I’ve written a few posts in recent months about Australian literary culture in the 1930s – on moving beyond “gumleaf and goanna”, on setting vs character, and two (here and here) on where Australian literature was heading. This week, I’m returning to the topic to share a random selection of comments made about Australian fiction in the newspapers around the middle of the decade, a time when life was still pretty tough due to the Great Depression.

Writing from real life

C.H. Wales (whoever s/he is) was inspired by the death of John McCarthy, who inspired ‘Irish Mac’ in Mrs. Aeneas Gunn’s 1907 novel, We of the Never-Never, to write about the frequent use made by Australian authors of people from real life in their novels. Writing in Adelaide’s Chronicle in June 1934, Wales comments that “the ways of life in the outback are accepted as a commonplace by people in the Commonwealth, but are learned of with amazement by people overseas” and suggests that it is therefore “no wonder, then, that our authors weave the romance of this life into their novels”. A life, he says, that includes cattle stations as big as Surrey and more, that involves using a flying medical service, and in which children who are five years old have “never seen a shower of rain”.

Wales names some contemporary writers continuing this tradition – William Hatfield’s Sheepmates (1931), which is dedicated to “the real life characters in the book”; Myrtle White’s evocatively titled No roads go by (1932); and, more famously, Ion Idriess’ Lasseter’s last ride (1931), which “adds another illuminating but tragic page to the annals of Australian exploration, which in years to come will supply a useful link with literature dealing with the history of the foundation and development of our Commonwealth and Empire”.

Interestingly, the two male writers here have Wikipedia articles, but not Myrtle White. However, like them, she does have an ADB entry (linked on her name), which includes this:

When her three children were older and she had some leisure, White began writing. At Wonnaminta, despite endless interruptions, she worked meticulously on her drafts which she typed with one finger. The result was No roads go by (Sydney, 1932), an account of life at Lake Elder, rather in the tradition of Mrs Gunn’s We of the Never–Never. With humour and resilience, White described the remote station surrounded by sand ‘insidiously creeping up the six-foot iron fence, which was our frail barrier against all that moving country’. Drought, flood and near death were presented in intense but restrained prose.

Stories about the past

Historical fiction, it seems, was as popular then as it is now. My random reading of “new fiction” columns revealed a goodly number of novels about Australia’s past, including:

•  John K. Ewers’ Fire on the wind (1935) is, says the reviewer in Melbourne’s Leader, “a story of Gippsland nearly forty years ago, culminating in the disastrous bush fires of February, 1898”. Ewers, says the reviewer, was a school teacher in Perth who “has not lived in Gippsland, but he has derived his local color from relatives who spent part of their lives there, and lived through the terrible experiences of Black Thursday […] although the author is not a Gippslander he knows the bush and the settlers, and on that account the background of his story has the note of realism”.
• Alice Meagher’s The moving finger (1934) was published to coincide with Victoria’s centenary. The South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus reviewer writes that “while not a history, the story gives an interesting outline the early days. There is a brief mention of the Eureka stockade, and a realistic description of the heart-breaking work in the mallee country. The graphic story of a bushfire helps to make one realise what the pioneers of this country had to go through.” The West Australian reviewer (below) says that it shows “the growth of the State in a comparatively brief period of time”.
• Brian Penton’s Landtakers (1934) is described as being among “other readable novels published in Australia”! Damned with faint praise? This West Australian reviewer describes it as “the usual type of tale that deals with Penal Settlement days, whereof Marcus Clarke’s For the term of his natural life is the great and abiding examplar”. Penton, who has a Wikipedia page like Ewers above, was an Australian journalist and novelist. Landtakers, his first novel, apparently sold well.

It’s interesting to see the specific mention of Ewers’ lack of personal experience about Gippsland and how he overcame that. I also liked the inference that fiction can tell us about who we are.

Other stories

Trove revealed many other books of different genres and styles, so I’ll share just a few, the first group coming from the West Australian (linked above):

• F.E. Baume’s Burnt sugar (1934), described as “a powerfully-written romance of North Queensland, and of Italian settlers, slightly at variance over their racial divergencies”. Baume was a journalist, author, and radio and television broadcaster, well-known to some boomers!
• Winifred Birkett’s Three goats on a bender (1934), described as “a highly farcical story, which has, however, its amusing moments”. I’ve mentioned Birkett here before, as she won the ALS Gold Medal in 1935 for another novel, Earth’s quality.
• J. J. Mulligan’s A gentleman never tells (1934), described as “the surprising adventures of the versatile Lord Gerrard Fitzgerald in London, Paris, on the Riviera, in Egypt and elsewhere”. The reviewer calls it “a modern picturesque story” and “remarkably entertaining”. S/he also says that it’s “none the worse for getting away from the conventional and often tedious setting of the ordinary Australian novel”. But, Mulligan doesn’t appear in Wikipedia or the ADB.
• Robert Waldron’s The flying doctor (1934), described as “the first romance — so far as we are aware — in which the leading motive is that admirable movement for supplying medical aid to persons in isolated districts of Australia by means of flying machines”. As with Mulligan, I can’t find him in Wikipedia or the ADB.

