Monday musings

Monday musings on Australian literature: Quiet achievers 1, Terri-ann White of Upswell Publishing

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Over the years I have started several Monday Musings sub-series, some of which I’ve nearly completed (such as those on writers centres and on supporting genres) while others are still continuing (like Forgotten writers). Today, I’m introducing a new one. It was inspired by an email I received the other day from Terri-ann White of Upswell Publishing. It occurred to me that not only was here a quiet achiever, but that people like her were worth posting about.

Okay, so those in the industry will say that White is no quiet achiever. After all, she’s been around publishing for a long time, and successfully so. However, for the general reading public, people in the industry are not necessarily well-known, hence this new little sub-series. I hope to focus on the people more than their companies, but they and their jobs are intertwined. Still, I hope to at least give a sense of who they are. I start with Terri-ann White, but there will be more …

Terri-ann White

In 2022, I wrote about two new indie publishers, of which Upswell Publishing was one. As I wrote then, it came across as a passion project, but the passion project of someone with significant cred. It was triggered by – hmm – adversity. White had been running UWAP (University of Western Australia Press) since 2006 when, in 2019, the University announced that it would close its publishing arm. As most of us know, that didn’t happen, but White left in 2020 anyhow, unhappy with how she had been treated.

Not long after, on 25 December 2020 in fact, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jason Steger reported that White had a plan. She wanted to publish books that for some reason couldn’t find an easy route to publication, “books that are too quiet, or the authors are older than 25, that are not about misery, that are not about trends”. She wanted to publish books, wrote Jason, “that speak to each other across a set of intellectual interests, and how they work language and revere it”. And so, Upswell Publishing was born.

Books are in White’s blood. As Upswell’s About page tells it, all her working life, from 1980 on, “has been arranged around books and ideas: as a bookseller, writer, publisher and organiser of public events involving literature and writing”. This new venture, however, broke new ground. For a start, it has been set up as a not-for-profit company, with three impressive women, Carmen Lawrence, Linda Savage and White, as its directors. It also has DGR status, which means that (Australian) donations to them are tax-deductible. Their tagline is “Support the future of Australian literary writing and publishing”. They hope that “the generosity of rusted-on, passionate readers” will help them extend their “work of commissioning writers and building audiences”.

Upswell is also selling a bit differently. While individual books can be bought from them directly or from booksellers, they also have a subscription program. I subscribed the first two years, but not since. They have been experimenting with their subscription packages, but my main issue is that I’m a bit too overwhelmed with books to keep subscribing (for a while, at least). I did however preorder two of their 2025 books. One has arrived, with Jessica White’s Silence is my habitat: Ecobiographical essays, to come.

Despite this, however, I have been watching and drooling, partially attracted, I admit, to their recognisable and gorgeous design, but also the content. White is, I believe, achieving what she set out to do, which was to publish distinctive works across narrative nonfiction, fiction and poetry, to publish books that “elude easy categorising and work somewhat against the grain of current trends … books that may have trouble finding a home in the contemporary Australian publishing sector”.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. In 2022 she was, as publisher, unwittingly caught up in the plagiarism controversy over John Hughes’ novel The dogs (my review) which was initially longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award.

If you really want to understand who she is, and what she believes, check out this opinion piece she wrote for Seesaw in September 2021. She wrote of

a withering of success for Australian literature of the ground-breaking variety. I think you’ll know what I’m getting at here: books that take more concentration, perhaps, with less of a direct connection to the idea of entertainment. By which I don’t mean the equivalence of cod liver oil – good for you but it’s unfathomable that you are sinking it down your gullet. I could be more explicit and name some names often cited as difficult writers: Shirley Hazzard, Randolph Stow, Beverley Farmer, Elizabeth Jolley, Kim Scott, Gerard Murnane. Or I could name literary forms that are not novels (including poetry and short stories, for instance).

Or, see her report, ‘There is nothing else quite like it’, in Books+Publishing about the Sharjah Publishers Conference, which she describes as “a corrective from the world of English-language commercial publishing, and a rich chance to meet the Arab world’s publishing enterprises, along with a raft of Eastern European book people and representatives from the wide-ranging Indian book industry.” Tells you something about her publishing philosophy.

Then there’s her interview in the Australian Book Review (ABR, November 2022, paywalled). Regarding the value of reviews, she says that they are “Very significant for the author and, to a lesser extent, the publisher. Potentially useful for finding readers”. And, regarding whether she thought individuality was a casualty of a highly competitive market, she responded:

No. I’m in this for the long haul. Even books that flop in their time end up in libraries and second-hand bookshops, ripe for discovery. The prospect of a living wage for writers, on the other hand, is even less likely these days.

I love this long view of what writing an publishing is about.

Finally, I’ll return to the email that inspired this post. It announced that Upswell’s book, Abbas El-Zein’s memoir, Bullet paper rock: A memoir of words and wars, had won the 2025 National Biography Award (having already won in the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards and been shortlisted in the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards). The NBA judges called it “a work of rare linguistic and emotional insight, and a tribute to the resilience of the human condition”. Awards aren’t the be-all and end-all of publishing, but it is still be a thrill for authors and their publishers when they win.

Any thoughts on this quiet achiever – and her contribution to the Australian literary scene?

Monday musings of Australian literature: National Tree Day

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Around ten years ago, I wrote a post on National Arbor Day. It was inspired by a Library of America story. The thing is that then I didn’t, and I still don’t hear, about Arbor Day anymore. Indeed, Mr Gums and I reminisced that it was mainly through school that we heard about it at all. Nor do I hear much about National Eucalypt Day, which I wrote about 8 years ago. I do hear sometimes about various tree-planting initiatives, but I was surprised to hear on ABC Classic FM on the weekend that Sunday was National Tree Day! A bit of research took me to the National Tree Day website.

