In & Out by Michael Plant

In & Out

Australian Usage and Abusage

Assembled by Michael Plant

Ornamented by Cedric Flower

Lansdowne Press, 1965, [Second Impression], illustrated with line drawings, paperback with wraps

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, ex-library with tape residue and stamp to front endpapers, stickers and stamps to back endpapers, book plate to half title page, wraps price-clipped (see photographs)

“If we could find a simple explanation why some things are IN and others OUT, the burning need for this definitive volume would not exist.  However, it is a most complex situation.
Curiously, the selection has little to do with money, fashion or snob appeal.  It will eschew the cliché one moment, cherish it the next.
The quality of being “chic” has been suggested – but then being chic is OUT which is unnerving, (Although if you were brutally chic, you might be IN.)
Somewhere involved are the elements of surprise, aesthetics, naturalism and , it cannot be denied, sheer perverseness.  Perhaps the keynote of being IN is originality – but even then you are on dangerous ground.  One step too far and you become amusingly original which is OUT.
Really, it’s all wildly confusing.
However, one immutable, hard and fast, cut and dried, copper-bottomed fact is that finding out for yourself is IN”