Monday musings

Monday musings on Australian literature: Et toi, France!

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With a certain event happening in Paris, and other parts of France at the moment, I thought it would be fun to briefly explore, some literary connections between Australia and France. I say “some” because there’s no way I could know, let alone list, all the ways in which our countries have connected over the years through literature. My aim, instead, as I often do in Monday Musings, is to introduce the topic with some ideas and let you all do the rest.

Settler Australia’s connection with France starts right back at the time of the arrival of the British in 1788, when French explorer Jean François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, and his expedition, met Captain Phillip’s First Fleet in Botany Bay in January 1788. After spending a few weeks in the settlement, the French left, and, as Wikipedia reports, “neither he nor any members of his expedition were seen again by Europeans”. In early 1801, another French explorer, Nicholas Baudin, led an expedition to map the coast of New Holland, as Australia was called back then, not leaving until July 1803. During this time they met Matthew Flinders’ expedition which was also charting the coast. Baudin stopped in Mauritius en route home, and died there of tuberculosis.

These were just the start of many links between France and Australia over time. Some have been negative (often military in origin, like nuclear testing and a certain submarine cancellation) and some positive (mostly cultural, like the work of Alliance Française and an interesting organisation called ISFAR, or Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations), but overall there are strong and continuing connections. After all, who can resist some French pastries with their coffee?

Now, though, my main point, literature …

Australian novels set in France

Australians being the travellers they are, it’s not surprising that our novelists sometimes set their stories in places other than Australia, like, say, France, albeit their reasons vary as greatly as their novels. War is one reason characters find themselves in France, and work is another, while for others it is travel, or study, or following lovers. Many of the novels I list here are not fully set in France, but all spend some time there – and they are almost all from this century.

  • Diana Blackwood’s Chaconne (2017, my review): starting in Cold War Paris, about a young Australian who goes to Paris for love only to find it’s not what she expected.
  • Michelle de Kretser’s The life to come (2017, my review): a big novel about contemporary social issues including emigration and personal challenges, one of its five parts is set in Paris.
  • Alan Gould’s The lake woman (2009, my review): a “romance” involving an Australian airman who parachutes into a lake in France just before D-Day.
  • Marion Halligan’s The golden dress (1988, read before blogging): multigenerational novel set in Newcastle, Paris and Sydney.
  • Marion Halligan’s Valley of Grace (2009, my review): set wholly in contemporary Paris, and about fertility, babies and children.
  • Anita Heiss’ Paris dreaming (2011, my review): one of Heiss’ “choc lit” books about professional First Nations’ women, this one about a young art curator mounting an Indigenous Australian art exhibition in Paris.
  • Mark Henshaw’s The snow kimono (2014, my review): a mystery set mainly in mid-late 20th century Paris and Japan about two men, their fractured lives, lies and memory.
  • Katherine Johnson’s Paris savages (2019): historical fiction based on the true story of three Badtjala people from Queensland’s Fraser Island, who, in 1882, were taken to European cities, including Paris, as ethnographic curiosities. 
  • Mary Rose MacColl, In falling snow (2013): historical fiction about an elderly woman in 1970s Australia reflecting on her life as a nurse in France during WW1.
  • David Malouf’s Fly away Peter (1982, read before blogging): about three very different Australians, and the impact on them of their experience of WW1 in France.
  • Alex Miller’s Lovesong (2009, my review): the love story of Sabiha and John who met in Paris, told to a writer in Melbourne, who ponders the art and responsibilities of storytelling.

There are also Australian short story collections which contain stories, sometimes just one, set in or referencing France, including Emma Ashmere’s Dreams they forgot, Irma Gold’s Two steps forward, Paddy O’Reilly’s Peripheral visions, and Tara June Winch’s After the carnage.

Australian novels written or published in France

Too many Australian novels have been translated into French over the years, so here I’m sharing some different examples of connections that can happen.

John Clanchy, Sisters

Writers’ retreats are loved by many writers for the opportunity they provide for dedicated, uninterrupted writing time, but not many Australian writers get to do so in France. This however is what John Clanchy did in 2008. His novel Sisters (2017, my review) was originally drafted at the La Muse writers retreat in southern France, and was later published by the retreat. The retreat is open to all sorts of creators, besides writers.

When it comes to translation, a highly successful contemporary Australian writer is Karen Viggers (see my posts). She is a bestselling author in France, with her novel The lightkeeper’s wife having also been awarded the Les Petits Mots de Libraires literary prize. Her latest novel (her fifth) is being translated. On why she is so popular in France, she says that they love her “big landscapes”. Most of her novels have strong environmental themes and are set in gorgeous Australian landscapes. (She has a French page on her website.)

Book cover

Then, in a different again example of Australia-France literary connections, there is Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch who moved to a French country town when, as a young woman in her 20s, she found herself caught up in the Andrew Bolt “It’s so hip to be black” discrimination case. She withdrew from the legal action taken by several First Nations Australian identities, and disappeared from view for some years, during which, living on her French farm, she wrote her award-winning novel The yield (2020, my review). As far as I know, she is still based in France.

Different again, but still relevant, is Noumea-born Jean-François Vernay, whose somewhat quirky book about Australian novels, Panorama du roman Australien, was published in France in 2009. (It was later revised and expanded, and published in Australia as A brief take on the Australian novel, on my TBR).

Finally, there is our lovely French blogger, Emma (bookaroundthecorner) who includes Australian books in her reading diet, giving our often strange idioms her very best shot.

Now, you know what to do – share your love of bookish France.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 6, Constance Clyde

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“Forgotten” is a subjective thing, as I suggested with my fifth post in this series on Lillian Pyke whose reputation as a children’s writer has survived in niche circles at least. My next subject, Constance Clyde, like Lillian Pyke, has entries in both AustLit and Wikipedia suggesting some notability, but I had not heard of her before.

Like my last three Forgotten Writers, Clyde was the subject of one of my posts on the Australian Women Writers (AWW) blog this year. Once again, I am not including here the piece written by Clyde that I published there, but it’s a little different from the more romantic stories I’ve published. Titled, “The paying back”, it references a failed romance but its subject is the relationship between a mother and her unmarried daughter … check it out at AWW.