Here, I learned that it was established in 1996, by Planet Ark, and that it has “grown into Australia’s largest community tree planting and nature care event”. The site continues that it is “a call to action for all Australians to get their hands dirty and give back to their community”.  I also learned that they run three tree days, whose dates for this year are:

  • Schools Tree Day Friday 25th July 2025 (set for the last Friday in July)
  • National Tree Day Sunday 27th July 2025 (set for the last Sunday in July)
  • Tropical Tree Day Sunday 7th December 2025

I said above that I don’t hear about Arbor Day anymore, so I checked Wikipedia. Under Australia, on the Arbor Day article, it says:

Arbor Day has been observed in Australia since the first event took place in Adelaide, South Australia on the 20th June 1889. National Schools Tree Day is held on the last Friday of July for schools and National Tree Day the last Sunday in July throughout Australia. Many states have Arbour Day, although Victoria has an Arbour Week, which was suggested by Premier Rupert (Dick) Hamer in the 1980s.

The implication is that it is still observed. It doesn’t, though, seem to get much publicity. I could research this, but so could you if you are interested! Meanwhile, I plan to use this post to share some tree quotes from Australian novels, and a couple of tree-inspired covers, as my little tribute to National Tree Day. 

My first quote is one I’ve shared before, because it’s my first memory of a tree playing a significant role in a novel. I’m referring to Ethel Turner’s children’s book, Seven little Australians (1894), and the death of our beloved Judy:

There was a tree falling, one of the great, gaunt, naked things that had been ringbarked long ago. All day it had swayed to and fro, rotten through and through; now there came up across the plain a puff of wind, and down it went before it. One wild ringing cry Judy gave, then she leaped across the ground, her arms outstretched to the little lad running with laughing eyes and lips straight to death.

This is realism. The tree has an important role to play in the plot. Another memorable novel featuring trees is Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus (1998). There is a narrative, of course, but it is framed around multiple species of gum trees, and opens with this:

We could begin with desertorum, common name hooked mallee … and anyway, the very word, desert-or-um, harks back to a stale version of the national landscape and from there in a more or less straight line onto the national character, all those linings of the soul and the larynx, which have their origin in the bush, so it is said, the poetic virtues (can you believe it?) of being belted about by droughts, bushfires, smelly sheep and so on; and let’s not forget the isolation …

As you can tell from the tone, the trees – although very real right down to their botanic descriptions – also set the novel’s tone and have something to say about Australian life and character.

More recent is Madelaine Dickie’s Red can origami (2019, my review). It is set in the Kimberley, but here is a description of a boab tree in Perth, a place where they don’t belong. It symbolises displacement:

The boab’s bark is cracked, its leaves are withered, and its roots strain from the soil, as if it’s planning on splitting town, hitching north.

There are more, but I’ll end with a writer who is loved for his landscape descriptions, Robbie Arnott. It’s hard to choose, but I’m going to use the one I used in my review of his novel, Limberlost, because it is a beautiful example of the landscape mirroring the emotions of the character moving through it. It occurs after a beautiful lovemaking scene:

Afterwards he’d driven them across the plateau through white-fingered fog, through ghostly stands of cider gums, through thick-needled pencil pines, through plains of button grass and tarns, through old rock and fresh lichen, until the road twisted and dived into a golden valley. Here at winter’s end, thousands of wattles had unfurled their gaudy colours. As they descended from the heights their vision was swarmed by the yellow fuzz. Every slope, every scree, every patch of forest, every glimpse through every window was a scene of flowering gold.

The book cover for this novel depicts what I assume is a stylised image of a Huon Pine with a boat, made by the protagonist using this wood.

Trees – or parts of trees, like branches or bark – often feature on book covers, because trees evoke so much in our consciousness. I guess they are easy to stimulate emotions in readers. They can be majestic and grand, or stark and threatening, or soft and sheltering – and suggest the associated feelings.

However, in doing a little research for this post, I stumbled across an old discussion about trees on book covers for crime novels. One was a 2007 blog post titled “Fright time in the forest”. The post broke down the four ways trees had been used on crime novel covers. There are those

  • used “more or less anthropomorphically–that is, as stand-ins for human-like monsters”
  • used “to establish a sense of desolation and bleakness, or mystery”
  • ominous-looking tree fronts, “on which the bark-encased stars loom belligerently overhead like villains preparing to fall upon and do violence to their victims”
  • used to “convey a mysterious atmosphere” through effects like fog, snow, a nighttime sky. 

Some of these overlap, I think, but I love the blogger’s conclusion, which suggests that

the designers of crime novels–like the storytellers who wanted to warn children off from wandering into the deep woods–have sought to associate trees with danger, disorientation, and despondency, all in the interests of book sales. One wonders whether this is healthy for the future of forests, a rapidly dwindling resource–or even healthy for the future of mankind, which might also become a dwindling resource.

I wonder whether book cover designers ever think of their larger responsibilities (besides garnering sales, I mean)!

I have strayed from where I started, which was to pay tribute to trees and share some favourite covers. However, this little discussion, which was picked up by England’s The Guardian was too interesting to ignore.

Any thoughts on trees in novels or on covers?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Factory novels

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“I love a factory novel”! So wrote Buried-In-Print blogger Marcie on my post earlier this year on the Australasian Book Society. I do too, I replied, and noted to myself that this could be a topic for Monday Musings. I have not done as much research as I would have liked, but I figured I never will, so why not just provide an intro and then call in all of you, the brains trust, for your contributions.

Factory novels are, essentially, a subset of working class literature. They emerged in the 19th century as a result of the Industrial Revolution. They critiqued the exploitation of workers, and identified the poverty and social problems that accompanied industrialisation. Some also explored attempts to improve the situation. Dickens was a major exponent of writing about social problems, but one that made a big impression on me was Elizabeth Gaskell in North and south (read before blogging). Her Mary Barton (on my TBR) also falls within this group.

I love factory novels because the best are written with such heart and passion, with such desire to bring about change. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe literature (or any art) has to do this, but I enjoy art that does.

