Andrew Fabinyi (27 December 1908–25 July 1978) was a Hungarian-born Australian publisher and bookseller,[1][2][3] working first with Frank Cheshire, Melbourne and then Pergamon Press, Sydney.

He became "extremely influential in the literary community of Australia"[5] and was awarded an Order of the British Empire "in recognition of his work for Australian literature".

He made his first entry into the booktrade by joining the Budapest bookshop and publisher, Lauffer,[7] and then in 1932 by starting an agency distributing British books in Hungary and representing Oxford University Press.

[8][9] With the approach of World War II and the rise of the fascist leader Admiral Miklós Horthy, Fabinyi feared being forced to join the army and to fight for Adolf Hitler and left Hungary to migrate to New Zealand which, as he later explained, "was the furthest place I could go.

However, the Cheshire list went beyond utilitarian titles and "books about the distinguishing characteristics of Australia" and ranged across "the whole breadth of national interests, from fiction and poetry to economics, politics and sociology".

The latter work became a bestseller when the United States opened a major naval base in New Caledonia during the Pacific War and the Australian public's interest in that territory soared.

[13] These included the architect Robin Boyd's The Australian Ugliness (1960), Alan Marshall's autobiography I Can Jump Puddles (1955),[8] and Joan Lindsay's novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967).

[14][15][16] Other distinguished authors and works published by Fabinyi at Cheshire were predominantly in the fields of the arts, history, biography and the social sciences (and frequently with a distinctively Australian connection) and included Kenneth Cook (Tuna, 1967), Bruce Dawe (No Fixed Address: Poems, 1962), C. P. Fitzgerald (The Empress Wu, 1955), Brian Fitzpatrick (The Australian Commonwealth, 1956), Xavier Herbert (Disturbing Element, 1963), David Martin (Spiegel the Cat, 1961), Barry Oakley (A Wild Ass of a Man, 1967), Cyril Pearl (So, You Want to Buy a House and Live in It!, 1961), Clive Turnbull (Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1943) and Judah Waten (Distant Land, 1964).

[32] Together with Jean May Campbell and Lina Bryans, he organised the first Moomba Book Week, an "event that became a feature of the annual Melbourne festival".

[34] He was for several years President of both the Victorian and New South Wales branches of the Australian Institute of International Affairs[35] and from 1960 was a member of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

[36] Fabinyi married Elisabeth Clare Robinson (1912–2002), an administrative officer and librarian,[37] in the Presbyterian Church in the Melbourne suburb of Toorak on 26 October 1940.