels continued to be issued under the Camden imprint in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is not known if the younger Willis was still connected to the company; he had moved to Ireland in the 1930s.
Melbourne Punch (2 August 1906) described Willis as 'a stout, florid man, whose vigour seems unabated by trouble, who challenges attention by his strong individualism, who talks in the racy vernacular of the street, and who may be relied upon to put up a good fight.' John Arnold argues: 'In the Bree Narran novels and in Defiance, Willis showed that he could write and he certainly had a good sense of imagination. And there was a message, whether deliberate or not in his books. The cad and bounder, in the long run, always got their just punishment. In regards to the novels of Bree Narran, if the company's sales figures are to be even half-believed, he is without doubt one of Australia's least known most successful authors.'
(Source: Adapted from Martha Rutledge, 'Willis, William Nicholas (1858 - 1922)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, MUP, (1990): 512-513)' John Arnold, 'Promoting, Publishing and Sensationalizing Sex: W. N. Willis and the Anglo-Eastern Publishing Company'. British-Australian Studies Association Biennial Conference, 'Projecting Australia', Cardiff 2-5 September 2004; John Arnold 'Australian Books, Publishers and Writers in England: 1900-1940' (2008); E. Morris Miller and Frederick Macartney Australian Literature: A Bibliography to 1938 Extended to 1950 (1956): 77; Cyril Pearl Wild Men of Sydney (1958): 190).
See also the full Australian Dictionary of Biography Online entry for 'Willis, William Nicholas (1858 - 1922)'.