Selection of Australian factory novels

This small selection includes novels in which factory work and factory workers are the prime focus of the story. There are many other novels which incorporate factory themes or storylines, that I haven’t included. I was so tempted to expand my definition and include other sorts of labourers, such as wharf labourers, for example, but decided to keep it to my original goal.

The books are listed in alphabetical order by author, though I did consider ordering them by date of publication (from 1926 to 2024).

  • Mena Calthorpe, The dyehouse (1961) (my review): set in a Sydney dyehouse, this novel is about the impact on workers of capitalism-at-all-costs
  • Dennis Glover, Factory 19 (2020): set in the very near future, 2022, it depicts Hobart, devastated by economic recession, being recreated as a new industrial colony titled Factory 19 which is fixed in the pre-digital past of the 1940s. What can go wrong!
  • Rosalie Ham, Molly (2024) (Lisa’s review): prequel to Ham’s The dressmaker (read before blogging); starts with Molly helping to support her struggling family from her backbreaking work in a corset factory (when she’s not demonstrating for women’s rights)
  • Dorothy Hewitt, Bobbin up (1959) (kimbofo’s review): set in inner-city Sydney and about, says, kimbofo, “a bunch of hard-working women whose lives are dominated by their long shifts in the [woollen mill] factory”, not to mention the restrictions on their lives imposed by their gender.
  • David Ireland, The unknown industrial prisoner (1971) (Bill’s review): set in an oil refinery, a winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Text classics describes it as “a fiercely brilliant comic portrait of Australia in the grip of a dehumanising labour system.”
  • Ruth Park, The harp in the south (1948) (read before blogging): several of the Darcie family work in factories; a warm-hearted novel in which Park documents the lives of people living on factory salaries and trying to lead a good life.
  • Katharine Susannah Prichard, Working bullocks (1926): includes depictions of a timber mill, and the broader issue of working conditions and industrial accidents.
Book cover

Not surprisingly, most factory novels tell their stories from the point of view of the workers. They chronicle the precarity of life when salary is low, rights are few, and there is little time or energy left for finding ways out. In some of the stories, the workers organise in the hope of forcing change and improving their lot, but our authors are under no illusion that this is easy. Most of the novels are contemporary – that is written around the time they are set – but Ham’s is historical fiction, and Glover’s is, technically, technically futuristic.

So now, my question to you is: Do you like factory novels, and would you like to share your favourites (from any nationality of writer)?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Prizes for Humour Writing

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There are not, apparently, many prizes for humour writing around the world, but we have two here in Australia, the Russell Prize and the John Clarke Prize. Those from other countries include the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize (UK), the Thurber Prize for American Humour, and the Leacock Memorial Medal for Canadian Humour. Do you know them? I’d be interested to know of your experience with them, but meanwhile, I’ll move on to the two Australian ones I’m featuring today.

Russel Prize for Humour Writing

According to the Prize website, this prize was established through a bequest from farmer and businessman Peter Wentworth Russell. Its aim is to “to celebrate, recognise and encourage humorous writing, and to promote public interest in this genre”. Established in 2014, it was the first award to recognise the art of humour writing in Australia and, argues the website, makes “a long overdue acknowledgment of the genre” here. They believe it will “promote public interest in humour writing just as its prestigious international counterparts have done”.

The prize is awarded biennially by the State Library of New South Wales, and the winner receives $10,000.

Associated with this award is a second prize, a Humour Writing for Young People Award for “a work promoting humour and championing laughter”. It is aimed at primary school level readers (5-12 years) and “recognises the role of humour in encouraging children to read”. The winner of this award receives $5,000. I love the spirit behind this.

Past winners

A full list of the winners and shortlists can be found at Wikipedia, but here are the winners to date:

  • 2015: Bernard Cohen, The antibiography of Robert F. Menzies (Fourth Estate)
  • 2017: Steve Toltz, Quicksand (Simon and Schuster) (my review)
  • 2019: David Cohen, The hunter and other stories of men (Transit Lounge)
  • 2021: Nakkiah Lui, Black is the new white (Allen and Unwin)
  • 2023: Martin McKenzie-Murray, The speechwriter (Scribe)
  • 2025: Madeleine Gray, The green dot (Henry Holt) (Theresa’s review) : “brings a new complexity to the genre sometimes called ‘rom-com’. It’s sweet but also sour. It’s terrifically funny as well as Anna Karenina sad … hilarious about the tedious realities of the modern workplace” (excerpted from the judges’ comments)

Writers shortlisted for this award over the years include some I have read and posted on, such as Trent Dalton for Boy swallows universe (my review), Chris Flynn’s Mammoth (my review) and Sun Jung, My name is Gucci (my review). They also include other writers I know or have reviewed or mentioned, just not their shortlisted books, like Annabel Crabb, Tracey Sorenson, Ryan O’Neill and Siang Lu. And, of course, there are new writers that I’m really pleased to hear about.

John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing

The second award is very new one. Titled the John Clarke Prize for Humour Writing, it is named for Australia’s much loved satirist and writer, John Clarke (1948–2017). It has been added to the suite of Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, so will presumably be made annually. The award, which was established by the Victorian Government and the Clarke family, was open in its first year to books of comedic fiction, nonfiction and poetry published in 2023 and 2024. It offers a cash prize of $25,000.

The first award was made this year, 2025, and it went to Robert Skinner’s I’d rather not say. I gave this to Son Gums for his birthday this year, but I’m not sure he’s read it. I certainly haven’t, though I’d like to. However, kimbofo has (her review). She comments that Skinner “knows how to craft a compelling narrative using jeopardy, self-deprecating humour and a deft turn of phrase”. This just makes me more keen. She also says that it was shortlisted for the Small Publishers’ Adult Book of the Year (in the 2024 ABIAs) and that The Guardian named it one of the Best Australian Books of 2023.

