The story
Peter Bridge first published technical material in 1969. The Hesperian Press business in its current format started in 1979. It republishes out-of-print books together with new texts. Hesperian Press has also published facsimiles of early out-of-print Western Australian books, and the writings of early Australian explorers. It also produces otherwise difficult to trace items.
In August 2025, The Guardian reported that Hesperian Press would be publishing an edition of the diaries of early Western Australian settler Major Logue. These diaries contained sections written in a simple code which, when decoded, revealed Logue had murdered at least 19 Yamatji people. The company made the decision not to publish the sections relating to the murders which was criticised by Chris Owen, historian of mass murders of Aboriginal people. In response, Bridge stated that he intended to publish the document as originally written, and that the sections written in code were unpublishable due to the technical difficulty of producing the characters.
The Guardian stated that Hesperian's catalogue contained "descriptions of historical works using outdated and racist language", and that Bridge's own works suggested "Aboriginal 'criminal matters' have been minimised by 'our masters'".
From Wikipedia’s article on Hesperian Press, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3