image of person or book cover 7211713442087613154.jpg
Source: University of Melbourne Archives
Baldwin Spencer Baldwin Spencer i(A3965 works by) (a.k.a. Walter Baldwin Spencer; Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer ; W. Baldwin Spencer)
Born: Established: 23 Jun 1860 Stretford, Manchester,
c
England,
c
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United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
; Died: Ceased: 14 Jul 1929 Patagonia,
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Argentina,
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South America, Americas,

Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 30 Mar 1887 Departed from Australia: ca. 1927
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Kakadu People Baldwin Spencer , Northern Territory : David M Welch , 2008 6017593 2008 single work prose

'Spencer's 1912 diary notes and photographs of Aboriginal life in the Kakadu region, Northern Territory of Australia. With rock art by Kakadu people and their ancestors' (Source: cover).

1 1 y separately published work icon My Dear Spencer : The Letters of F.J.Gillen to Baldwin Spencer F. J. Gillen , Baldwin Spencer , John Mulvaney (editor), Howard Morphy (editor), Alison Petch (editor), Hyland House , 2001 12249560 2001 selected work correspondence diary

'The extraordinary collection of letters has remained unpublished for nearly a century. It sheds vivid light on race relations, social conditions and Aboriginal culture in Central Australia, It also documents a crucial and poorly understood period in the history of anthropology. The book makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of central Australian Aboriginal society, and to current debates concerning land rights.'  (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon From the Frontier : Outback Letters to Baldwin Spencer Baldwin Spencer , John Mulvaney (editor), Alison Petch (editor), Howard Morphy (editor), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2000 11976190 2000 single work correspondence

This is the story of three men and three frontiers.

In the nineteenth century the centre of the continent was, to white Australians, a vast forbidding emptiness. The completion of the Overland Telegraph Line in the 1870s brought with it a new knowledge of the area, as well as a number of intruders to a landscape familiar to Aboriginal people for thirty millennia. Among the newcomers were a policeman, Ernest Cowle, and a telegraph official, Paddy Byrne, living in frontier settlements hundreds of kilometres from the nearest Europeans.

'From 1894 to 1925, Cowle and Byrne wrote letters to pioneering anthropologist and biologist, Baldwin Spencer, whom they had met during the 1894 Horn Scientific Expedition to central Australia. Neither expected their letters to be read by any person other than Spencer, and both made observations which they would never voice to each other. Yet through their letters, and the Spencer and Gillen books, they became linked to such giants of intellectual history as James Frazer, Emile Durkheim and Sigmund Freud. And both became figures, however minute, on the frontier of discovery, of new ways of looking at human experience in all its diversity.

'The subjects of their letters were the Aboriginal people, the landscape in which they lived and the unusual flora and fauna of their habitat. These earthy and thoughtful men offered an extended report from the frontier of the relations between white and black Australians, a place then characterised by mutual incomprehension, outbreaks of violence and the vast distance between two seemingly incompatible ways of responding to an extreme environment.

'A moment in time, a place on the edge, two men writing to a third; From the Frontier combines local history, race relations and scientific discovery, and enters a place whose very strangeness tells us much about our past-and our present.'  (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon Wanderings in Wild Australia Baldwin Spencer , London : Macmillan , 1928 Z1754045 1928 single work non-fiction
1 'An Untamed Territory' Baldwin Spencer , 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Argus , 27 November 1915; (p. 6)

— Review of An Untamed Territory : The Northern Territory of Australia Elsie R. Masson , 1915 selected work prose autobiography
Professor Baldwin Spencer welcomes Miss Masson's book and praises its scope. He offers a brief outline of each of the eleven stories and concludes by lamenting that the 'delightful' book is not longer.
1 Central Australia : From Oodnadatta to Charlotte Waters, South Australia Baldwin Spencer , 1902 single work prose travel
— Appears in: School Paper for Classes V and VI , February no. 38 1902; (p. 3-7) The Victorian Reading-Books : Eighth Book 1928; (p. 64-68)
1 The Australian Aborigines Baldwin Spencer , 1900 extract prose
— Appears in: School Paper for Classes V and VI , June no. 20 1900; (p. 142-142)
1 y separately published work icon The Australasian Critic Baldwin Spencer (editor), T. G. Tucker (editor), Melbourne Sydney : Melville, Mullen and Slade Petherick and Co. , 1890-1891 Z1136908 1890-1891 periodical (12 issues)

The Australasian Critic was published for twelve issues from October 1890 to September 1891. It came into being on the basis that Australia lacked a review journal and with the intention that it would 'not resemble any publication which has hitherto originated in Australasia'. Its purpose was 'to give reviews and criticisms of works of literature, science and art and of dramatic and musical productions, a record of what is being done in the world of pure and applied science, and news, notes, and articles concerning matters of literary, scientific and artistic interest.' (1 October 1890, p.xiv)

Regular contributors to the literary pages of the journal included Professor E. E. Morris and John Steele Robertson (qq.v.); occasional contributors included Mary Gaunt and Alfred Deakin (qq.v.).

In the Critic's final issue, the following notice appeared: 'The Editors of the Australasian Critic regret to announce that, as the paper has not been sufficiently supported to make its longer life possible, the present will be the last number. They take this opportunity to thank those who have supported it.' (1 September 1891, p.284)

1 A Visit to King Island Baldwin Spencer , 1888 single work non-fiction travel
— Appears in: The Centennial Magazine , August vol. 1 no. 1 1888; (p. 12-16)
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