This award, as both the Clarke family and the Wheeler Centre’s CEO have been quoted as saying, is “a fitting tribute” to one of our greatest satirists. They hope it will help the careers of future humour writers. It will certainly help Skinner, whom the ABC reports as saying:

“When you’re writing in Australia, in the back of your mind, the question is always, How long can I keep affording to do this?” he says.

“And now the answer is: slightly longer.”

Echoing, in other words, what many authors say about awards with a decent cash prize. It buys them time.

I enjoy humorous writing, particularly at the satirical end of the spectrum, so I love that there are some awards aimed at supporting this sort of writing. I fear there’s almost a natural tendency in readers to equate better with serious, but that is not necessarily the case.

So now, my question to you is: Do you know of any other awards for Humour Writing, and, regardless, do you like Humour Writing? I’d love to hear anything you’d like to share about this.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Collaborative story-telling between First Nations Australian and white writers

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National NAIDOC Logo (2025)

NAIDOC Week 2025 started yesterday, and as I have done for many years now, I am devoting my NAIDOC Week Monday Musings to celebrating First Nations writers in some way.

This year is a particularly special year because it marks NAIDOC Week’s 50th anniversary, 50 years it says, “of honoring and elevating Indigenous voices, culture, and resilience”. The 2025 theme is “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy,” and is intended to celebrate not only past achievements achievements, “but the bright future ahead, empowered by the strength of our young leaders, the vision of our communities, and the legacy of our ancestors”. 

.Now, over the years, I have written posts on a wide range of First Nations writing and storytelling, was wondering what to write about this year, when a couple of weeks ago this idea of collaborative writing projects popped into my head because I’ve come across a few in the last few years. Then, at the ACT Literary Awards last Thursday night, another such collaboration was not only shortlisted but won the Nonfiction award. The book is Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People, and is by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick. That sealed the deal!

In the introduction to this book, Darren and Craig, the names they use to sign off the Introduction, say that:

This book has been a blackfella-whitefella collaboration, because too much of our history has been written by one voice only, and we need to find more collaborative ways to tell our past, present and future.

I would love to discuss all the collaborations I’m going to share in this post – including researching how the collaborations worked, who did what, and how differences (if any) were resolved – but that would be a big project. I have, however, met some of the writers involved, and have followed some of the projects on social media, so I am aware of some of the processes the writers followed. For now, though, I will share what Darren and Craig say in their Introduction:

In this collaboration, we each worked to our strengths. Craig did most of the work in the archives, and Darren did most of the oral interviews – and the people we talked to got the final say on the text. The stories we gathered belong to the individuals and communities we visited. This is their book.

Selected list of collaborative books

This list is presented in alphabetical order by the name of the first author listed on the title. I did think about dividing it into two lists – one fiction, one nonfiction – but decided that all these books aim to share truths about our society and culture, whether told within a factual or imaginative framework, so one list it is. (Links on authors’ names are to my posts on that author.)

There has been a lot collaborative publishing in the children’s literature sphere, over a significant period of time, but I’ve been less aware, until relatively recently, of similar activity in the adult sphere.

Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie, Some people want to shoot me (memoir, Fremantle Press, 2024, on my TBR): shortlisted for Nonfiction Book of the Year in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick, On a barbarous coast (historical fiction, Allen & Unwin, 2020, my review): a re-imagining of what happened when Captain Cook’s Endeavour was wrecked off the coast of Far North Queensland.

Aaron Fa’Aoso with Michelle Scott Tucker, So far, so good: On connection, loss, laughter and the Torres Strait (memoir, Pantera Press, 2022, Bill’s review): apparently the first memoir by a Torres Strait Islander to be commercially published, which means it addresses “the under-representation of Torres Strait Islander perspectives in Australian life”. You can read more about it on Tucker’s website.

Aaron Fa’Aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker with Lyn White, Spirit of the crocodile (YA fiction, Allen & Unwin, 2025, on my TBR, Bill’s review): a coming-of-age novel set against the challenges to the Saibai island community of climate change.

Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler, with Dub Leffler (illus.), Black cockatoo (YA fiction, Magabala Books, 2018, my review): pleasingly, this book was in my Top 10 visited posts last year, and is in the Top 20 this year to date.

Boori Monty Pryor and Meme McDonald, Maybe tomorrow (memoir, 1998, my review): one of the first books I reviewed on this blog. Pryor has focused much of his life’s work on helping young people feel strong in their culture.

Boori Monty Pryor and Jan Ormerod, Shake a leg (Children’s picture book, Allen & Unwin, 2010): one of several children’s book collaborations involving Boori Monty Pryor.

Darren Rix and Craig Cormick, Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People (history, Scribner, 2024, on my TBR): follows Cook’s journey up “Australia’s” east coast, visiting the places he renamed and gathering the local people’s stories.

Nicolas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, Yilkari: A desert suite (“unclassifiable” but fiction, Text Publishing, July 2025, on my TBR)

As the word “selected” conveys, this is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but an introduction to the range of collaborative writing that’s been happening. However, I (and readers of this blog I’m sure) would love to hear of other First Nations-settler collaborations, including from other parts of the world.

Click here for my previous NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Have you read any First Nations-white writer collaborations? And if so, care to recommend any?

Monday musings on Australian literature: on 1925: 1, Literary societies

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As I’ve done in recent years, I decided to start a little Monday Musings sub-series drawing on researching Trove to get a picture of Australian literature a century ago, that is, in 1925. One of the things that popped up as I started this year’s Trove trawl was the existence of an active community of people enjoying literary activities in the company of others, including through various literary and arts societies. I’m going to focus on two such societies.

Australian Literature Society

The most serious was probably the Australian Literature Society. I wrote a little about this society in one of my 1922 posts, so won’t spend a lot of time on it here. Essentially, it was formed in Melbourne in 1899, aimed at encouraging the study of both Australian literature and Australian authors. It still exists today, as a result of its merging in 1982 into the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. It is a scholarly organisation.

