Editorial.
Arnold, John
THIS ISSUE of the La Trobe Journal focuses on Victorian writers (in
the geographic sense) and opens with 'Sweet Yarra, Run Softly'
by poet and critic, Chris Wallace-Crabbe. Some forty-six years ago,
Wallace-Crabbe wrote an off-quoted essay entitled 'Melbourne in
1963' and in 'Sweet Yarra, Run Softly' he reaffirms his
affection for--and affiliation with--the city he has lived and worked in
for more than fifty years.
Wallace-Crabbe's essay is followed by an article on designing
a centre for Australian Crime Fiction by Derham Groves. Here he combines
his interest in crime fiction with his role as a Senior Lecturer in
Architecture at the University of Melbourne.
Sidney Courtier and June Wright, two of the writers discussed by
Groves, can be classed as neglected Victorian writers. The same could be
said for the three writers covered in the article by Gavin De Lacy. Jean
Campbell, 'Georgia Rivers' and 'Capel Boake' are
virtually forgotten today but De Lacy makes a strong case for the three
being included in any assessment of Australian women's writing of
the 1930s.
All three were well known to Nettie Palmer. Palmer was a great
supporter of Australian writers. One of the many she mentored--a word
she is unlikely to have used--was a young John Barnes. In
'Remembering the Palmers; John Barnes, my predecessor as editor of
the La Trobe Journal, provides an evocative memoir of his friendship
with Nettie Palmer and his meetings with her husband, Vance Palmer.
John's memoir is followed by Robin Lucas' account of the
publication of Nettie Palmer's Fourteen Years, published in 1948 by
the Meanjin Press. This was a hybrid publication in that the book was
effectively self-published by the Palmers using the infrastructure of
the Meanjin Press. It could be argued that Frank Hardy's notorious
Melbourne novel, Power without Glory, was also self-published in that
Hardy established a company in which he was the sole trader to print and
publish the book. But he was also supported by an infrastructure, this
one more fluid, being the network of supporters and friends associated
with the Communist Party of Australia. In 'Proof Copy or
Clandestine Edition?' Des Cowley outlines the intriguing story
behind what he calls the 'Fraser' copy of Power without Glory,
donated to the State Library by its namesake in 2005.
Terence O'Neill in 'Joan Lindsay: a time for everything;
in addition to being the first detailed biographical study of Joan
Lindsay, provides important new insights to the background behind
Lindsay's mysterious and eerie novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock. The
novel, first published in 1967 and later filmed by Peter Weir, is
alleged by one commentator to have been read by more than eleven million
people world-wide.
Continuing the theme of neglected Melbourne writers, Graham Willett
in 'Moods of Love and Commitment' discusses the Melbourne
years of Brisbane-born poet and writer, Laurence Collinson. While living
and working in Melbourne, Collinson had, like fellow Brisbane emigre to
Victoria, poet and librarian Barret Reid, a long association with the
literary magazine Overland.
One of my favourite Melbourne novels, Trap (1966), is by yet
another neglected Victorian writer, namely Peter Mathers. Following
Mathers' death in 2004, the State Library acquired a substantial
archive of his papers. Peter Pierce uses these as a basis to discuss
Mathers' life and work in 'Sunshine and Shambles: the Peter
Mathers Papers'. Despite the qualities of Trap noted by both Chris
Wallace-Crabbe in his opening essay and in Peter Pierce's article,
the novel has been out of print for nearly thirty years.
All the articles noted above deal with writers active in
twentieth-century Melbourne. The final two articles are short pieces on
two important cultural figures in Melbourne in the nineteenth-century:
artist and diarist Georgiana McCrae and doctor and theatre critic James
Edward Neild.
Angus Trumble introduces an interesting 1854 letter of introduction
for Georgiana and her family from her step-mother, Elizabeth, Duchess of
Gordon, to Beaumont Hotham, the cousin of the recently appointed
Governor of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham, while Mimi Colligan writes
about the recent acquisition by the State Library of some
'lost' Neild scrapbooks. These scrapbooks, containing both
manuscript material and annotated press cuttings, were noted as being
either lost or possibly in private hands by Neild's biographer, the
late Harold Love. The later summation was correct: they formed part of
the extraordinary collection of the Berry Family and came to light when
the first part of collection was sold at auction in September 2007.
Mimi's article is about the contents and nature of the scrapbooks
but also serves as a tribute to Harold Love, a mentor at Monash
University to both Mimi and myself.
Finally, this issue of the La Trobe Journal complements the major
2009 exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. 'The Independent
Type' opened last month and will run through to November. A panel
display of the exhibition will also travel to various libraries within
the Public Libraries Victoria Network from September through to the
middle of 2011. The exhibition (see
slv.vic.gov.au.goto/independent-type) focuses on the richness and
variety of Victorian writers and their books, and also celebrates
Melbourne's recently acquired status as a UNESCO City of
Literature.
