The stories behind the people who wielded the blue pencils We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss Normal text size If you thought publishing was a sedate business, think again. Craig Munro’s lively account, Literary Lion Tamers, is full of eccentric characters, entrepreneurial derring-do, financial ruin, creative brilliance, emotional breakdown, obsession, intrigue, imprisonment and untimely death. When A.G. Stephens was editor of the Bulletin Company’s book list around the turn of the 20th century, for example, his overworked boss J.F. Archibald, editor of The Bulletin, suffered a manic episode. The tragicomic symptom of his illness was that "he suddenly began paying contributors far above the usual rate for their poetry" and ended up in Callan Park Asylum.