Cirrus@Austlit

'The Australian Journal of Biography and History is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography (NCB) in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. The NCB was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally. The Australian Journal of Biography and History seeks to promote the study of biography in Australia. Articles that appear in the journal are lively, engaging and provocative, and are intended to appeal to the current popular and scholarly interest in biography, memoir and autobiography. They recount interesting and telling life stories and engage critically with issues and problems in historiography and life writing.

'The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles on Australian historical biography, including biographical studies, studies relating to theory and methodology, and the associated genres of autobiography, life writing, memoir, collective biography and prosopography. We are especially interested in articles that explore the way in which biography and its associated genres can illuminate themes in Australian history, including women in Australian society, family history, transnational networks and mobilities, and Indigenous history.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In 1968 the esteemed Australian anthropologist Bill Stanner coined the term “the great Australian silence” to describe a “cult of forgetfulness” that had seen Aboriginal people virtually ignored in the writing of Australian history. The Australian Dictionary of Biography had published its first two volumes by then, and the indifference that Stanner observed was already apparent in its choice of biographical subjects.

'The architects of the dictionary had envisaged a great national co-operative venture with autonomous working parties in each state whose members would choose “significant and representative” subjects, a “cross-section of Australian society”. In succinct articles, these lives would collectively illustrate the Australian national story.'

'For countless generations, coastal country in the west Kimberley region of northwest Australia has been the home of Dambeemangaddee Traditional Owners. Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee- We're Telling All of You describes the deep history of this country. In it our senior people describe our country's creation during Lalai and provide recollections of our ancestors' lives.

'The book also draws on archival sources and information Dambeemangaddee people had shared with early missionaries and anthropologists, while incorporating cultural knowledge our senior people have imparted over the past four decades to the book's compilers and authors.

'The result is a book that contains an unprecedented level of detail regarding our history, culture and country- the Aboriginal names of some three hundred ancestors, many born in the mid-1800s; their connections to country and to each other; their responses to the arrival of explorers, missionaries and others in our country; and their often heroic efforts to sustain our traditions and care for our country despite outsiders' attempts to regulate their lives and displace them from our lands.' (Publication summary)

'Paul Hasluck (1905–1993), Australian politician, minister, public servant, poet, historian, and governor-general, was always going to present a formidable task for a future biographer, for his was a life richly documented, not only by his own extraordinary literary output but by the words of those around him. Geoffrey Bolton's task was to make sense of this wealth of information to present his subject sympathetically within the strong narrative drive of one who lived his life largely in the public sphere. As a ‘first-class historian’, Bolton writes, ‘few public figures can have been so conscious of the future looking over their shoulders’ (474). The archives of the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, including parliamentary and ministerial papers and correspondence, show Hasluck in his public life, the efficient and diligent minister, politician and public servant, highly productive and effective in his professional life, yet always seeming the background man, austere and colourless in his public demeanour. Twice he put himself forward for leadership of the parliamentary Liberal party. After the retirement of Sir Robert Menzies in January 1966, he took on William McMahon for the deputy leadership, but ‘did virtually nothing’ (389), while his opponent worked the party and the media, and prevailed by just a few votes. Again, after the disappearance of Harold Holt in January 1967, Hasluck could have become prime minister, but contested the leadership against John Gorton without enthusiasm, unwilling to engage in the politicking and horse-trading needed to secure the support of his party. On the morning of the vote, Hasluck ‘conversed with nobody, but contented himself with retiring to the parliamentary library’ (410). Even so, he only just lost, showing that although he commanded a solid body of respect, ‘his almost wilful refusal to chase votes told against him’ (411).'  (Introduction)

'Henry Prinsep is known as Western Australia’s first Chief Protector of Aborigines in the colonial government of Sir John Forrest, a period which saw the introduction of oppressive laws that dominated the lives of Aboriginal people for most of the 20th century.

'But he was also an artist, horse-trader, member of a prominent East India Company family, and everyday citizen, whose identity was formed during his colonial upbringing in India and England. As a creator of Imperial culture, he supported the great men and women of history while he painted, wrote about and photographed the scenes around him. In terms of naked power he was a middle man, perhaps even a small man. His empire is an intensely personal place, a vast network of family and friends from every quarter of the British imperial world, engaged in the common tasks of making a home and a career, while framing new identities, new imaginings and new relationships with each other, Indigenous peoples and fellow colonists. This book traces Henry Prinsep’s life from India to Western Australia and shows how these texts and images illuminate not only Prinsep the man, but the affectionate bonds that endured despite the geographic bounds of empire, and the historical, social, geographic and economic origins of Aboriginal and colonial relationships which are important to this day.' (Publication summary)