Constance Clyde

Constance Clyde (1872-1951), born Constance Jane McAdam, is another writer who wrote under a few names, but Constance Clyde seems to be the name by which she was best known, as well as the name she mostly wrote under. However, for the record, AustLit says that she also wrote under Clyde Wright, Pen, C.C. and C. Clyde. Christopher Dawson, writing in the Inside Boggo Road Gaol blog, describes her as the “author of a novel, contributor to high-class English reviews, sometime social editress of a Christchurch (N.Z.) newspaper, and in 1906 one of Emmeline Pankhurst’s Suffragettes”. He sums her up, in his 2023 article, as “a formidably independent woman”.

Clyde was born, the 11th child in her family, on 25 Jul 1872 in Glasgow, Scotland, and died in Brisbane, Queensland, on 30 Aug 1951. The “Clyde”, both Dawson and I suspect, comes from Glasgow’s Clyde River. She moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, with her family when she was 7, and was schooled there. According to Australian writer and journalist Zora Cross (writing as Bernice May), Constance Clyde’s first poem, called “Blighted Hopes,” was published in the Otago Witness when she was twelve, and she won second prize in a story competition for adults when she was still at school.

She arrived in Sydney in 1898, where she continued her career in literature and journalism, contributing to Australian and English newspapers, including the Sydney Bulletin. Cross says that Clyde was one of the first women to contribute to the Bulletin regularly, and that it was the Bulletin that gave her “the idea that one can and should write from the soul”. She also says that “Possessed of a rippling sense of humor, a pen as strong and vigorous as a man’s at times, it is because she does write with her soul that this writer has so many admirers.” Cross, adds later that Clyde

thoroughly mastered the tense, compressed drama the pink-covered weekly [The Bulletin] favored, and her work earned the admiration of the reader and the envy of the aspiring writer of the day.

Meanwhile, Dawson says New Zealand academic Kirstine Moffatt describes Clyde’s subject matter as encompassing “social, feminist and literary questions”. Wikipedia says that, in an essay entitled “The Literary Woman”, Clyde urged women to continue “to make brilliant discoveries in the realm of the emotions”.

In 1903, Clyde went to London to pursue a literary career, and her only novel, A pagan’s love, was published there in 1905. Anti-Puritan, it apparently explored ideas about women’s dependence, which included the heroine considering an extra-marital relationship with a man. Cross writes that while in London, Clyde met leading writers like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw.

In 1907, she was imprisoned in Holloway Prison as one of the suffragettes who ’caused a disturbance’ in the House of Commons. She wrote about this experience – which I found in Hobart’s The Mercury (June 24 1907) – from how she went about ensuring that she was arrested through to her release after thirteen days incarceration. It’s worth reading, not only for its firsthand experience but for its insight into who she was, but I’ll just share this little reference to Australia and Australian literature. She says one visitor was not allowed to give her a rose, but another was

permitted to leave a book. It is Tom Collins’s “Such is Life,” and she had previously reviewed it as a volume “suitable for reading in a desert, island, or gaol.” I find its acid philosophy, flavoured by eucalyptus, thoroughly refreshing!

Some time later, she returned to New Zealand, and in 1925 co-authored a travel book with journalist Alan Mulgan. In 1928, while living in Auckland, she was described by Sydney’s Smith’s Weekly as “one of the most brilliant and versatile of Australasian women journalists”. The article explains that:

In order to understand officialdom, Miss Clyde in recent years accepted appointments in New Zealand institutions, being on the staff of a backward school, sub-matron of a women’s gaol, and attendant at a mental asylum of 1500 inmates. She is strongly opposed to the new N.Z. Child Welfare Act, which she contends gives the official too much power over family life. Her great desire is to have proper Montessori teachers in New Zealand for such backward children as do come into the hands of the State.

In 1931, she was ejected from the New Zealand Parliament for protesting against the 1925 Child Welfare Act. She was a true activist, in other words.

Sometime after this, in the early 1930s, she returned to Australia, to Brisbane, where she was again imprisoned in 1935, this time for refusing to pay a fine for fortune-telling using tea-leaves. Dawson reports that, when in court for this offence, she said, “I thought that I could do some good in this depression by sympathy, kindness and advice, and especially by telling people that there is nothing wrong with this world except the monetary system.” As Dawson added, “even reading tea leaves could become a political platform” for Constance Clyde. Somehow, in between all this she wrote prolifically, with AustLit listing over 130 works by her, most of them short stories, the latest dated 1938.

Sadly, as Dawson chronicles, her life ended quietly, petering out “in the mundane concerns of suburbia after such an ambitious foray into the bohemian literary circles of turn-of-the-century Sydney and London”. There was no obituary. Forgotten already it seems!

Sources

  • Bernice May (aka Zora Cross), “Constance Clyde“, “Constance Clyde”, The Australian woman’s mirror, 3 July 1928 (Accessed: 22 July 2024[
  • Christopher Dawson, Constance Clyde of Dutton Park: Author and Suffragette, 16 May 2023 [Accessed 22 June 2024]
  • Christopher Dawson, “A Suffragette Recalls Boggo Road Gaol“, Inside Boggo Road blog, 17 June 2018 [Accessed: 22 June 2024]
  • Constance Clyde, Wikipedia (citing several sources) [Accesed; 21 June 2024]
  • Constance McAdam, AustLit (sourced from A. G. Stephens, ed., Australian Autobiographies, vol.2) [Accessed 21 June 2024]

Image: Constance Clyde in her suffragette days, circa 1914, from Australian Women’s Mirror 1928. Public Domain from Wikipedia.

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian short story collections

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NAIDOC Week 2024 National Logo

NAIDOC Week 2024 finished yesterday, but, as I often do, I am bookending the week with Monday Musings posts. Last week, I posted on First Nations Australian Stella listees. This week I’d like to highlight some recent (meaning 21st century) short story collections. In my admittedly limited experience, First Nations people can be wonderful storytellers. Lest this sound like a stereotype or generalisation, see Tara June Winch’s quote below!