From the above-linked Leader article comes the comment that “there are few Australian novels ‘with a purpose’ in these distressful days” but that Ambrose Pratt “has attempted one in his new book, Lift up your eyes.” (1935). The reviewer wonders, however, whether the book

will add to his reputation as a writer or really further the causes of the ideal life and social and moral reconstruction which, it is to be presumed, are part of its justification. It is a Melbourne story, and some of its pleasantest passages describe hill-scenery and touch on life in and around the Victorian metropolis. But the strain upon the credulity of the reader is excessive and there appears to be an almost complete disregard of the “unities.”

S/he finds it hard to reconcile “the idealism and the religious intensity of feeling attributed to the leading male character” with his “Machiavellian conduct of a gigantic gamble in wheat”, but suggests the book “will excite curiosity and discussion”. Pratt was a prolific novelist who appears in both Wikipedia and the ADB. ADB says that in 1933 he founded “a League of Youth dedicated to the ‘protection and preservation of the flora and fauna of Australia’ and ‘the development of ideals of citizenship in the minds of young Australians'” and that the latter aspiration was reflected in Lift up your eyes.

Those versed in the period will know that I’ve not included some of the better known writers. This is partly because some have been mentioned in previous posts, but more because they didn’t pop up in my random search of this mid-30s period. One did, however, appear – Christina Stead’s The Salzburg tales. However, I have decided to hold it over for a future post as she’s worth a special focus.

Notwithstanding the above, the most notable observation to make, of course, is how few of these books and authors we know now. That may not be a bad thing, given the reviewers’ comments, but I love that Trove enables us to obtain a picture of what was being written and read at the time, and what the commentators thought. It all contributes to our knowledge of Australia’s culture and literary history.

As I wrote last week, I apologise to those of you not interested in the history of Australian literature, because yes again I am continuing my little survey of contemporary writing about Australian literature in the 1930s. This week I plan to look at some another discussion about the place of and interest in Australian literature.

So, today’s post looks at an article which asked Why is the average Australian reader, if given the choice, more likely to pick an overseas (English or American book) than an Australian one?

Australian fiction in America

In 1935, Pegasus (whoever that is) wrote an article (probably syndicated) in the Central Queensland Herald inspired by Australian readers’ apparent preference for books written overseas*, and in which s/he discusses, conversely, the growth of interest in Australian literature in America! S/he says that the Christian Science Monitor reports that “the American reading public is beginning to ‘wake up’ to the fact that worthwhile fiction is being produced in Australia”.  Tell McKinnon et al, that, eh? Pegasus, in fact, says that

Australian fiction has been noticed in America is something to be put to the credit side of the ledger, when Australian authors and critics deplore the quality of Australian fiction produced to date.

Indeed, Pegasus says that the Christian Science Monitor writer talks about the enthusiasm of the American reviewers “which is more than I can remember occurring in this country”. The book, they are particularly enthusiastic about is Henry Handel Richarson’s The fortunes of Richard Mahony. Pegasus notes that “there are many in Australia who would agree with the American critic who described this novel as ‘the most important single piece of literature ever to come out of Australia,’ [but] it has never become popular in Australia, either amongst critics or readers”!

Pegasus then shares some of the other books that were being appreciated in America. Rolfe Boldrewood’s Robbery under arms and Marcus Clarke’s For the term of his natural life are also loved here, he says, but EL Grant Watson’s Desert horizon, “has been forgotten here, if it ever received any particular attention”. Katherine Susannah Prichard’s Working bullocks was being deservedly appreciated, but, says Pegasus,

the unfortunate Coonardoo, well-written though it is, is probably better appreciated than it deserves by an American critic who can regard it as “a portrayal of the relations between the white race and the white black on a typical cattle station in north-eastern Australia.

