NLA image of person
David Ireland David Ireland i(A31438 works by) (a.k.a. David Neil Ireland)
Born: Established: 24 Aug 1927 Lakemba, Canterbury area, Sydney Inner West, Sydney, New South Wales, ; Died: Ceased: 26 Jul 2022
Gender: Male
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.

BiographyHistory

David Ireland was born at Lakemba, New South Wales, and was educated at various schools, including Sydney Technical High School. After finishing high school, he held a variety of jobs, but spent most of his working life in an oil refinery. From an early age Ireland aspired to be a writer and he published several poems in the early 1950s. In 1958, he won third prize in the Elizabethan Theatre Trust competition for his play about an Aboriginal family, Image in the Clay. He wrote further plays, but he is best-known as a fiction writer, publishing his first novel, The Chantic Bird, in 1968.

Ireland's second novel, The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1971. He wrote another three novels during the 1970s and won the Miles Franklin Award two more times, for The Glass Canoe (1976) and A Woman of the Future (1979). He was made a member in the Order of Australia (AM) in 1981 and won the ALS Gold Medal in 1985.

Ireland's novels frequently explored the relationship between fiction and reality with fragmented narratives and unconventional narrators such as the red setter dog in Archimedes and the Seagle (1984). Ireland's frank and explicit treatment of sex  attracted controversy, causing his books to be withdrawn from the recommended reading list for the NSW Higher School Certificate course in 1983. But despite some argument over the merit of his work in the late 1970s, his fiction has since supported two book-length studies.

Ireland became a full-time writer in 1973.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The World Repair Video Game Hobart : Island Magazine , 2015 9421482 2015 single work novel
2016 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction
y separately published work icon Bloodfather Ringwood : Viking , 1987 Z377225 1987 single work novel
1987 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
y separately published work icon Archimedes and the Seagle : A Novel Ringwood : Allen Lane , 1984 Z131265 1984 single work novel humour

'The protagonist of this first-person narrative is Archimedes, also called ""Happy,'' an Irish setter who has taught himself to read and write. Archimedes guides the reader through the streets of Sydney, Australia, and expounds on human and dog life. Happy's world includes a Sydney waterfront where humans act like seagulls and seagulls take on human characteristics: there are seagull tourists, seagull art critics and seagull gay-rights activists. The eponymous seagle is different from the other seagulls, spending most of its time soaring like an eagle, and Archimedes admires it from a distance.'

Source: Publisher's Weekly (https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-14-008090-2). (Sighted: 10/01/2018)

1985 winner ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal

Known archival holdings

University of Queensland University of Queensland Library (QLD)
State Library of New South Wales State Library of NSW (NSW)
Last amended 10 Aug 2022 09:41:52
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X