As I shared last week, NAIDOC Week’s theme this year was Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. It encompasses a number of ideas but one, the website says, relates to forging “a future where the stories, traditions, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are cherished and celebrated, enriching the fabric of the nation with the oldest living culture in the world.” Short stories make a perfect contribution to this goal, and contemporary First Nations writing is richly served in this form. My aim here is to share a selection in order to provide a resource for anyone interested in reading more First Nations stories.

“we are a culture that has survived by storytelling” (Tara June Winch)*

The first First Nations stories I read were the “myths and legends” which comprised a significant component of the first works of First Nations literature to find its way into the mainstream. Not all of these, I admit, were written by First Nations people, though some were, such as those published in the 1970s and 80s by Dick Roughsey. Some others claimed (and I hope this was honest) to have shared the stories with the agreement of the relevant owners of those stories. I then jump a few decades to journals like The Griffith Review which has, from its start, included writings – fiction and nonfiction – by First Nations writers. Indeed, they write on their website that

One of the things that makes Australia truly unique is being home to the oldest continuous civilisation. What this really means is undervalued and little understood in this country. It is part of the reason Griffith Review has featured Indigenous writing in every edition.

So, we find articles, poetry and fiction by Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Ellen van Neerven, Alexis Wright, and others. One of the first First Nations short stories I reviewed on my blog was one by Melissa Lucashenko from The Griffith Review.

Selected short story collections and anthologies

  • Tony Birch, Common people (UQP, 2017) (Lisa’s review)
  • Tony Birch, Dark as last night (UQP, 2021)
  • Tony Birch, Father’s day (Hunter Publications, 2009)
  • Tony Birch, The promise (UQP, 2014)
  • John Morrissey, Firelight stories (Text Publishing, 2023)
  • Mykaela Saunders (ed), This all come back now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction (UQP, 2022)
  • Adam Thompson, Born into this (UQP, 2021) (my review)
  • Ellen van Neerven (ed.), Flock: First Nations stories then and now (UQP, 2021) (on my TBR)
  • Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (UQP, 2014) (my review)
  • Archie Weller, The window seat (UQP, 2009)
  • Tara June Winch, After the carnage (UQP, 2016)

As with the Stella listees, UQP leads the pack here too, with such a strong commitment not only to First Nations writing but to that dreaded form, the short story! And, many of these collections have been listed for (or won) some of Australia’s top literary awards. The stories cover all genres – contemporary fiction, speculative, dystopian, historical fiction, satire, ghost stories, and so on.

I would like to add here a title from Fremantle Press, though its ambit is a little wider. Published in 2022 and edited by Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail, it is Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction, and it comprises “speculative, visionary fiction from 21 emerging and established First Nations writers and Black writers” (Fremantle website). I’ve reviewed a few pieces from it, including Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Fifteen days on Mars (my review).

I didn’t plan for this to be a treatise, but a taster – or, is it, tempter? I will close on another quote that speaks to me …

We are your original storytellers. Our culture has survived through story and we are the civilisation with songlines etched in the land you inhabit. (Tara June Winch)*

* Tara June Winch, “Decolonising the shelf”, Griffith Review 66 (Nov 2019)

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

Have you read any First Nations short stories – Australian or otherwise? And if so, care to recommend any?

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian Stella listees

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NAIDOC Week 2024 National Logo

Yesterday was the start of NAIDOC Week 2024. As has been my practice since 2013, I’m devoting this week’s Monday Musings to the cause.

NAIDOC Week’s theme this year is Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. Without specifically stating it, this theme responds, I’m sure, to the devastating loss of the Voice referendum last year. As the website says, it “celebrates the unyielding spirit of our communities and invites all to stand in solidarity, amplifying the voices that have long been silenced”. They say more, but I’ll just share two other points. One is that “the fire represents the enduring strength and vitality of Indigenous cultures, passed down through generations despite the challenges faced”, and the other is that

Through our collective efforts, we can forge a future where the stories, traditions, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are cherished and celebrated, enriching the fabric of the nation with the oldest living culture in the world.

For this year’s NAIDOC Week Monday Musings, I thought I’d pick up the point about cherishing and celebrating the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This is simplistic, I know, but one way in which stories are celebrated is through awards – particularly through being short- or long-listed, or winning them. One award which has actively sought to embrace diversity in its foundational purpose is the Stella. Yes, that diversity is limited to “women and non-binary writers”. Nonetheless, the achievements have been significant in encouraging and raising the profile of many writers who may not have been seen otherwise.

So, with 17 years of the prize now in the bag and in the spirit of celebrating their achievement, I am listing all those works by First Nations writers which have featured in the Stellas over that time. This might also give them another little time in the air.

The Stella listees

  • Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear (Poetry and prose, UQP) : Winner 2022 (my review)
  • Claire G. Coleman, Terra nullius (Fiction, Hachette Australia) : Shortlisted 2018 (my review)
  • Dylan Coleman, Mazin Grace (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2013 (Lisa’s review)
  • Debra Dank, We come with this place (Nonfiction, Echo) : Shortlisted 2023 (my review)
  • Ali Cobby Eckermann, She is the earth (Poetry/Verse novel, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2024  (on my TBR, kimbofo’s review)
  • Gay’wu Group of Women, Songspirals (Nonfiction, Allen & Unwin) : Longlisted 2020 (Denise’s review)
  • Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (Fiction, Simon & Schuster) : Longlisted 2022 (my review)
  • Ngaire Jarro & Jackie Huggins, Jack of Hearts: QX11594 (Nonfiction, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2023 (kimbofo’s review)
  • Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2024 (on my TBR, Brona’s review)
  • Melissa Lucashenko, Mullumbimby (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2014 (Lisa’s review)
  • Melissa Lucashenko, Too much lip (Fiction, UQP) : Shortlisted 2019 (my review)
  • SJ Norman, Permafrost (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2022
  • Elfie Shiosaki, Homecoming (Poetry, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2022 (Lisa’s review)
  • Nardi Simpson, Song of the crocodile (Fiction, Hachette) : Longlisted 2021 (my review)
  • Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (Fiction/short stories: UQP) : Shortlisted 2015 (my review)
  • Chelsea Watego, Another day in the colony (Nonfiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2022 (on my TBR, Bill’s review)
  • Tara June Winch, The yield (Fiction, Penguin Random House) : Shortlisted 2020 (my review)
  • Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy (Fiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Shortlisted 2024 (Bill’s second post with a link to his first)
  • Alexis Wright, The swan book (Fiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Shortlisted 2014 (on my TBR, Bill’s review)
  • Alexis Wright, Tracker (Nonfiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Winner 2018  (Bill’s review)