In the 1920s, it held meetings that were open to the public and were reported publicly in the newspapers. They presented lectures, held “review” nights, dramatic nights, a “woman’s night” (which I have researched for the Australian Women Writers blog), and more. So, for example, in 1925, they held a review night in May at which papers were presented reviewing Australian works. One work reviewed was Myra Morris’ Us five, a children’s book published in 1922. The Age (May 12) reports that J. McKellar’s paper (read by someone else) “said Miss Morris had woven a garland perfumed with the delicate flowers of fancy and imagination” but her book had been neglected. The question was how “to galvanise the Australian reading public into a realisation of the good work Australians were doing”. Other writers reviewed included Dowell O’Reilly, Bancroft Boake, and Conrad Sayce, mostly little known now.

At their dramatic meeting in September, they presented four “playlets” by Australian writers, three of them women, including Mary Simpson (whom we have featured on the Australian Women Writers blog). In other words their events focused very much, as per their aims, on Australian writing.

Australian Institute of Arts and Literature

This society is referred to by variations of its names in the papers, including the Australian Institute of the Arts and Literature and the Australian Institution of Arts and Literature. Minor differences perhaps, but why is there such sloppiness about getting the names of organisations right? It still happens!

Anyhow, this Institute was quite different from the ALS – and a big distinction is there in its name. It’s not about “Australian” literature, but is an Australian organisation interested in “arts and literature”. Like the ALS, it has a Wikipedia article, but unlike the ALS, it was short-lived. It seems to have been founded in Melbourne in 1921 and it folded around 1930. According to Wikipedia, the club gained significantly in status and membership numbers when lawyer and respected public servant, Sir Robert Garran, became president. However, 1927, he was transferred to Canberra and, again according to Wikipedia, “the Institute felt his loss keenly, and never recovered”.

Louis Lavater, c 1917, Public Domain from the State Library of Victoria

However, during its heyday, it was highly active, meeting weekly during some of this time, and providing much entertainment and cultural nourishment for its members/attendees. Many of the meetings were reported in the papers. As Melbourne’s Table Talk (4 June) wrote, “music played an important part” in the pleasure of the meetings. And, while there was some music composed by Australians – specifically Louis Lavater whom Wikipedia describes as “a gifted leader of music in rural Victoria” – most of the music performed were the standards (Handel, Beethoven, and Mozart for example). However, there was one event devoted to Russian music, with songs by Gretchaninoff, Kveneman, Tchaikowsky; violin pieces by Wieniawski and Rimsky-Korsakov; and piano works by Rachmaninoff, Rebikoff and Liadow*. The report in Melbourne’s The Age (27 June) describes it “as altogether a programme out of the beaten track”. The music was followed by the clearly all-round Lavatar giving a lecture on “The Sonnet” which, the report said, dealt “sympathetically and appreciatively” with the work of “many of our sonnet writers during the past century”. I don’t know how long these meetings were, but it seems like they packed a lot in.

I’ll give one more example, this one reported by The Argus (31 August), which called it a varied program, “covering literature, music, and the drama”. So, ‘Louis Lavater, poet and composer, read a short paper supplementary to one previously given on “The Sonnet,” and dealing this time specially with some of the more important written in Australasia’. In addition, Vera Buck gave “an enjoyable piano and song recital” including two songs she’d composed (sung by Mary Killey); and Marie Tuck played piano pieces by Schumann (six delightful “Scenes from Childhood”), Beethoven, Chopin, and Schubert. Also, Frank Goddard, from the Melbourne Repertory Society, “gave two capital recitations”, and Don Mather and Pauline Abrahams acted the “Helen and Modus” scene from Sheridan Knowles’ drama, The Hunchback. Phew!

I think you get the gist. While it lasted, this was an active organisation and must have brought so much pleasure to Melbourne’s “culture vultures” (can I say that?).

Are you aware of any literary organisations from the past, where you abide?

* These are the spellings used in the report.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 12, Catherine Gaskin

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Of all my Forgotten Writers posts, this one is the most questionable because I’m not sure she is completely forgotten. For baby-boomer and I think some Gen X readers, Catherine Gaskin was a household name. Just ask Brona who reviewed her 1962 novel I know my love, and said in her post that she’d read her mother’s whole bookshelf of Gaskins. But, Gaskin has, I believe, now slipped from view and is worth a little post. Her big, breakout novel was her sixth, Sara Dane (see Wikipedia), which was published in 1954. It remained popular through the 1960s to 1980s, when it was adapted to a miniseries in 1982. So, who was this writer …

Catherine Gaskin

Catherine Gaskin (1929-2009) was, says Wikipedia, a romance novelist – but I seem to remember her books as being historical fiction so I’d say her genre was mostly historical romance. She also included mystery and crime in her stories, at times. The youngest of six children, she was born the same year as my mother, but in County Louth, Ireland. She was not there long, however, as when she was only three months old, her parents moved to Australia, settling in the Sydney beach suburb of Coogee. She wrote her first novel, This other Eden, when she was 15 and it was published by Collins two years later, while she was still a schoolgirl. It sold 50,000 copies, and she never returned to school.

After her second novel, With every year, was published, she moved to London with her mother and a sick sister, Moira (who also published two novels). Three best-sellers followed, Dust in sunlight (1950), All else is Folly (1951), and Daughter of the house (1952). Wikipedia lists 21 novels to her name. In his obituary, Stephens tells that as a child she had loved reading, and read such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene and Scott Fitzgerald. 

According to Wikipedia, she completed her best-known work, Sara Dane, on her 25th birthday in 1954, and it was published in 1955. It sold more than 2 million copies, was translated into a number of other languages, and was made, as I’ve said above, into a television mini-series in 1982. It is loosely based on the life of the Australian convict businesswoman Mary Reibey. Stephens writes that ‘a Herald critic described the novel as “most readable”‘ although the critic also suggested “that Gaskin’s understanding of history was not deep”. He says that “after Sara Dane, many of her books were overlooked by critics, although welcomed by readers”.

