Cirrus@Austlit

'The paper considers Ruth Park’s memoirs by reflecting on three autobiographical texts: a lengthy article in the Sydney Morning Herald (1946); her first memoir The Drums Go Bang (1956, co-authored with husband D’Arcy Niland); and her third and final volume of memoir, Fishing in the Styx (1993). Each offers a reflection on the same critical turning-point in Park’s career – her controversial winning of the Sydney Morning Herald Prize in 1946 for an unpublished novel, with The Harp in the South. This was, Park declared, the moment ‘The drums went bang with a terrific sound’ (Drums 188).

'Park’s accounts of this incident are examined in the context of her observation – made while questioning her capacity to accurately frame a narrative moment in her memoir Fishing in the Styx – that ‘there is a truth in there somewhere, but like all truth, no statement of it can be final’ (210). It is argued that whenever Park recalled her life and career she modified how she expressed the ‘truth in there’ regarding the extraordinary episode of the Herald Prize, an incident that resonated throughout the span of her life.' (Publication abstract)

'The publication of The End of the Morning is a long-awaited moment in Australian literature.'

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'This article presents results of research using the diaries of Sidney Nolan, recently made available by the National Library of Australia. In particular, it focuses on two matters relating to Nolan’s lengthy friendship with Australian journalist and novelist George Johnston: clarifying the origin of Nolan’s Gallipoli series, which is strongly associated with a period in 1955 and 1956 that Nolan spent with Johnston on the Greek island of Hydra; and secondly, providing evidence regarding a curiosity with the series of portraits known as the Adelaide Ladies, which Nolan painted after spending time with Johnston at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1964. With regard to the Gallipoli series, Nolan’s diaries establish that the origin of this series is considerably later than has previously been believed; likewise, our research suggests that the diaries support the contention that a portrait that has long been included among the Adelaide Ladies is in fact a portrait of Johnston.' (Publication abstract)

'This essay draws a comparison between two published memoirs of participants, both of them women writers, in the Hydra expatriate community of the 1950s and ’60s: Australian Charmian Clift’s Peel Me a Lotus, and Welsh artist and writer Brenda Chamberlain’s A Rope of Vines. As memoirs of female experience on Hydra the two texts have elements in common, but the contrasts are also stark. Whereas Clift focused on family life, the bucolic harbourside agora and the boisterous life of the taverns and kafenia, Chamberlain represented herself as being alone and declared, ‘the port and the people on it do not interest me.’ For Chamberlain, the dockside was a place of ‘unreal glamour’ that deadened her creative spirit as surely as it deflected Hydra’s international visitors from understanding the true nature of the island they superficially embraced.

'This essay discusses both Clift’s and Chamberlain’s responses to Hydra, examining how despite the differences in their memoirs, both writers can be seen to be working at a resolution of the conflicting aspects of Hydra the town and Hydra the island, as each woman struggles in her own way to realise the promise of ‘freedom.' (Publication abstract)

''Their years in the Aegean may have been half perfect at best, but it was on Hydra that they connected to a place, a lifestyle and a community that allowed them to live and express themselves intensely, and as they wished. They refused to believe their dreams were an illusion, or that boldness, ambition and a leap-of-faith might not allow them to reach beyond the constraints of their birthright'.

'Half the Perfect World tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Most famously, it included renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his partner Marianne Ihlen, as well as many other artists and writers including the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, who fostered this fabled colony.

'Drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of a creative life that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the unrealised youthful ambitions, internal strife and personal tragedy that attends this story, the authors nonetheless find that the example of these writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire.' (Publication summary)

'In this collection of more than thirty pieces of fiction, journalism, criticism, academic papers, and ephemera (acceptance speeches, parliamentary questions, university course outlines), Frank Moorhouse gives evidence of, and attempts to explain, the durability of Henry Lawson’s classic short story ‘The Drover’s Wife’ in Australian cultural life. Moorhouse’s interest encompasses not only the persistence of Lawson’s story, but also the many ways in which it has lingered by being constantly reinvented – both reverently and otherwise – to the point where he declares that it has become ‘a phenomenon unique in the Australian artistic imagination’.' (Introduction)

' We are first introduced to the character of Professor Ronald Challis in Shane Martin's detective fiction Twelve Girls in the Garden (1957) as he walks idly beside the River Thames, which "on this particular evening" the third person narration informs us, "was the of Turner rather than Whistler" (3). As Challis strolls from Pimlico to Chelsea, he muses on the circumstances that have recently led him from an archaeological dig in Greece to London. For "no reason at all" he then begins to think about past friends and he dwelling they once inhabited in Tite Street (4). (It was in this street in Chelsea, and in the same house once owned by James McNeill Whistler, that the Australian artist Colin Colahan and his wife Ursua lived during World War Two. Twelve Girls in the Garden is dedicated to them both "for fun.") (Introduction)

'In late 1963, Rodney Hall – an aspiring but unpublished poet and novelist – travelled through Greece’s Saronic islands with his wife and their infant daughter. Shortly after Christmas they found themselves on the island of Hydra, where they fell into the company of expatriate Australian writers George Johnston and his wife Charmian Clift, whose time on the island was drawing to a close after nearly a decade. The Johnstons, their marriage precariously holding together amid a ruinous trail of alcohol, infidelity, and public brawling, did as they had done so often before – cast aside their personal troubles and embraced their fellow Australians with immense personal warmth, hospitality, and charisma. As Hall remembers, ‘they were lovely, they were so warm, and welcoming, and funny and clever, and it was just instant friendship, we just loved them.’' (Introduction)