Some comments. There are 20 listed books (if I’ve got them all) out of 204. Of these there have been two winners – Alexis Wright’s Tracker and Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear – seven shortlists, and 11 longlists. Alexis Wright and Melissa Lucashenko are the most listed authors – out of all authors – through the history of the prize to date. The listed books include novels, poetry and nonfiction.

Certain publishers appear frequently, particularly UQP which has an excellent – and long record – for supporting and publishing First Nations Writers. Eight of the listed books come from them. First Nations publisher, Magabala, has three, and Giramondo which publishes Alexis Wright also has three. Hachette has published two, with Simon & Schuster (which is behind the new First Nations imprint Bundyi I wrote about last week), Allen & Unwin, Penguin Random House and Echo, each having one. It’s healthy to see a spread, but it’s also great to see serious support being reflected here.

You will also see that almost every book has been reviewed by a litblogger. Some have been reviewed more than once, but I’ve just chosen one to share here. I hope that my posting this list will remind us all of some good books out there, and whet our appetites to check out First Nations writing.

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

Monday musings on Australian literature: Bundyi

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Next week will be NAIDOC Week – with this year’s theme being “Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud” – but I am jumping the gun a little with a post on a relevant publishing initiative that was announced earlier this year.

This initiative comes from publisher Simon & Schuster, and is that they have created a new First Nations imprint called Bundyi, which will be curated by Dr Anita Heiss, “a proud Wiradyuri woman and one of Australia’s most prolific and well-known authors”. Simon & Schuster published Heiss’s most recent novel, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (my review).

Bundyi is, the website says, a Wiradyuri word meaning “to share with me’” The aim is to “focus on cultivating First Nations talent in the industry by publishing First Nations authors, edited and designed by First Nations people”. Heiss, described as Publisher at Large, will be commissioning both fiction and non-fiction writing. She says that “the only way we will see First Nations people truly sovereign in this space, is to have us as publishers of our own stories”, and makes the point that Simon & Schuster understands “that the responsibility for change in the sector lies with the current mainstream publishers acting as mentors, and eventually moving over to allow us to learn, and to do what Australian publishing has needed for a long time: for us to have control over the way we are represented on the page, and in the national narrative”.

And they have started the way they mean to continue with the Bundyi logo being designed by a 100% Aboriginal-owned company, Iscariot media. The logo, which you can see at the link I’ve provided above, “represents the flow of the three rivers of Wiradyuri country – the Kilari, the Marrambidya and the Wambool – as well as the flow of creativity”.

What can we expect?

S&S’s page, linked above, says that the first titles in the imprint will be published this year, but doesn’t name them. However, in late May, through Canberra’s wonderful Meet The Author convenor, Colin Steele, who is also one of my major sources of literary news, I received a news item from Books+Publishing. It said that Bundyi had “acquired world rights to a new commercial novel by Larissa Behrendt”, and that the book was the result of a brainstorm between Behrendt and her good friend Anita Heiss. It is to be a First Nations take on Pride and prejudice!

Heiss said that “It didn’t take long for us to come up with the idea of Larissa, an Austen aficionado, writing a version of Pride and Prejudice through her lens, as a Euahlayai/Gamilaroi woman”. Behrendt added that “As a long-time friend and admirer of her work, I am beyond excited to be working with Anita on this project. I love Jane Austen, and the idea of translating the characters and story arcs through a First Nations lens is an idea that is close to my heart. Anita has been a trailblazer with new writing, and I am proud to be following in her footsteps.”

That Behrendt is a fan of Austen won’t be news to those who read her novel After story (my review) in which a woman takes her mother on a literary tour of England, so this will be interesting – even to someone like me who is not normally a fan of prequels, sequels and retellings. Behrendt has a seriously impressive cv. Not only is she an award-winning author, but she is a filmmaker and host of the program Speaking Out on ABC Radio, the Distinguished Professor at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law – and more. We have to wait a bit for her book, though, as it’s not due to be published until 2026.

Meanwhile, Books+Publishing named two books which will be published by Bundyi before Behrendt’s – Stan Grant’s memoir Murriyang and Tasma Walton’s historical fiction novel, I am Nan’nert’garrook. These align with the imprint’s focus as listed on its homepage:

  • Non-fiction: memoir, autobiography, biography, essays
  • Commercial fiction: romance / chick lit, historical fiction, contemporary fiction.

This new imprint is exciting news for all of us interested in First Nations Australian writing. It may not, it seems, be focusing on the edgier end of town, but there is room for all, particularly if we want more Australians to read First Nations writing. If you are interested, I suggest you keep an eye on Bundyi’s homepage for further news. I plan to.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 5, Lillian Pyke

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The subjects for my Monday Musings sub-series on forgotten Australian writers vary in the degree to which they’ve been forgotten, but those still remembered are only so in niche areas. Today’s subject Lillian Pyke is one of these, in that although no longer well-known, her reputation as a children’s writer has survived somewhat.

Pyke, like my two most recent Forgotten Writers, Marion Simons and Kate Helen Weston, was the subject of one of my posts on the Australian Women Writers (AWW) blog this year. As with these two, I am not including here the piece written by Pyke that I published at AWW. It is a sweet romance titled “Mary’s mother”, which means it’s not in the genre for which she is best known, but it offers an insight into the times while showing how, in some ways, times haven’t changed all that much … check it out at AWW.

