Each book was often issued in both standard editions and small deluxe genuine colour-prints, each selected carefully and pasted by hand by Barnett himself.
[3] Through both his personal collection and publications Barnett traced the subtle progress of the Australian bookplate tradition by analyzing their formal and stylistic development historically and aesthetically.
Although they had been present in Australia from the very first days of European settlement, bookplates remained an expensive and exclusive item reserved only for the literati, missionaries, military officers, government officials and the occasional landed gentlemen.
Up until the mid-1800s convicts in Australia accounted for about one third of the population; with low literacy levels in the British colonies, bookplates were reserved only for people who possessed personal libraries.
Enjoying a moderate popularity with a few people interested in the subject, they were such as to appear neither widely nor for long, and would have remained a fad with few adherents.In 1923 Barnett was becoming involved in the conception and formation of an Australian Bookplate Society.
Commissioning Adrian Feint and George David Perrottet to design plates which were to be gifts to the Prince of Wales and Princess Elizabeth, and which would also be included in his Woodcut Book-plates (1934).