At least three of her novels – Sara Dane, I know my love, and The Tilsit inheritance – were adapted for radio, by Australia’s Grace Gibson Radio Productions, and many others besides Sara Dane, were translated into other languages.

Gaskin met the man who became her husband in London, and they married in 1955. He was a TV executive and 19 years her senior. They lived in various places together, including the USA, the Virgin Islands, and Ireland. However, she returned to Sydney at the end of her life, and died there in September 2009.

I was inspired to write this post by some research I did for the #1970 Year Club last year. Journalist Rita Grosvenor visited her in Ireland around the time of the publication of her novel, Fiona. Grosvenor writes that:

She is among the elite of the world’s women novelists, with such a faithful following of readers she can be sure that every time she produces a new book it will sell 50,000 copies in hard-cover – and that’s more than most authors sell with a handful of books. With paperback sales she often passes a million.

Grosvenor’s article was for the Australian Women’s Weekly, so there’s much about her living arrangements and house, but towards the end, she shares Gaskin’s thoughts about her writing. Despite her success, Gaskin is depressed every time she starts a book, fearing that “this time it is not going to work out, but somehow it does”. However, she says:

“I know I can never be a Graham Greene, but I always want to improve within my limitations. I’m a perfectionist.”

As Stephens writes, “she knew her limitations but didn’t like being regarded as a romantic writer”. She saw herself as “an entertainer and good craftswoman who married romance with history and studies of such subjects as trades and places”. 

According to Stephens, Gaskin retired after her last novel, The charmed circle, was published in 1988. She wanted to travel with her husband, without publishers’ deadlines. So, they did travel, apparently, until his death in 1999. She then moved to Mosman, in Sydney, and spent the rest of her life there. Stephens quoted her as saying, ”I am not an Australian by birth but I think like one”.

Have any of you heard of or read Catherine Gaskin?

Sources

Monday musings on Australian literature: Names and naming

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In yesterday’s post on Percival Everett’s James, I didn’t discuss the issue of naming. I should have, however, as it is a significant aspect of the novel, so much so that the novel ends on exactly that point. Throughout the novel, James, who is called “Jim” by the “massas” (aka masters) if they bother to call him anything, clarifies that he is James:

“I am James.”
“James what?”
“Just James.”
[end of novel]

Names, as we know, can be tools used for power and control, to dehumanise people. It happens in the most subtle ways, as well as in sanctioned ways. Throughout the colonial project, for example, naming has been used a tool of ownership and submission, but it has also been used to dehumanise and control in all sorts of other legitimated ways, such as in the practice of giving prisoners numbers and calling them by that number.

I was horrified to witness a misuse of a name during our recent trip to Far North Queensland with a company called Outback Spirit. This company makes a practice of using local guides wherever possible, and in remote regions those guides are often First Nations People. It is such a privilege to spend time with those who know the country so well and are prepared to share their knowledge with us. And so it was on our little expedition to stand on the top of mainland Australia.

Our guide was Tom, who identified himself as a Gudang man (with several other familial connections in the region). On our return from Pajinka (their preferred name for the top or point), he lead us across the rocks to the beach and thence our bus. I was in the group right behind him, when we met three middle-aged guys on the way up. The one in front saw Tom and gestured for him to stop. Then, without asking permission, he took a photo (as if Tom was some exotic!) Tom was impressively gracious and, when the guy finished, introduced himself as Tom and welcomed them to country. They seemed to appreciate this – but twice in the very brief conversation that followed, the photographer addressed Tom as “Tommy”. Really? I could be generous and assume that he was one of those people who automatically uses a diminutive form of a name when they are introduced to another person, and I will never know, but it felt so wrong. Whatever the man’s intentions were in using “Tommy” – and whether they were conscious or not – it was a shocking reminder to me of how far we have to go.

This issue of names and naming – of people and places – of course comes up in First Nations politics. I was interested that in Cape York there was far less use of local names for places (towns, rivers, and so on) than I expected. I asked Tom about it, and he simply said that it was coming. Interestingly, the week we were up there, Qantas had announced that it had renamed one of its Dash-8 aeroplanes, “Horn Island Ngurupai”. According to the National Indigenous Times this was done at the request of the Torres Shire Council. It seems rather little to me, but the Torres Shire Council chief executive Dalassia Yorkston is quoted in the article as saying that

“Even though our request was a simple one, it was a powerful one,” she continued. “Because it showed that beyond Horn Island we not only recognise that English name but we recognise the Kaurareg people, the Kaurareg nation, the traditional name.”

Back in 2012, I wrote a Monday Musings on the importance of place and researching local names in Noongar/Nyungar culture

Of course, naming frequently appears in First Nations writing. One example I’ve shared in this blog was in the opening paragraph of Ambelin Kwaymullina’s short story, “Fifteen days on Mars”, when our first person narrator says, pointedly,

It had been almost a year since we came to Mars. That was what I called this place although it had another name. It was Kensington Park or Windsor Estate or something like that but I couldn’t have said what because I could never remember it.

I love the way she turns this white-person excuse of “not remembering” unfamiliar names on its head.

Alexis Wright, Carpentaria

Many First Nations novelists have used names to make political points. The names for people and places in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria is another good example of using satire to make a point, with the town of Desperance and characters like “Normal Phantom” and “Mozzie Fishman”.

One of the issues that confronts non-Indigenous people is how (and whether) to write about Indigenous Peoples. I found a useful guide by Macquarie University, published in 2021, on “writing and speaking about Indigenous People in Australia”. It’s written primarily for those writing academic papers, and it recognises that language changes, but looks to be still relevant now and is worth checking out for anyone who is interested in their own writing practice.