Lillian Pyke

Lillian Pyke (1881-1927) was an Australian children’s writer, who also wrote adult novels under the pseudonym of Erica Maxwell. However, the adult short story I published at AWW was published under her real name, Lillian Pyke.

Pyke was born Lillian Maxwell Heath, the tenth child to her English-born parents, on 25 August 1881 at Port Fairy, in Victoria. She went to school in Melbourne, and then worked as a teacher and journalist there until she married Richard Dimond Pyke on 7 April 1906. According to her obituary in The Queenslander, Richard’s brother was W. T. Pyke, manager of Melbourne’s famous Cole’s Book Arcade. The couple moved to Gympie, Queensland, where he worked as an accountant for a railway construction company. (And where I lived for a brief time during my childhood.) They had three children, before he died by suicide in 1914. Pyke then returned to Melbourne where she took up writing again to support her family. In other words, like my previous subject in this series, Kate Helen Weston, she was widowed with young children and also seems to have managed to eke some sort of living from writing.

Pyke appears both in Wikipedia and the Australian dictionary of biography, and Trove searches also produced a few articles about her, so she clearly made some mark on her times. Kingston, in the ADB, says that between 1916 and 1927 she wrote sixteen books that were classified as children’s books, though today they’d probably be classified as Young Adult. She also wrote three novels for adults, as Erica Maxwell. One of these, A wife by proxy (1926), apparently contained Esperanto themes. It was translated into Esperanto, and published in 1930 as Anstataria Edzino. She also wrote A guide to Australian etiquette, edited short story collections, and adapted an Ethel Turner story.

Kingston writes that “most of her stories for both children and adults came out of her experience of Queensland railway construction camps or her involvement in education, and had an improving intention”. A Heath family tree webpage quotes the Oxford Companion to Australian Children’s Stories as saying of her school stories that her “educational ideas… are notably enlightened and ahead of her time”, and that her “novels about railway construction camps in Queensland are realistic insights into the life of construction workers and their families.” It’s worth noting, too, that in the list of her works on this page are three “Cole’s” books.

From Abe Books – Lillian M Pyke

Contemporary reviewers and columnists were generally positive about her books. The Queenslander wrote (17 November 1923) that her “stories of public school life in Australia are becoming famous” and suggests that perhaps her “best work is in her descriptive novels with a railway construction camp for a back-ground; but there is no doubt her stories of school life in Australia are almost unrivalled”. The same paper, writing a year later (15 November 1924) says her latest novel Brothers of the fleet is set in “those far-off and almost forgotten days of Australia’s beginning” and is her first attempt at an historical novel. They hope that it’s “the beginning of another rich vein of her imagination”.

Pyke died of renal failure at Brighton, Victoria, on 31 August, 1927. Her obituary in Brisbane’s The Telegraph (8 September) provides a biography, and concludes that they understand that one of her latest books, Three bachelor girls, was being filmed. However, I can find no evidence that that eventuated. Launceston’s Examiner (22 October) offers a more effusive obituary, explaining that having been widowed young, she

gallantly took up the pen as a means of livelihood and it was not long before her name was bracketed with those of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce as the most popular authoress of minor fiction in this part of the world.

Big praise. The Examiner also makes an interesting political point. Having just commented on her having had to work to support her children, it suggests it’s “ironical”

that her death should have occurred just before the first Australian Authors’ Week, which may be the beginnings of better things for those who try to live by the pen out here. In a popularity plebiscite held in connection with this “week” Mrs. Pyke polled remarkably well.

It concludes:

Mrs. Pyke’s work has a rare charm, which is all the more to be appreciated when it is realised that most of her writing was done under great difficulties. She was young always in her outlook, and by no means old in years, and her death at a time when she still had years for development before her is a regrettable loss to Australian literature. She has left a name of which her children can be proud.

Sources

  • Beverley Kingston, ‘Pyke, Lillian Maxwell (1881–1927)‘, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2005, accessed online 22 April 2024.
  • Lillian Pyke, in Wikipedia, accessed 22 April 2024
  • Other sources are linked in the article

Monday musings on Australian literature: Book industry awards

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How to title today’s post was my first challenge – and I hope the title I settled on covers it well enough. What I am wanting to cover here are those awards that don’t go to books (or manuscripts) or writers, but to those in the industry – people and organisations – that support writers and their books. The ABIAs, or, Australian Book Industry Awards, have been doing this for some years.

ABIAs

Established in 2006, these awards are, says Wikipedia, ‘publishers’ and literary awards held by the Australian Publishers Association annually in Sydney “to celebrate the achievements of authors and publishers in bringing Australian books to readers”‘. I have only written on them once before, and that was to highlight some of the winners in the 2019 awards that interested me. However, these awards also recognise others working in the industry. The categories change over the years, but since 2017 there have been awards for (listed with the winners in the years they were made):

  • Book Retailer of the Year: Readings (2020); Readings (2021); Harry Hartog Bookseller, Burnside Village, Adelaide (2022); Big W (2023)
  • Bookshop of the Year: Books Kinokuniya (2020); Avid Reader, Brisbane (2021); Avenue Bookstore, Albert Park, Melbourne (2022); Matilda Bookshop (2023); Fullers Bookshop, Hobart, Tasmania (2024)
  • Commissioning editor of the Year: Jane Palfreyman (Allen & Unwin) (2023); Catherine Milne (HarperCollins Publishers) (2024)
  • Independent Book Retailer of the Year: Readings Potts Point Bookshop (2017); Readings (2018); Mary Martin Bookshops (2019)
  • Marketing Strategy of the Year: Bloomsbury for Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus (2023); Affirm Press for Pip Williams’ The Bookbinder of Jericho (2024)
  • National Book Retailer of the Year: Booktopia (2017); Dymocks (2018); Booktopia (2019)
  • Publisher of the Year: Pan Macmillan Australia) (2017); HarperCollins (2018); Pan Macmillan Australia (2019); Allen and Unwin (2020); Penguin Random House Australia (2021); Penguin Random House Australia (2022); Allen and Unwin (2023); Penguin Random House Australia (2024)
  • Rising Star Award: Shalini Kunahlan, marketing manager at Text Publishing (2018); Ella Chapman, head of marketing communications at Hachette Australia (2019); Hazel Lam, senior book designer at HarperCollins (2020); Pooja Desai, head of design at Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing (2021); Emily Hart, Commissioning Editor, Hardie Grant Books (2022)
  • Small Publisher of the Year: NewSouth (2017); Thames & Hudson Australia (2018); Affirm Press, with Honourable Mention to Magabala Books (2019); Magabala Books (2020); UQP (or University of Queensland Press) (2021); UQP (or University of Queensland Press) (2022); UQP (or University of Queensland Press) (2023); Magabala Books (2024)