Other books appreciated in America include G.B. Lancaster’s Pageant, M. Barnard Eldershaw’s A house is built, and Frank Dalby Davison’s Red heifer (Man shy), which “has already been accepted in America, probably to a greater extent than in Australia”. Man shy and A house is built are both well known to me, and would be regarded as classics I think, but G.B. Lancaster, whom most of us haven’t read, is mentioned once again in my blog. This is the name used by Edith Lyttleton (1873-1945). Born south of Launceston, she moved with her family to New Zealand when she was six years old, and stayed there until she moved to England in 1909. She returned to Tasmania in the 1930s, but ended up moving back to England. She wrote, among other things, thirteen novels and some 250 short stories, which, says AustLit, were “mostly narratives of romance and adventure set in the remote back country of New Zealand, Australia and Canada”. It’s probably not surprising, given she lived very little of her adult life in Australia, that she’s not particularly well-known here now. However, Pageant did win the ALS Gold Medal.

What all this says to me is that when it comes to the creative arts, there is always something for commentators to be concerned about – and then talk about – which is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, any publicity is good publicity, n’est-ce pas?

Any comments?

* Things seemed to have started to change by 1937, according to Angus and Robertson’s Mr W.G. Cousins.

Apologies to those of you not interested in the history of Australian literature, because this week and next I’m continuing my little survey of contemporary writing about Australian literature in the 1930s. My first post discussed the move from “gumleaf and goanna” to other topics, and last week’s focused on discussions about the importance of writing about character. This week and next, I plan to look at some bigger picture discussions about the place of Australian literature.

These posts are, however, based on a somewhat serendipitous search of Trove. There could very well be articles – there probably are – which say some different things. I can only share what I have been able to find in the time I have available. Just as well I’m not producing an academic work, eh?

And here might be a good place to point you to an article by Susan Lever in Inside Story concerning the current parlous state of teaching and research about Australian literature in Australian universities. It’s particularly depressing, now that we have Trove with its rich content, that there is not the support for research into our written heritage and culture – which, of course, feeds into discussions about who we are and where we are going.

Australian literature’s place in the Dominions

“Why is it that Australian creative literature, fiction, and poetry has not reached the same high standard as that of South Africa and Canada?” and “What is the place of the Australian novel in the fiction of the British Dominions?” These questions were posed in reports of a lecture given in June 1934 by Firmin McKinnon to the English Association of the University of Queensland. Thomas Firmin McKinnon (1878-1953) was, coincidentally, born in the Yass area not far from were I live. He was a journalist, and, says Desmond Macaulay in the ADB, was nicknamed at Brisbane’s Courier, “the Encyclopaedia”! He and his wife were active in Brisbane’s cultural life, and by the mid 1910s and 1920s, he was “recognized as a tireless literary lecturer and mentor of many young writers”. Among his many roles, he was President of the Queensland Bush Book Club. Macaulay also says that “his Anglocentric conservatism, however, allowed little sympathy for certain literary trends”, so we should keep this in mind when thinking about his views of Australian literature.

The two reports are both in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, one a brief report on a Tuesday and the other clearly a more feature article report on a Saturday. Neither have by-lines as far as I can see, so I’ll just call them Tuesday and Saturday. Tuesday’s is titled “Australian fiction: Where is it lacking” and Saturday’s is “Australian fiction: It’s place in literature”.

Prichard, 1927/8 (Courtesy: State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons)

Tuesday says that McKinnon particularly focused on the fiction of South Africa (represented by Sarah Gertrude Millin, Pauline-Smith, and Norman Giles), Canada (by Martha Ostenso, Corinthia Cannon, and Maza de la Roche), and Australia (by Katharine Susannah Prichard, Brent of Bin Bin, Flora Eldershaw, Marjorie Barnard, Helen Simpson, G. B. Lancaster, and John Dalley). Tuesday shares some of McKinnon’s arguments for the comparative failure of Australian fiction versus that of South Africa and Canada, saying that McKinnon’s conclusion is that “the contrast of nationality, and conflict of international ideas … were deficient in Australia. Even the contrasts provided by the migration era of the gold digging days had disappeared, and Australia was now the most homogeneous race on earth.” By contrast, South Africa had “a continuous conflict of colour and clash of nationalities” and while there was less conflict in Canada, it did have “a contrast of nationalities”. Hmm … sounds a bit simplistic to me. Prichard and Barnard-Eldershaw, for a start, found signifiant issues to tackle within our so-called homogenous culture. As did Christina Stead in Seven poor men of Sydney, but that, her first novel, was only published in the year of this lecture.