I know I’ve just touched several surfaces in this post, but I wanted to capture some ideas while I could. I can always build on them later.

Thoughts or examples, anyone?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 11, Nancy Francis

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Like my last forgotten writer, Ruby Mary Doyle, today’s writer, though also a prolific contributor to newspapers in her day, has slipped into the shadows. Neither Wikipedia nor the Australian dictionary of biography (ADB) contain articles for her, but the AustLit database does and Zora Cross, writing as Bernice May in The Australian Woman’s Mirror, also did a piece on her. As with many of my Forgotten Writers articles, I researched and posted a version of this on the Australian Women Writers’ site in April, but have saved posting here until June because I am in Far North Queensland where she lived most of her life. Seemed fitting.

Nancy Francis

Nancy Francis (1873-1954) was a poet, and writer of short stories, essays and serialised novels. She was born in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England, in 1873. According to the Obituary in The Cairns Post, her mother was the surviving descendant of the Beaton family, which was connected, through service, with Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Her Yorkshire-born father was a well-known musician who had played a cornet solo in front of Queen Victoria. Nancy developed her musical talent, and apparently had “a beautiful and unusual soprano voice”. She also wrote verse as a hobby and contributed to various periodicals.

According to the Obituary, Nancy married Frederick James Francis in 1900. They lived in London and other country centres, before coming to Australia, just before the 1914-18 war. With three young daughters, they travelled to the remote Bloomfield River, in Far North Queensland, where her husband joined his brother in various mining ventures. During this period Francis “acquired her exhaustive knowledge of the North Australian bush and its aboriginal inhabitants, of whose character and folklore she made a sympathetic study”. She increased her output over this time, with her verses, articles and short stories appearing regularly in the Bulletin and other southern periodicals. Much of this writing appeared under the nom-de-plume of “Black Bonnet”, which Bernice May (Zora Cross) ascribes to her love of Henry Lawson (who wrote a poem titled Black bonnet”).

After some time – not specified in the Obituary – the family moved to the small mining township of Rossville outside Cooktown, where Frederick and two brothers continued working in mining and other development. The Obituary says that “among these jungle clad hills she produced some of her best literary work, including many of the poems later collected and published in book form”. In 1927, Bernice May wrote about Francis and her daughters – who all became published writers in their teens – and praised the quality of their verse. May clearly had some correspondence with Nancy and her daughters, and was impressed by what the girls had achieved under their mother’s home schooling. Francis wrote to her, “How I long at times for a creepy novel, a box of chocolates and no bright ideas that nag to be put on paper”, which May says reminded her of Mary Gilmore who “in her first passionate days of great poetry declared she could not take her hands out of the cooking-basin and washing-up dish fast enough to run away to her pen and write some fiery line that had flashed to her across her domestic work”. Bernice May understood the challenge faced by women artists.

In 1928, Nancy and her husband moved to Cairns, but not long after, in 1929-30, she travelled back to England. On her return she “joined her husband at Herberton where she lived until her death”, on 28 June 1954. Her husband, who had also worked as a freelance journalist, predeceased her in 1942.

According to the Obituary, she was actively involved in community activities, including being a member of the C.W.A. from its inception, and President of the local branch for eight years. She also worked for the Red Cross and Patriotic Associations during both world wars. She remained a journalist throughout her life and was keenly interested in politics and world affairs. She also left behind four children, the three daughters (Patricia, Kathleen, and Christobel) and a son. The Obituary describes her as follows: “Generous and warmhearted, and with a vast fund of kindness for the underprivileged, she retained the standards of her English upbringing in a new country and a changing world”.

AustLit focuses on her writing. She wrote under many variations of her name and initials – N. Francis, Nancy Christobel Francis, N. C. Francis, N. C. F, N. F., Nancy C. Francis – as well as her Black Bonnet pen-name. They list 426 works by her under her Nancy Francis name variants, and another 62 under Black Bonnet, so she was prolific. And yet, she does not appear in the plethora of reference books, histories and guides I have on Australian literature. Why? Perhaps it’s because she spent her life in such a remote part of Australia, away from the literary world, though she did have writing published down south. Or, maybe it’s simply that for all her writing, she had only one published book, her poetry collection, Feet in the night and other poems, which was published by The Cairns Post in 1947. All her other writing appeared in newspapers and magazines/periodicals.

Indeed, this book’s reviewer in Mackay’s Daily Mercury (28 August 1948) implies that the ephemeral nature of newspapers is behind obscurity when they write that “beautifully hewn lines of poetry, melodious verses which have stirred the infrequent verse-readers for a morning half-hour, lie … forever entombed in rows of bound newspapers in libraries”. Fortunately, however, Francis had managed to compile a volume from her output, and the reviewer liked the result:

“FEET IN THE NIGHT” is … taken from the first poem of the first section, which deals sympathetically with the vanishing natives of this continent, who move like shadows on the hill, or ghosts in the scrub, along dark green valleys and dim waterways out to where the jungle ends. The other sections celebrate the Galllpoli era, romance, soft and melancholy, the scenic glories of the North, and memories of England and the out-bound voyage

We do not hesitate to express the opinion that almost every poem in the collection was well worth rescuing from its dusty obscurity. These verses have been polished and polished again. All are graceful, delicate and restrained.

According to AustLit, her writing for Queensland newspapers included essays in series, such as her studies of North Queensland Aboriginal culture, titled ‘By Forest, Scrub and Shore’ (1939-1940), which include detailed discussions of customs and practices in the region; a series of historical essays on ‘The Anglican Church in North Queensland’ (1936-1938); and many essays on Captain Cook. AustLit also says that her travels Western Europe and Northern Africa around 1930 inspired several poems which expressed her identification with the North Queensland landscape and a longing for her North Queensland home. It seems she travelled overseas more than once, with The Courier-Mail (26 April 1938) reporting on a planned trip to “the Continent” in 1938.

