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'When the first of Frank Moorhouse's trilogy of novels about Edith Campbell Berry was
published in 1993, Canberra-based political historian Lenore Coltheart was teaching and
writing on women and internationalism and about to spend a sabbatical at the League of
Nations archives in Geneva. Edith Campbell Berry is a heroine so vivid that, although a
fictional construction, 'What would Edith do?' has become a ready response to dilemmas
public and private. Drawing on Moorhouse's trilogy and her own research into the time,
Coltheart examines a more fundamental question: 'Who is Edith Campbell Berry?' (p. 7)
'Drawing on published and unpublished material, as well as interviews with family and
friends, Briony Kidd explores how Geoff and Liz Dean have left an indelible mark on
Tasmanian culture, assisting in the early incarnation of Island Magazine, as well as the
establishment of the precursor to the Tasmanian Writers' Centre. They were driven
by a sense of curiosity, and by ambitions that were just as likely to be on behalf of
colleagues or their community at large as in the service of their own work. They shared
an enduring commitment to three things: literature, their home state of Tasmania,
and a sense of justice.' (p. 23)
