Jim Davidson Jim Davidson i(A4416 works by) (a.k.a. James Hector Davidson)
Born: Established: 1942 ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

After receiving a BA (Hons) from Melbourne University, Jim Davidson continued his studies at Rhodes University, completing an MA thesis on Anthony Trollope's South Africa. While working in London, he was offered the position of editor of Meanjin. After a tense period of transition with Clem Christesen, Davidson was officially instated as editor in 1975, continuing in that position until 1982.

Davidson has taught for many years at Victoria University (formerly Footscray University of Technology). He completed his PhD thesis at Melbourne University on the philanthropist and music publisher Louise Hanson-Dyer in 1992 and has also been opera critic for the Age. His work on Hanson-Dyer was published in book form in 1994. His most recent book (with Peter Spearritt) is Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870 (2000).

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2012 Australia Council Literature Board Grants Grants for Developing Writers $40,000 for non-fiction.
2012 Order of Australia Member of the Order of Australia (AM) For service to literature as an editor and cultural commentator, and to education as an historical researcher and biographer.
2011 recipient Redmond Barry Fellowship for 

Bigger than little: literary magazine culture in Melbourne between 1940 and 1988

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Emperors in Lilliput : Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland Carlton : Miegunyah Press , 2022 24684478 2022 single work biography

'Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith were giants of the world of Australian books and writing from the 1940s to 1980s'Lilliput', in this dual biography, is the world of literary magazines in Australia between the 1940s and the 1980s. Here Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith, of the journals Meanjin and Overland, were determined, driven visionaries. Both were very human-and occasionally bruised-believers in and workers for a better nation. The book ranges from before the Menzies era and the Cold War, through the Whitlam period and beyond to the challenges of the 1980s. It shows how the editors constantly aimed for a culture more liberal, diverse and developed than the one then prevailing. Their publications may have lacked resources and economic return, but they nonetheless possessed authority, regularly providing stimulation for their readers and for the nation. In finely wrought detail, Jim Davidson - the second editor of Meanjin - traces the commitment of Christesen and Murray-Smith to this ambitious cultural project and how it attracted many of the key writers and thinkers of those years. There are pen portraits of many of them, as the reader is taken behind the scenes. Emperors in Lilliput exhibits the enlightened creative spirit animating these journals at their best. It is at once captivating biography and rich social history.'  (Publication summary)

2023 winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
2023 shortlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
y separately published work icon A Three-Cornered Life : The Historian W. K. Hancock Sydney : University of New South Wales Press , 2010 Z1704878 2010 single work biography 'While W.K. Hancock may no longer be described as 'Australia's most distinguished historian', he has some enduring claims to our attention. No other Australian historian - and few elsewhere - can match his 'span', to use one of his watchwords. Hancock was a major historian in four or five fields, who himself made history by going on a mission to Uganda for the British government in 1954 to mediate the future of Buganda after its ruler had been exiled. He was also, from a room in the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, the editor of a vast historical project: the writing of a series of accounts of British mobilisation on the home front during the Second World War. In addition, Hancock was a founder of the Australian National University, while his Australia (1930) remains one of the classic accounts of this country' (Publishers website).
2012 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
2010-2011 joint winner Prime Minister's Literary Awards The Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History Joint winner with Peter Stanley's Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny and Murder in the Great War.
2010 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2011 joint winner Ernest Scott Prize Joint winner with Emma Christopher's A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain's Convict Disaster in Africa and How It Led to the Settlement of Australia.
2011 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's History Prize New South Wales History Prize Australian History Prize
2011 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Non-Fiction Prize
2010 winner Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Non-Fiction
y separately published work icon Lyrebird Rising : Louise Hanson-Dyer of Oiseau-Lyre, 1884-1962 Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 1994 Z1179836 1994 single work biography 'Lyrebird Rising re-creates the ambience of Melbourne in the twenties, Paris in the thirties, and London in the fifties; it also discusses expatriatism, explores the paths open to a dynamic woman at the time, and examines the changes in musical taste that were set in motion by the rise of musicology, radio, and the gramophone record.' (Libraries Australia summary)
1995 shortlisted NBC Banjo Awards NBC Banjo Award for Non-Fiction
1994 winner The Age Book of the Year Award Non-Fiction Prize
Last amended 8 Oct 2019 16:23:15
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