Welcome to Litsy!

Author E.W. Cole was Australia's first bookseller, building his bookshop, the Cole's Book Arcade, in Bourke Street Melbourne into Australia's most loved and renown bookshop for over fifty years. A riotous and incredible retail experience with tea salons, live animals, a speakers corner as well as jugglers and buskers, E.W. Cole created a book selling experience like no other. A true eccentric (like many booksellers today...), E.W. Cole was a one man publicity machine, writing columns in the paper, a staunch adversary of the White Australia Policy and even advertising in the Melbourne Herald for a wife in 1875: "I require a woman chaste, sober, honest, truthful, intelligent, industrious, frugal, cleanly, neat, not dressy, good-tempered, moderately educated and a lover of home." Leaving a legacy of several best-selling and varied publications, his most famous was the Coles Little Funny Picture Book. A 'family' book filled with parlour games, puzzles, riddles, illustrations and games, it took Australia by storm and sold thousands of copies. This new edition of the Australian classic contains selective facsimile samples from the original books of humorous rhymes and poems, puzzles, stories, songs and cartoons, optical illusions, illustrations of crazy inventions and machines and much more. Chapters include Dolly Land, Girl Land, Boy Land, Play Land, Drawing Land, Monkey Land, Froggy Land, Piggy Land, Temper Land, Stealing Land and Laziness land. A true Australian character and our most original and beloved bookseller and author, with Cole's Funny Little Picture Book E.W. Cole created a unique slice of Australian life which went on to delight and enchant generations of Australian children and adults alike..