"These letters provide a remarkable, bird's eye view of the friendship, courtship and love of two `colonial intellectuals' played out in Melbourne, London and Brisbane. Their deep interest in knowledge, ideas and culture shapes their growing commitment to each other - their letters bring a relationship to life and capture a time. The tentative and increasingly passionate youthful correspondence sets the scene and tone for a life-time of collaboration and activism. Reading these moving and tender letters is a timely reminder of the enduring nature of love, the value of partnership, and the importance of engaging with the world." Professor Julianne Schultz, editor of Griffith Review
"The great originality of Deborah Jordan's collection of Vance and Nettie Palmer's love letters is that it shows us not just the private life-the desire, the love, the searching for self-behind the public life of two of Australia's most significant literary figures but the private in the public life and the public in the private life, revealing how their private and public selves were intimately entangled." David Carter, Professor of Australian Literature and Cultural History, University of Queensland
"The Palmers were prolific letter writers and their observations on the people around them, their social and cultural circumstances and the natural world make for rich reading. We are privy to the emotional, intellectual, political and spiritual development of one of the most significant partner - ships in Australian literary history, that of Janet (Nettie) Higgins and Vance Palmer." Elaine Lindsay, author of Rewriting God: Spirituality in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction
'When Vance Palmer met Nettie Higgins in the summer of 1909 in the sedate setting of the State Library of Victoria, they were both twenty-three years old. Yet even to speak to one another was a breach of convention; they had not been introduced, and Nettie at least felt quite daring. An arts student at Melbourne University, she had never been far from her parents’ house. Vance had made the break with home and travelled the world: he had worked as a teacher and a freelance journalist, and nourished hopes of becoming a full-time writer.' (Introduction)
'When Vance Palmer met Nettie Higgins in the summer of 1909 in the sedate setting of the State Library of Victoria, they were both twenty-three years old. Yet even to speak to one another was a breach of convention; they had not been introduced, and Nettie at least felt quite daring. An arts student at Melbourne University, she had never been far from her parents’ house. Vance had made the break with home and travelled the world: he had worked as a teacher and a freelance journalist, and nourished hopes of becoming a full-time writer.' (Introduction)
