Cirrus@Austlit

'One of Patrick White’s working notebooks, acquired by the National Library of Australia in 2006, is almost exclusively devoted to material related to his breakthrough novel Voss (1957), which marks a new departure in his career. It is a historical novel set in Australia’s colonial period, though with thematic connections to White’s earlier works. Close attention to Notebook 5 shows how extensively White researched its historical background and how he absorbed that research, sometimes transposing details verbatim into Voss. While certain material deals with Ludwig Leichhardt and his expeditions into the interior (for example Daniel Bunce’s Travels with Dr Leichhardt in Australia [1859] and Alec H. Chisholm’s Strange New World [1941]), it is apparent that White is more interested in details of Leichhardt’s various journeys than in debates about the man himself. He read other explorers, notably Edward John Eyre, and settlers of whom John Dunmore Lang is prominent, his notes revealing a particular interest in Aboriginal people. A second strand of White’s research informs those sections of Voss set in Sydney in the 1840s, and a third involves theological and philosophical speculations about the nature of faith that are reflected in the musings of Laura Trevelyan and others. In addition, there are fragments of draft of both Voss and Riders in the Chariot (1961), indicating that White was already incubating the later novel as he was completing Voss. It appears too that he undertook major restructuring of Voss at a late stage.' (Introduction)

'Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880) arrived in Sydney in 1838 and became almost immediately notorious for her poem “The Aboriginal Mother,” written in response to the infamous Myall Creek massacre. She published more poetry in colonial newspapers during her lifetime, but for the century following her death her work was largely neglected. In recent years, however, critical interest in Dunlop has increased, in Australia and internationally and in a range of fields, including literary studies; settler, postcolonial and imperial studies; and Indigenous studies.

'This stimulating collection of essays by leading scholars considers Dunlop's work from a range of perspectives and includes a new selection of her poetry.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Locating Australian Literary Memory begins with a typically pithy quotation from Miles Franklin about its subject matter: ‘Such monuments, alas, too often are a saving of face by the living in regard to the neglected dead’. Many of the eleven Australian writers focused on by Brigid Magner were indeed neglected during their lifetimes, and most, even if achieving popularity at one time, are little read today. They include a number whose work would still be regarded as canonical, such as Joseph Furphy, Henry Handel Richardson, Henry Lawson, ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark, along with two best-known for their books for children, Nan Chauncy and P. L. Travers. Novelist Kylie Tennant, Indigenous author David Unaipon and poet Adam Lindsay Gordon make up the rest of the group, all of whom were writing mainly in the nineteenth through to the mid-twentieth centuries.' (Publication abstract)

'The past month has attracted more attention to older Australians, positive and negative, as those most at risk from the coronavirus. As the editors of these two anthologies note, people, especially women, have usually faded into the background once they reached old age.' (Introduction)

'Over the past decade, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver have been researching nineteenth-century Australian popular fiction with the aid of a succession of research grants. Associated publications have included a series of genre-based anthologies of gothic, romance, adventure and crime stories, as well as a selection of extracts from the local journals in which many of these stories were first published. While these books included introductions by Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction is their most sustained account of the field.' (Introduction)

'Once again it is a pleasure to welcome readers to a new issue of Humanities Australia and a sample of the outstanding research and writing being carried out by Australian humanities scholars. While the contributors to this issue come from a broad range of the disciplines represented in the Academy, including linguistics, philosophy, the arts, history and Asian studies, some common themes have emerged, especially in relation to questions of human rights, both in the past and today.' (Introduction)

'Yarn Spinners was first published by the University of Queensland Press in 2001 with the much shorter subtitle of ' A Story of Letters'. Coming after over a decade of increased attention to the lives and work of Austrlai's earlier women writers, thanks to the impact of femenist literary history and criticism, it was perhaps less necessary then to spell out just what the story was about. In epilogue Marilla North noted some ofthe fruits of the revival of interest in cusack work. Her play Morning Sacrifice (1943) was about to be produced by the Sydney Theatre Company and there was to be a reprint of her novel Say No to Death (1951). During the 1988 Bicentenary there had been reprints of the novels she wrote with Miles Franklin, Pioneers on Parade (1939), and Florence James, Come in Spinner (1951). Many of the letters in Yarn Spinners relate to the writing and publication of these two jointly- authored works. Today, while some of Cusack's novels can be ordered from Allen and Unwin as print on demand titles, they are not readliy available in bookshops, and she has been largley forgotten again.' (Introduction)

'Literary journalism in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific varies according to the populations, histories, and communications infrastructure of each location...' (Introduction)

'Australia, like other white settler countries, has a long tradition of short story writing dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. In the days when Australian novels were mainly published in England, but a strong local newspaper and magazine culture was beginning to develop, many authors turned to the short story to achieve some income...' (Introduction)

'Welcome to the 2016 edition of Humanities Australia which again aims to present a small sample of the outstanding research and writing being carried out by humanities scholars and arts practitioners in Australia and internationally. Several of the essays this year deal with interactions between the human and natural worlds, involving the hunting and collecting of animals and insects, across various times and cultures. Others deal with the hunting and collecting of information, whether in fifteenth-century Florence or contemporary Australia. This remains an essential part of humanities scholarship despite the vast difference between an illuminated manuscript and a computer database.' (Introduction)

'Harris and Webby give an overview of the newly discovered notebooks and manuscripts enhanced by their long experience researching White's writing, and their thorough examination of the 'new' collection's breadth and scope.' (Introduction 7)