As you can see, the categories move around a bit, but there are awards for publishing companies, booksellers, and book industry professionals. I like seeing designers, commissioning editors and marketers being recognised in what is an awards-rich field.

ABDAs

The Australian Book Design Awards aim to “showcase the best of the best in book design in this country”. They are open to books designed and first published in Australia, in the year preceding the awards. They are offered in multiple categories. In 2024, some 19 categories are in the mix, including Best Designed Commercial Fiction Cover, Best Designed Literary Fiction/Poetry Cover, Best Designed Non-fiction Cover, and so on. There are awards for covers only and for overall book design. I have written about them once, in the past, for the 2017 Shortlist.

Sarah Krasnostein, The trauma cleaner

Their Awards Archive site takes a bit of navigation, and doesn’t always present the information in the most ideal way, but you can find some gorgeous covers there, including Sandy Cull’s award winning cover (2017) for Heather Rose’s The museum of modern love. Another award winner – cover and overall design (2018) – was W.H. Chong’s work on Sarah Krasnostein’s The trauma cleaner. Back in 2018, I attended and wrote up a Canberra Writers’ Festival event involving W.H. Chong.

Specialist Awards

There are also awards run by specialist or special interest publishers, like the Educational Publishing Awards Australia (or EPAAs). These were co-founded in 1993 by the APA (Australian Publishers Association) and the late Professor Mike Horsley, and are organised by the APA which also manages the ABIAs. Most of the award categories are for specific books/educational titles, but they also include Primary and Secondary Publisher of the Year, which, in 2023, were won by SevenSteps (Primary) and Cambridge University Press (Secondary). Publisher Jacaranda has been a regular winner of these awards.

Are you aware of these awards, or of similar awards in your location or area of interest? I’d love to hear about them.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Untangling the tangles

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Introducing last week’s Monday Musings, I mentioned that the article I was sharing in that post contained a clue to a curly identification I was working on for my upcoming Australian Women Writers blog post. I said that I might share that puzzle this week, and that is what I am doing.

I will get to that soon, but as I also explained last week, that very article that I shared came with its own identification puzzle. That article was signed W.M., and best I cold find was W.M. Kyle, M.A. (or, William Marquis Kyle). He was a loose fit, because while he was a contemporaneous Queenslander, and did write newspaper articles, his interests seemed more philosophy than literature. Fortunately, some of my regular commenters took up the challenge. (How great is this!)

Melanie (Grab the Lapels) posited William Montgomerie Fleming but, while his dates fit, he seems unlikely in terms of his location and focus. I’m glad, though, to add him to my knowledge bank. Meg, however, came up with Winifred Moore, whom she found in Women Journalists in Australian History in a discussion about “the confinement of women journalists to the women’s pages”. Meg wrote that this article said that “under the direction of Winifred Moore from the 1920s, the Brisbane Courier’s ‘Home Circle’ section included a political column of sorts, profiling public personalities in Australia and abroad, alongside the usual recipes and serialised novels.” (You can read more about Moore at the Australian Women’s Register.)

So, of course, I researched Winifred Moore a little more (pun unintended). She wrote the “Home Circle” pages under the pseudonym of “Verity”. But, I also found references to a paper she had given on women writers in 1927 (three years after the article I posted on last week) . So, thanks to Meg, I think there is a good chance that she may be our W.M. I plan to share more on her later. Meanwhile, the original puzzle …

The mysterious J.M. Stevens

I had chosen a story by J.M. Stevens to be my May post for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge, but, as we find all too frequently, identifying our writers can prove tricky. So it was for J.M. Stevens.

A major source for Australian writers is the (fire-walled) AustLit database and I was delighted to find that J.M. Stevens did have an entry there. It gave me some of her background, including her parentage, and identified an apparently better-known sister as Maymie Ada Hamlyn-Harris, who was a writer and convenor of the Lyceum Club literary circle. It also said that Stevens married John Frederick Stevens around 1917 which means, of course, that her last name stayed the same.

Book cover for The mad painter

Austlit gives her dates as 1887 to 30 May 1944, and uses J.M. Stevens as their name heading for her. They add that she also wrote under other names: Joan Marguerite Stevens, Janie M. Stevens, Joan M. Stevens. The University of Melbourne’s Colonial Australian Popular Fiction digital archive agrees with Austlit’s dates, but uses Janie M. Stevens as their name heading. They list one book for her, The mad painter and other bush sketches, by J.M. Stevens.

All well and good. It seemed pretty straightforward, but I like to find more if I can and this is where things came a bit unstuck because on 31 May 1944, Brisbane’s The Telegraph reported on the death of Mrs Joan M. Stevens. It says:

Mrs Joan M. Stevens, whose death look place yesterday afternoon at her home, Bylaugh, Glenny Street, Toowong, had been an invalid for many years. She was the fifth daughter of the late Mr E. J. Stevens MLC and the late Mrs Stevens, and had lived practically the whole of her life in Brisbane and Southport. Mrs Stevens was gifted musically, showed considerable talent as a painter and like several members of her family possessed distinct literary gifts, two of her books having been accepted for publication in the south. The late Mrs Stevens, who was the wife of Mr John F. Stevens, is survived by her husband, one daughter, three sons, and one granddaughter. Mrs Stevens was the third sister in the same family to die within six months; Miss Alys Stevens died in November last in Melbourne, and her eldest sister, Miss J. M. Stevens, died in Brisbane a few weeks ago.