Tuesday reported that during the post-lecture comments, one person said “that many books of Australian fiction showed a good deal of slovenliness and lacked any marked spiritual impulse and characterisation”.

Saturday, as you would expect, provided more detail, including about the authors chosen to represent the three countries. Saturday reports that McKinnon admitted that “we have in Australia, in its history, and in its great cities excellent material and splendid background” but were not producing literature equal to Canada and South Africa. Saturday writes, presumably reporting McKinnon, that:

Unquestionably the impatience of the age has something to do with the decline of great creative literature all over the world. Beauty in literary form cannot flourish to perfection in an age that is wildly excitable, in an age that relishes some snippet about Bradman or Larwood, much more than it would a gem of English.

Have things changed much? Saturday goes on to report (or say) that

Australia has produced some very creditable fiction, but almost every creditable novelist who is writing of Australia has been abroad. Now is there any reason why our purely Australian novelist is not doing better work? There must be. Here in Australia we have a magnificent background for novels, and there is abundance of material. Some of the greatest novelists in the English language, from Jane Austen and Scott to Dickens and Walpole, have found their inspiration in happenings far less outstanding than those that could be found in the development of Australia, and in characters that may be found in any Australian city. But everything lies in the treatment of the subject, and our novelists fall short in the treatment of the story. Now what is the reason?

Llike Tuesday, he reports on the various ideas put forward and rejected by McKinnon, one being the effect of Democracy, itself, which he argued “which tends to the mediocre in everything”. Saturday quotes McKinnon as saying

Art and literature need to be fostered by leisure, good taste, moderate wealth, and cultivated discernment, and these do not flourish best in a democracy. Demos is a poor patron of art and literature.

Sounds a bit elitist don’t you think?

However, McKinnon, fortunately, realised the error of this argument, given Canada and South Africa were also democracies. And so, as Tuesday did before him, Saturday shares McKinnon’s argument that it’s “the lack of contrast and conflict in Australian life” that doesn’t support “literary creativeness”.

The answer? McKinnon says that what Australia needed was the “steady flow of migration” to provide “the clashes”, the opportunity to make comparisons “that are particularly valuable to the creative artist”. I’m not sure I fully agree with McKinnon’s argument regarding literature – I don’t see much evidence of clash of cultures driving Jane Austen’s novels, for example – but I do agree that cultural diversity is a good thing.

Anyhow, it appears that McKinnon gave a version of this talk later in the year, on 17 October, to the Authors’ and Artists’ Association. He again compared Australian writers with Canadian and South African ones, and he again argued that Australian novelists, with some exceptions, lack perspective and imagination, that they’re narrow and insular. Perhaps because this time he was talking to the creators themselves, he was, it appears, a little more positive. He “spoke of the vast and artistic improvement In Australian fiction within the past three years” albeit “all of it [was] written by travelled authors”. He again recommended migration to Australia, but added that “the development of aviation” and “even the Centenary gatherings in Melbourne” would be valuable in “helping to provide that standard of measurement that novelists needed”.

Now, I don’t know the South African and Canadian writers named, so I can’t comment on their relative merits. I’d love to hear from anyone who does know them. Regardless, though, I believe that Australians were producing some very interesting work in the 1930s, alongside the usual more popular fare?

Any comments?

Today’s post continues the discussion started in last Monday’s “gumleaf and goanna” post. It looks particularly at what reviewers were saying about setting/scene and character, through five Australian books that were reviewed in papers during the decade. There was clearly a lot of engagement in the community about the development of Australian literature, and you can expect more posts on the decade!

This post was inspired, though I’m not going to labour the point, by Eric Norton, who wrote in The Courier Mail in 1934. He comments on the over-focus in Australian literature on “some half dozen ‘peculiar’ environments — the farm, the selection, the station, the mining camp, and a few others, which, if not familiar to us in actuality, have become so through the magazines or by repute”. The stories relying on these, he says, “develop inevitably a certain sameness”. For him, “the imperishable in fiction is that which deals primarily with the shallows or the deeps of the human heart” and he concludes with:

In the creation of fiction, as in life, it is character, not setting, that counts; and it is to the Australian rather than to Australia that the local novelist must look for his inspiration.

