Lenore Coltheart Lenore Coltheart i(A28236 works by) (a.k.a. Lenore Marcella Coltheart)
Born: Established: 1940 ;
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 'Who is Edith Campbell Berry? Lenore Coltheart , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: Island , Autumn no. 132 2013; (p. 6-12)
'When the first of Frank Moorhouse's trilogy of novels about Edith Campbell Berry was published in 1993, Canberra-based political historian Lenore Coltheart was teaching and writing on women and internationalism and about to spend a sabbatical at the League of Nations archives in Geneva. Edith Campbell Berry is a heroine so vivid that, although a fictional construction, 'What would Edith do?' has become a ready response to dilemmas public and private. Drawing on Moorhouse's trilogy and her own research into the time, Coltheart examines a more fundamental question: 'Who is Edith Campbell Berry?' (p. 7)
1 Jessie Street and the Soviet Union Lenore Coltheart , 2008 single work biography
— Appears in: Political Tourists : Travellers from Australia to the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1940s 2008; (p. 277-300)
1 Jessie Street and the New Political Biography Lenore Coltheart , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Political Lives : Chronicling Political Careers and Administrative Histories 2006; (p. 77-80)

'Writing political biography almost always involves a degree of self-exploration: there is a little bit of autobiography lurking beneath the surface of every biography. To begin with, there is the choice of subject. Some biographers are drawn to personalities they admire while others tackle those they have little regard for but consider important or perhaps want to understand. Choosing a subject must involve reflection on the biographer’s part about the reasons for their choice and also about the nature of the feelings they bring to the task. This reflection is essential if a biography is to be other than hagiography or a hatchet job. In my own choice of subject, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, I was driven by a desire to understand the community in which I had lived most of my life and which had played a large part in my own political socialisation. Bjelke-Petersen was a man who had both shaped that community and been shaped by it. In growing up in provincial Queensland I had become acquainted with many of Bjelke-Petersen’s men and women who in many respects were kindly churchgoers, yet who would think nothing of rorting their tax or doing slippery business deals. They always puzzled me, as Bjelke-Petersen did — that combination of rectitude and shady dealings.'  (Introduction)

1 The Legacy of Jessie Street Lenore Coltheart , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , August vol. 15 no. 11 2005; (p. 3-6)
Lenore Coltheart discusses the Papers of Jessie Street, 1914-1968 held at the National Library of Australia.
3 7 y separately published work icon Truth or Repose Jessie Street , Sydney : Australasian Book Society , 1966 Z1105371 1966 single work autobiography

'Jessie Street was a key figure in Australian political life for over 50 years. She was the only Australian woman delegate at the founding of the United Nations in 1945; the initiator of the 1967 ?Aboriginal? amendment of the Australian Constitution; the colleague of Pablo Picasso on the World Peace Council Executive; and a controversial promoter of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, known as ?Red Jessie? to a generation of Australians. She led an extraordinary, vivid life. Her autobiography, written with candour and humour, is a guidebook to the 20th century. From Jessie?s early life in the Australian bush, readers join suffragette marches in London; hear civil rights singers in the jazz clubs of New York; visit occupied Egypt, imperial India, outback Australia, Stalin?s Moscow; witness the Anschluss and Sudetenland crises in Europe in 1938; and see the destroyed cities of London, Berlin, Leningrad, and Hiroshima after the Second World War. Her life was one dedicated to peace and justice. The daughter-in-law, wife and mother of three Chief Justices, she met and worked with extraordinary figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, Margaret Sanger, Jawaharal Nehru and many others. Her autobiography, first published in 1966, is now reissued, corrected and edited, a sparkling, powerful, bright book that truly reflects Jessie Street?s energy, charm and practical humanitarianism.' (Publication summary)

1 Anguish Over Meanjin Lenore Coltheart , 1996 single work correspondence
— Appears in: The Australian , 2 December 1996; (p. 8)
1 The Art of Identity Lenore Coltheart , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser Magazine , 7 March 1992; (p. 12)

— Review of The Yellow Lady : Australian Impressions of Asia Alison Broinowski , 1992 single work criticism
X