Cirrus@Austlit

'The Supplement to the Bibliography of Australian Literature (BAL) completes the most comprehensive reference to Australian creative writing ever published. The four volumes of BAL recorded details of all separately published creative literature by Australian writers from 1788 to 2000. Core genres covered were poetry, fiction, drama and children’s writing. This Supplement includes some 2700 new Australian authors and over 7000 titles by them. It also provides new and updated information on many of the authors listed in the original four volumes.

'BAL and the Supplement have no canon. All books and pamphlets in the core genres published by Australian authors are included, regardless of perceived or accepted literary merit. To BAL, the self-published book of verse is as important as the prize-winning novel by an established author.

'For each work in a core genre, details of the first edition and, where applicable, the first Australian, UK, US, Canadian and New Zealand editions are listed, as well as significant new or revised editions and translations. Awards won and additional information relevant to individual authors and titles are also included. Where an author has also published in other fields (e.g. biography), titles are selectively listed under ‘Other Works’ or mentioned in the ‘Comment/s’ section. Indexes of titles and pseudonyms and various writing names enhance the extensive alphabetical author listing.

'This Supplement, like its predecessors, is an essential source for the study of Australian literature to the end of the twentieth century.' (Publication summary)

'Pride of Place describes in detail a selection of the outstanding collection of Australian books, paintings, photographs, and prints that Russell and Mabel Grimwade donated to the University of Melbourne. The main focus is on Russell, but they were clearly a team with shared interests in Australian native trees and plants and the European history of Australia.' (Introduction)

'The sudden death of Peter Pierce at the relatively young age of 68 has robbed Australian Studies of one of its ablest practitioners. On Tuesday 4 September Peter collapsed in the foyer of the apartment complex in inner city Melbourne where he and wife Rae lived, and died shortly afterwards.' (Introduction)

'Through the memoirs of former Library staff, this issue of the journal focuses on the history of State Library Victoria. The period covered by these memoirs is around two-thirds of the Library’s history of more than 160 years.' (Introduction)

'Victorians know the name La Trobe through the eponymous university, La Trobe Street in the city of Melbourne, and the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland. Tasmanians are familiar with the town of Latrobe in the north-west of their state. But how many are aware that all the above were named after Charles Joseph La Trobe, the first superintendent of the European settlement of Port Phillip, one-time acting governor of Tasmania, and the first lieutenant-governor of the new British colony of Victoria?' (Introduction)

'Victorians know the name La Trobe through the eponymous university, La Trobe Street in the city of Melbourne, and the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland. Tasmanians are familiar with the town of Latrobe in the north-west of their state. But how many are aware that all the above were named after Charles Joseph La Trobe, the first superintendent of the European settlement of Port Phillip, one-time acting governor of Tasmania, and the first lieutenant-governor of the new British colony of Victoria?' (Introduction)

'This article will look at the careers of two Australian expatriate writers, John Gordon Brandon and Robert Coutts Armour, better known as ‘Coutts Brisbane’. Both were born in Australia and both travelled to England to further their careers in their mid-to-late 20s, one in the theatre and the other as an artist. They both became, however, writers of popular fiction, especially of stories for boys, both being frequent contributors to the Sexton Blake Library. Coutts Brisbane was also a pioneer Science Fiction writer. Neither returned to Australia, but their stories and books did and it can well be argued that, despite their being known today only to collectors and a few specialists, both made interesting contributions to popular culture in England (and to Australia) in the second to fourth decades of the last century.' (Publication abstract)

'This issue of the La Trobe Journal has a distinct biographical flavour and

includes articles on a range of notable individuals with a diversity of interests

and experience. It opens with Sandra McComb’s survey of the remarkable life

of the explorer and linguist Alfred Howitt, author of The Native Tribes of SouthEast

Australia (1904).' (Introduction)

'At the launch of Up Came a Squatter, Geoffrey Blainey reflected on how important the wool industry was to Australia for more than a hundred years. He noted that forty or fifty years ago you would not have bothered to mention the fact: it was as understood as the vagaries of Melbourne’s weather. Now wool is not even among Australia’s twenty top exports. Many of those present listening to Blainey and the author speak were from the Western District, descendants of Niel Black and others who established squatting runs in the 1830s and 1840s on the lands of Australia Felix ‘discovered’ by Major Mitchell during his overland expedition of 1836. An inevitable result of the land’s rapid occupation by squatters was the dispossession and near destruction of the local indigenous peoples.'

(Introduction)

'Eric Partridge is rightly known as a major lexicographer and the chronicler of slang: the American critic Edmund Wilson went so far as to describe him as “the word king” of the twentieth century. Many people would have at least one of his books such as Usage and Abusage of English, Origins, Dictionary of Catch Phrases or a version of his monumental Dictionary of Slang on their shelves. His role as a founder and proprietor of the Scholartis Press is also known, but to a lesser extent. His World War I army service—he was a genuine Anzac in that he was born in New Zealand but served in the Australian Imperial Force and saw active service at both Gallipoli and the Western Front—is just known. His outstanding war memoir, Frank Honywood, Private is hardly known although it deserves to be widely read. But very few people know that Eric Partridge also wrote and published fiction.'

Source: Article.