Nancy Francis may not (yet) have come to the serious attention of those documenting Australia’s literary history, but back in 1927, Bernice May was impressed, writing that,

“One does not know whether her crisp articles on nature study, her accounts of the blacks and their ways, or her verses are the most remarkable”.

She also compared Nancy and her daughters to the Brontë sisters, no less, saying

It was not until the Bronte girls left Yorkshire for Belgium that their hearts turned back to the scenes of their youth and they began to write of them with the wonderful feeling which has never since been surpassed in fiction written by women. I sometimes wonder if when this little outpost moves, when perhaps the mother and daughters become separated from the scenes of their early days, something missing in our fiction will be supplied—the great story of the lonely, mighty North.

This is not all she said, but you can read the rest at the link below.

The piece I shared on the AWW site is “The black snake”, which, as the title suggests, references the “snake” motif frequently found in Australian bush stories (including Henry Lawson’s). It draws on familiar short story tropes to tell a good story, and shows a writer who knows her craft and how to entertain her audience.

Sources

  • Bernice May (aka Zora Cross), “Black Bonnet and her daughters“, The Australian Woman’s Mirror, 3 (26),  24 May 1927 [Accessed: 8 April 2025]
  • “Black Bonnet“, Daily Mercury, 28 August 1948 [2 April 2025]
  • Black Bonnet, AustLit [5 April 2025]
  • Nancy Francis, AustLit [5 April 2025]
  • Nancy Francis, “The black snake“, The Cairns Post, 28 December 1935 [Accessed: 8 April 2025]
  • Obituary, The Cairns Post, 10 July 1954 [Accessed: 2 April 2025]

Monday musings on Australian literature: Trove treasures (13), American scholar on Australian culture (1952)

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(Courtesy OCAL, via clker.com)

While researching Trove for April’s 1952 Year Club, I came across some articles about an American Fulbright scholar’s critique of Australian culture, and thought it a worthy topic for my occasional Trove Treasures series. The scholar was John Hough, who was Professor of Classics at Colorado State University, and he was finishing his year’s scholarship at University of Sydney.

Grafton’s Daily Examiner (22 November 1952) titled its article “Criticised aspects of Australian life“, while the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (also 22 November 1952) titled theirs “Australian ways slated by American“. It was also reported, along similar lines, in Sydney’s Sun and The Daily Mirror, and Melbourne’s The Argus. According to the Daily Examiner, Hough was speaking at an Australian-American luncheon at the Trocadero, and had said “he was appalled at the prejudice that had grown up against migrants”. He said that migrants to America “came of their own accord, and had to take their chance of making a living” but there was “no need for Australia to make the same mistakes”. And then he identified a number of other aspects of Australian culture that he felt were going wrong:

  • Mistakes in the treatment of aborigines.
  • The almost exclusive use of American and other imported songs, and records of oversea artists on the radio. 
  • He did not know why Australia did not make more use of its own songs and singers, instead of listening to people who “occasionally croon, sing, and cry.” 
  • The attitude of Australian “upper-level society” to Australian culture, which it belittled, and the denial that there was any such thing as Australian literature.

None of the articles expanded much on these, and when they did it was brief and focused on Hough’s critique about migrants. For example, the Daily Mirror (21 November) explained that

He said America had made terrible mistakes in migration, but that there was no reason why Australia, should make them. He said he regretted the tendency to stress that a man was a New Australian when he got into trouble.

The Sun (21 November) reported it a little differently:

“In America our migrants came of their own accord, and had to take their chances of making a living,” he said. 
“We also did not have the benefit of the study of sociology available today”. 

A couple reported that he’d been to the Greta migrant camp, and hadn’t liked what he’d seen. Most of the other issues were either ignored in the reports, or were listed as “other” aspects.

However, a few days later, on 8 December, the Daily Examiner, took on Hough’s comments – the only one to do so as far as I’ve found – and discussed them in an article simply titled, “Australian culture“. They argued, for example, that Hough had criticised Australia for not being “very hospitable towards migrants or new ideas” but had also said, contradictorily, that “we make exclusive use of American and imported songs and records of overseas artists on the radio”.

The article continues that Hough “emphasises” that while “we have our own rich array of local talent”, we “prefer to ignore Australian artists … and listen to those who croon sing and cry!” It doesn’t disagree with this preference. Its point, rather, is that this is “easy enterment [sic] but it isn’t culture”. This narrow idea of culture is not uncommon I think.

Anyhow, the article then takes on Hough’s statement that Australia’s upper-level society “belittled Australian culture and denied that there is any such thing as Australian literature”. It argues that this “belittles our land as much as it belittles our people”. Then, in its parochial way, says:

We in Grafton are rightfully proud of our Jacaranda Festival. Not only because it provides gay and whole-some entertainment, but because it sets a standard of culture that is lovely and fundamentally Australian.

But there’s more … it argues that Australian has “many scientists, inventors, physicians, writers, artists and musicians whose names and works shine like gems in any hall of culture” and calls these people “true Australians from the land they love”. Ignoring them, the paper says, “does them and their nation grave disservice”. Then, in another statement that comes straight from its times, it points out that:

Australia Day for example might have a more popular appeal if we used it to praise our famous men, the glory of their times. 

There’s more, including a them-versus-us statement which promotes the value of the “country Press”, and has a dig at the metropolitan Press which, it claims, “frequently says that writings about Australia have no publicity value”. The result is that

… our mighty land mainly goes unhonoured and unsung, and Australian literature and art is said not to exist. The great deeds of the pioneers, the fortitude, skill and’ patience of the modern countryman are overlooked. The essential loveliness of our land is side-tracked. Yet these things form the basis of our culture, and until they are recognised and publicised our mighty land will remain a Lilliput among the nations of the world.

It’s a beautiful bit of self-defence that turns Hough’s criticism into, at least in part, a pat on their own regional backs for writing about – for recognising, in other words – the true value of Australian culture.

I do enjoy Trove.