A good crowd came to the Hocken Library for the launch of Erik Olssen’s new book, Working Lives c.1900: A Photographic Essay. Erik, an Emeritus Professor of the Department of History and Art History, is a particularly engaged member of the Centre. This book came out of his research for An Accidental Utopia?: Social Mobility & the Foundations of an Egalitarian Society, 1880–1940, a book he published with Clyde Griffen and Frank Jones in 2009, also with Otago University Press.
![Rachel Scott, the Otago University Press Publisher addressed the crowd to begin the formal part of the evening](https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/crocc/files/2014/08/IMG_2473-rachel-a-283x300.jpg)
Rachel Scott, the Otago University Press Publisher addressed the crowd to begin the formal part of the evening
![Erik gave an entertaining speech to those who came to the Hocken Library to help him launch his new book.](https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/crocc/files/2014/08/IMG_2483-erik-1024x682.jpg)
Erik gave an entertaining speech to those who came to the Hocken Library to help him launch his new book.
Erik encountered a lot of photographs that he was unable to include in An Accidental Utopia, and it was on the advice of the previous Otago University Press publisher, Wendy Harrex, that he went on to produce this wonderful volume.