So, this seems like “our” J.M. Stevens – same death date, and married to Mr John F. Stevens. But, they also mention a sister, “Miss J.M. Stevens”. Oh oh! Who is this? Three months later, on 17 August, this same newspaper announced the posthumous publication of a novel This game of murder, and says it

was written by the late Joan M. Stevens (Mrs J. F. Stevens), whose death took place a short time ago. The late Mrs Stevens, who was the fifth daughter of the late Mr E. J. Stevens, MLC, a former managing director of the “Courier,” belonged to a literary family. Her sisters included the late Miss J. M. Stevens, the writer of short stories and nature studies, whose death occurred earlier in the year. Another sister is Mrs M. Hamlyn-Harris, who has published several books of verse.

Now, AustLit had said that J.M. Stevens (remember, aka Joan M. Stevens and Janie M. Stevens) was a freelance journalist, with articles and short stories appearing in the leading magazines and weeklies in Australia and New Zealand in the earlier part of her life. In her later years, it says, she wrote a long series of nature studies for the Sunday Mail.

I was starting to feel confused. We have a Mrs. J.M. Stevens and a Miss J.M. Stevens. We have a Joan M. Stevens and a Janie M. Stevens. And it seems that despite AustLit’s entry, they are not the same person, but sisters who both wrote. We know that Joan wrote This game of murder, but who wrote The mad painter and other bush sketches? The cover says J.M. Stevens. It sounds like a nature-related work – the sort of writing that Miss J.M. Stevens did. Certainly Brisbane’s The Week writing about this book on 7 January 1927 describes its author as “Miss Stevens … nature lover and also something [of] a humorist”.

Then I found it! The Brisbane Courier, in an article on Queensland writers on 15 October 1927 identifies Janie Stevens as The mad painter’s author. So, clearly we have two sisters here with the initials J.M. One (Miss Janie) wrote The mad painter, and the other (Mrs Joan) wrote This game of murder. The life dates (at least, the death date) given by AustLit for J.M. Stevens and the Colonial Australian Popular Fiction archive for Janie Stevens, are for Joan. I have shared all this with the AustLit researchers who are always happy to receive feedback. Their challenge now, besides confirming my deduction, will be to identify who wrote which of the newspaper articles ascribed to J.M. Stevens!

I really should be doing more reading …

Monday musings on Australian literature: Queensland’s women writers, 1920s

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Yesterday, as I was trying to untangle a curly identification for my next Australian Women Writers blog post, I came across an interesting article in The Brisbane Courier. Published on 15 October 1927, and penned by one W.M., the 1300-word article is titled “Queensland Women Writers: Poets and Novelists“. Of course, it caught my attention, and not only because buried within was an important clue for my puzzle (about which I might write next Monday).

Although I’ve written several Trove-inspired posts about Australian literature in the 1920s and 30s, this one caught my attention for two reasons – it is focused on just one state (Queensland) and is limited to women writers. I don’t know whether W.M. wrote separately about Queensland’s men writers, because it’s hard to search on by-lines like “W.M.” I did try to identify him. He may be William Marquis Kyle, whom I came across via an announcement for a lecture to be given by “Mr. W.M. Kyle, M.A.” He was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland in 1938. The best record I found for him included that “he gave public lectures, wrote and reviewed newspaper articles and was well known as a broadcaster”.  So, on this slim basis, I am going to refer to “W.M.” as he/him.

Queensland women writers

W.M. commences by talking about poetry, arguing that

When we contemplate the work of Australian writers, we can hardly fail to be impressed with the large proportion who have chosen poetry rather than prose as their medium. May it not be that a young nation, like a young writer, turns to poetry as more fitting than prose to express wonder and joy in a country which inspires emotions and sensations most appropriately uttered in lyrical form?

He goes on to say that whether his reasoning is true or not, “there is a larger amount of creditable verse than prose in the imaginative literature of Australia” and this is “apparent in any survey of the women writers of Queensland and their work”. But, he says, two novelists do occupy the first and last positions in his chronological list of Queensland women writers: Mrs Campbell Praed and Mrs Dorothy Cottrell. Both have appeared on my blog before.

W.M.’s article starts with brief paragraphs on the older writers. They are (links go to their Wikipedia pages):

For these six writers, W.M. identifies a work or two, and adds some assessment or description. I’m not sure why he allows Sumner Locke her own name, given she married Henry Logan Elliott. Perhaps it’s that most if not all her works were published before she married, and she died the following year. Anyhow, he praises her, saying “her style was forcible and direct, as shown in her novels”.

He has positive words for all these writers. Of Rosa Praed, he says:

Her style was simple and illustrative, and she had the faculty of making her characters “live.” Her descriptions of the social life of early Brisbane, centring in Government House, show that in many respects the social life of the present time still resembles that of 30 years ago.

Mary Hannay Foott’s “poetic style was simple, but distinguished by considerable lyrical power”, and he praises her versatility. Mabel Forrest’s early promise, evident in a story published when she was 10, “has been fulfilled by an exceptionally large output of poetry, short stories, descriptive articles, and novels”. And, while her novels “contain many descriptive passages of outstanding charm and sincerity, upon her verse rests her claim to rank among the foremost writers of Australia to-day.” Her novel The wild moth was adapted to screen by Charles Chauvel in The moth of Moonbi.

Emily Coungeau had, he says, “a mind attuned to the beauty of Nature and the best in human hearts” which enabled her “to produce verse of much charm and sensibility”. Emily Bulcock’s poetry, on the other hand, was characterised by a “strong spiritual note”.

