'Bruce Bennett and Anne Pender explore the lives and creative work of Australia's many expatriate writers living and working in Britain since the early nineteenth century. They contest the notion of Australia as an 'import culture' and show Australians exporting literary talent to Britain and further afield from 1820 until the present. Stories of the lives and work of writers working in all genres, from romance and crime to contemporary literary fiction, are interweaved in a collective biography.
'Bennett and Pender uncover many unknown writers and document their adventures both on and off the page. They also discover the expatriate lives of figures such as Pamela Travers (author of Mary Poppins), Frederic Manning, Randolph Stow and Madeleine St John. They explore the work of lesser known writers such as Jill Neville, as well as investigating Christina Stead's expatriate years, the modernist dramas of Patrick White and Barry Humphries, and the arguments with England expressed in the lives and work of Peter Porter, Germaine Greer, Michael Blakemore and Geoffrey Robertson.
'This book is the first historically comprehensive, detailed examination of expatriate Australian writers at work in Britain. The authors illuminate two centuries of intense literary activity and discover the major contributions by Australian writers to world literature.'
Source: Monash University Publishing website
'Looking back to the past this paper discusses why Pacific studies and in particular Australasian studies became an area of interest in tertiary education in Europe. What subject areas initiated these studies, and how do past legacies shape the present? With cutbacks in higher education over the past two decades the future of interdisciplinary studies and the humanities looks bleak. At the same time due to global business and increased political communication across borders there is a vibrant interest in and need for such studies among businesses and students. For most Europeans the literature of settler countries, with their European legacy, makes access to ways of thought and culture easier than studies of countries with other mythological backgrounds. In today’s multicultural environment such studies can provide knowledge for an understanding of other cultures and increase tolerance of the ‘other’. Area studies have relevance to our situation in Europe with increased migrancy, not least as a result of Schengen and EU regulations. ' (Author's abstract)
'Looking back to the past this paper discusses why Pacific studies and in particular Australasian studies became an area of interest in tertiary education in Europe. What subject areas initiated these studies, and how do past legacies shape the present? With cutbacks in higher education over the past two decades the future of interdisciplinary studies and the humanities looks bleak. At the same time due to global business and increased political communication across borders there is a vibrant interest in and need for such studies among businesses and students. For most Europeans the literature of settler countries, with their European legacy, makes access to ways of thought and culture easier than studies of countries with other mythological backgrounds. In today’s multicultural environment such studies can provide knowledge for an understanding of other cultures and increase tolerance of the ‘other’. Area studies have relevance to our situation in Europe with increased migrancy, not least as a result of Schengen and EU regulations. ' (Author's abstract)
'In 1798 one of the pioneers of the Australian wool industry, Elizabeth Macarthur, wrote to an old friend in England about the advantages of life in Australia, the only drawback being the lack of education for her children. They – or at least the boys – had to be sent home to England, a place they thought was “the seat of happiness and delight”, where they would “possess all that they desire”.' (Publication summary)
