This might be a first for me, an obituary-style post for an academic/literary scholar rather than for an author. However, this post seemed appropriate as, Elizabeth Webby, who died last month, is someone whom I’ve mentioned several times in my blog due to her having written in areas that are of interest to me. Specifically, these areas were colonial Australian literature and contemporary Australian writers, particularly women writers. I heard about her death from the Association of the Study of Australian Literature, for which she was a founding member and of which she was President from 1988 to 1990.

A significant legacy

Julieanne Lamond, current president of ASAL and co-editor of its online journal, Australian Literary Studies, has posted a tribute to her on ASAL’s website. It is well worth reading, because it outlines her major roles and achievements, which include her being Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney from 1990 to 2007. This involved her “supporting works of scholarly infrastructure including the AustLit Database, numerous scholarly editions, and the online Australian Poetry Library”. I have often used AustLit (albeit much of the content is paywalled) and the Australian Poetry Library (which seems not to be currently available, perhaps due to lack of ongoing support?) Webby also edited the Southerly literary journal for over a decade.

However, my “experience” of Webby has also been more specific. While I had come across her before, I became seriously aware of her through The Cambridge companion to Australian literature (1996), which she edited. This book is a little different from those “companion” style books which contain alphabetic encyclopaedic entries related to their chosen topic. Rather, it comprises essays which provide a partly chronological, partly thematic, survey of Australian literature starting with “Indigenous texts and narratives”. It works, in other words, more like a text book or history than a reference book. I often dip into it, when I am researching specific aspects of Australian literature, and find it sometimes useful sometimes not, depending on how well my particular interest has been covered.

However, I had came across Webby earlier via her essay on colonial poets in Debra Adelaide’s A bright and fiery troop (1988), which is another book of essays on Australian literature, but this one limited to 19th century women writers. It’s another book I often dip into when researching earlier writers.

Both these books, though, were in my ken before I started blogging. Skip a couple of decades to 2018 when I wrote a Monday Musings post titled Literary culture in colonial Australia drawing on Webby’s work. It was fascinating research, both for what she found and for the sorts of sources she used and their varying levels of completeness. Then in 2021, I wrote another Monday Musings on the Irish-Australian poet, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880), using research by Elizabeth Webby and another academic, Anna Johnston. These are just two examples of Webby’s work but, as Lamond of ASAL writes, her research interests spanned the breadth and depth of Australian literature, from early colonial literature, through early 20th century writers like Miles Franklin and Barbara Baynton, and mid-20th century ones like Patrick White, to those more contemporary to her own times like Frank Moorhouse, Elizabeth Harrower and Joan London. She was also, apparently, a loved and respected teacher, academic supervisor and mentor.

All this is important and significant, but another measure of who she was can be found in the funeral notice for her in the Sydney Morning Herald where can be found the following request, “In lieu of floral tributes, please consider a donation to the Indigenous Literary Foundation”. Presumably that was her own request – or from her family based on their knowledge of her passions. Either way, it’s the icing on the cake. Vale, indeed, Elizabeth Webby.