The rest of the writers, listed under the heading “Other writers”, are given one sentence or less, with the exception of the first in the list, Zora Cross. Her reputation has lasted more than most of the above. The reason for the short shrift given to her seems to be that she made her home in Sydney, so, not really a Queensland writer it seems! Few of the others are remembered today, except perhaps for the last on his list, the aforementioned Mrs Dorothy Cottrell. She, he writes, “is hailed by American publishers as a writer of exceptional power”. Her novel The singing gold was first serialised in The ladies home journal. The cover here is the 1956 edition (obvious from the fashion!) which suggests she remained popular for some time. A later story of hers became Ken Hall’s 1936 film, Orphan of the wilderness.

However, I will comment on one other. Wikipedia and the ADB have an entry for Nelle Tritton (1899-1946) whom Wikipedia writes as Lydia “Nellé” Tritton, and ADB as Lydia Ellen (Nell) Tritton. She had an interesting life. She was born in Brisbane in 1899, but in her mid-20s, she went to London and toured Europe, gained “a reputation for knowledge of international affairs”, and married a former officer of Russia’s White Army. The marriage ended in 1936, and in 1939, she married the exiled Russian prime minister Alexander Kerensky in Pennsylvania. ADB writes of their time in America that “their life, when they were together, was idyllic, with numerous visitors and games of croquet”. W.M. tells us none of this – much of which happened after 1927 – but it’s interesting that he’s included her, given she was barely in Australia. All he says of her is that “while still in her teens” she wrote a booklet of “Poems”. Curious – but fascinating. 

W.M. concludes that, from his brief survey, “it is evident that the work of Queensland writers has reached a standard which justifies and claims adequate attention from the reading public”, and he quotes literary critic Bertram Stevens, who had died in 1922 but had apparently said:

Australia has now come of age, and is becoming conscious of its strength and its possibilities. Its writers to-day are, as a rule, self-reliant and hopeful. They have faith in their own country; they write of it as they see it, and of their work and their joys and fears in simple direct language.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Trove treasures (12), A rare humorous novel

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I was unsure about whether to make this post part of my Trove Treasures or Forgotten Writers series, but Wikipedia tells me that in 2006, the historian John Hirst, writing in The Monthly, included this author’s book, The colonial Australians, in a brief list of the best Australian history books of all-time. That probably means he’s not quite forgotten, wouldn’t you think? So, a “Trove Treasure” it is. The author is David Forrest, which is the name used by historian David Denholm for his fiction.

David Denholm was born in Maryborough, Queensland, in 1924 – the place where I, also, was born but, more significantly, it was the birthplace of P.L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins. Denholm died in Wagga Wagga, just 3-hours drive from where I live now, in 1997. He has an entry in Wikipedia and in AustLit. From these I gleaned that he served in the Australian army, in New Guinea, during World War 2 and worked in the banking industry until 1964. (I can’t resist adding here that Pamela Travers’ father was a banker, as was my own.) He was a mature age student when he went to university, first to the University of Queensland and then the Australian National University, where he gained a Ph.D in history. He ended his career as an academic in history at the Riverina College of Advanced Education.

He wrote two novels. His debut novel, published in 1959, was The last blue sea. It is set in New Guinea during World War 2. It focuses, in particular, on the difficulty the Australians faced in fighting in the heat and rain of New Guinea. Wikipedia shares that it has been called “the classic short novel of the New Guinea campaign.” It apparently won the first Mary Gilmore Prize. I wrote last year about his winning this award, but it wasn’t clear in my research that he was the first winner. Now I know.

However, the book which inspired this post, was …

His humorous novel

The Trove Treasure I found was in Sydney’s Tribune on 12 September 1962 and was written by someone signing as R.W. S/he started with:

Humorous novels are not particularly common in Australian literature, or for that matter in any other. This is all the more reason why we should be grateful for such a deliciously humorous work as David Forrest’s new novel, “The Hollow Woodheap”. Not since Lower’s famous “Here’s Luck” has the Australian reader’s sense of humour been so titillated.

It seems that Forrest took to heart the advice to “write what you know”, because his first novel was set during World War 2 in New Guinea, where he had served, and this novel, says R.W., “deals with life in the branch office of a bank in Brisbane” which is where he was working at the time. Critiquing the book, R.W. says that the “the plot is rather flimsy” with the humour deriving “mainly from the personalities and behaviour of the characters in their office environment”. Forrest “reveals a sense of the ridiculous and a capacity for irony, of which there is not the slightest trace in his war novel”. My question is, does the humour have a point? R.W. continues,

The new novel is not a work of profound social criticism, but in his lightly humorous way, the author makes many a sharp jibe at the snobbery and red tape of banking institutions, and at the soulless careerism which corrupts those who cannot resist the lure of money, power and status.

I found little else about the book, but I did find a review-rebuff in a Letter to the Editor in The Canberra Times (14 August 1962). Unfortunately, I could not find the actual review, but Maria Reah did not agree with some criticisms the reviewer had made. I’ll just share one paragraph from her letter:

It is true that most of the characters—the bank manager (The Keg), the bank inspector (The Drummer), the savings bank officer (St. Joseph the Bloody Worker), and the three models of managerial material (Mark One, Mark Two and Mark Three)—are caricatures, but Forrest is not the first creative artist to use caricature to good purpose. If these characters were developed more fully they would lose their value as symbols. For The Hollow Woodheap is more than an attempt to poke fun at “the establishment,” though it does this very successfully. It presents a novelist’s impression of Australian society. The sociology is impeccable, but unobtrusive. The young man who wrote the book is not angry enough to lose sight of either the patterning of social life or the lighter aspects of this patterning. His humour is never plodding, as it appears to your reviewer.

Finally, I’ll return to R.W. He hopes that Forrest will write more humorous novels. As it turns out, while he lived another thirty or so years, Forrest wrote no more novels, humorous or otherwise. Wikipedia , however, does say that he wrote a notable and humorous short story, “The Barambah mob” (1963), which has been often anthologised.

I could say more about Denholm/Forrest, but my point for this post is simply this little “treasure”. I agree with R.W. that good humorous novels are hard to find, but they add so much to our literary environment.

Do you have a favourite humorous novel, and would you share it with us?