Brent of Bin Bin: We now know this pseudonym was Miles Franklin, but it was a pretty well-kept secret at the time. Certainly, the reviewer in Melbourne’s The Age had no idea. S/he reviews Ten creeks run (1930) (see Bill’s review), which was the second Brent of Bin Bin novel. The reviewer has mixed feelings, saying that “the same defects and the same merits” are apparent in it, but then says that “the effect of repetition is to bring out the merits more emphatically and to place the defects in the background”. This reviewer discusses both setting and character:

The canvas is crowded with minor characters, and the author has not sufficient skill to make these minor characters stand out individually; but the mass effect is good as a background to this story of station life on the Murrumbidgee more than a generation ago. Station life has never been more faithfully depicted in Australian fiction, or with so little conscious effort. Most of the more important characters are true to life, and though the story does not reveal much imaginative force on the part of the author in creating dramatic situations, he [ha!] has skill enough to keep the reader’s interest alive.

Birkett, 1939, Unknown, National Library of Australia, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons.

Winifred Birkett, who won the prestigious ALS Gold Medal, for her 1934 novel, Earth’s quality. The reviewer in Melbourne’s Leader, says this book represents a “great advance on her previous book, Three goats on a bender”.  S/he goes on to say that Earth’s quality,

like so many other Australian novels, has a sheep station for its setting, but unlike most of its class it is not a description of station life, but a study in characterisation. And most of the characters are portrayed with the skill of a practised hand.

S/he then describes some of the main and minor characters, noting that one of the minor characters, Anthony, a Cockney man-of-all-work, “stands out with the vividness of reality”. Fascinatingly, however, “Miss Birkett is not very successful in portraying woman characters”. The story is “somewhat bare of incident, but the literary quality of her book lifts it much above the level of most Australian novels”.

John K Ewers: A Western Australian novelist, poet and schoolteacher who was President of the WA branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. His second novel, Fire on the wind (1935), was reviewed in Melbourne’s Leader.  It’s a story about disastrous bushfires in Gippsland in the late nineteenth century. The reviewer notes that Ewers hadn’t lived in Gippsland, but did have “relatives who spent part of their lives there, and lived through the terrible experiences of Black Thursday.” S/he then outlines the plot – a farm saga – including describing the characters, and concludes that “Although the author is not a Gippslander he knows the bush and the settlers, and on that account the background of his story has the note of realism. His best portrait is that of the aged Colliver, who, despite his narrowmindedness and his bigotry, is an engaging old man”. (ADB)

William Hatfield (pen-name of English-born writer Ernest Chapman): This author I hadn’t heard of. He was best known for his novel Sheepmates (1931), but the review I’m focusing on is for his 1933 novel, Desert saga. It buys right into our modern discussions about who can write what story, because it is, says the The Age’s reviewer, “about a tribe of aborigines in Central Australia, who, when the story opens, had never even seen a white man.” Our reviewer says the author provides “an interesting account of tribal customs and ceremonies, but the primitive conditions of life of an aboriginal tribe do not provide the variety in scene, incident and character, which are the main essentials of a good novel”. Of course, there would have been be good character to explore here, but Hatfield wouldn’t have been the man to do it. Hatfield is on firmer ground when he introduces white men, and explores their relationship with Indigenous people. The reviewer concludes that it’s obvious that Hatfield “has studied the Australian aborigines, and that in presenting their customs, habits and mentality, in the form of a story, he has adhered to truth”. Hmm … how does the reviewer know – and yet, it’s interesting to see that Indigenous people appeared in fiction more often, perhaps, than we might have thought. (ADB)

Kay Glasson Taylor (who, Bill identified last week, used the pseudonym of Daniel Hamline, and was second place-getter in the 1929 Bulletin Prize): The reviewer of her novel, Pick and the duffers (1930), commences by noting that the Australian story “must stand on its own merit, and not by implication or suggestion strive to emulate something of quite different atmosphere.” S/he was commenting on the claim on the jacket of “Pick …” that “Pick is an Australian re-incarnation of the immortal Tom Sawyer.” Our reviewer finds such comparisons dangerous. S/he writes that like several recent Australian stories, “the setting of Pick and the duffers is Queensland, and it deals with some lively incidents connected with cattle duffing on “Coomera” and adjoining stations … It is quite a good yarn, with plenty of action and incident”. It also, interestingly, has an Aboriginal character, Gordon, who is a friend of 11-year-old protagonist Pick. But, for our reviewer, it’s a “a good story for boys, but to adults, Pick becomes tedious with his posturing and posing and precocities”. Not much character development here!

I have more, but will save them for another post another time. I’m enjoying exploring the period, particularly seeing the reviewing style, and what reviewers looked for in and thought about Australian literature.

Any comments?