An academic, editor and literary critic, Peter Pierce held a BA with Honours from the University of Tasmania and an MLitt from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
He was Professor of Australian Literature at James Cook University from 1996 to 2006. He also worked at Monash University. His research interests included nineteenth-century and contemporary Australian literature and literary history, and war literature. Pierce was also the General Editor of The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, assistant editor of The Penguin New Literary History of Australia, author and editor of Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, and co-editor of Clubbing of the Gunfire: 101 Australian War Poems, The Poets’ Discovery: Nineteenth Century Australia in Verse, and Xavier Herbert. He was a regular reviewer for the Age, Bulletin, Canberra Times and Sydney Morning Herald and was turf correspondent for Eureka Street. His comprehensive study of Thomas Keneally’s work and its critical reception, Australian Melodramas, was published by UQP in 1995.
He also wrote a cook book of Italian food and a history of racing in Australia. He died in 2018.
