Monday musings on Australian literature: 1925 in fiction

/ Whispering Gums / 31 Comments

Once again it’s Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” week. This week, it is 1925, and it runs from today, 20 to 26 October. As for the last 8 clubs, I am devoting my Monday Musings to the week.

The 1920s were wild years, at least in the Western World. The First World War was over, and neither the Depression nor Second World War were on the horizon. It was a time of excess for many, of the flappers, of

A brief 1925 literary recap

Books were, naturally, published across all forms, but my focus is Australian fiction, so here is a selection of novels published in 1925:

  • Martin Boyd (as Martin Mills): Love gods
  • Dale Collins, The haven: A chronicle
  • Erle Cox, Out of the silence
  • Zora Cross, The lute-girl of Rainyvale : A story of love, mystery, and adventure in North Queensland
  • Carlton Dawe, Love: the conqueror
  • Carlton Dawe, The way of a maid
  • C.J. de Garis, The victories of failure
  • W. M. Fleming, Where eagles build
  • Nat Gould, Riding to orders
  • Jack McLaren, Spear-eye
  • Henry Handel Richardson, The way home (the second book in the The Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy)
  • M. L. Skinner, Black swans: Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno
  • E. V. Timms, The hills of hate
  • Ethel Turner, The ungardeners
  • E. L. Grant Watson,  Daimon
  • Arthur Wright, The boy from Bullarah

EV Timms had a long career. Indeed, he also appeared in my 1952 Year Club list. Zora Cross has reappeared in recent decades due to renewed interest in Australia woman writers. Both Bill and I have written about M.L. (Mollie) Skinner, a Western Australian writer who came to the attention of D.H. Lawrence. And then of course there are those writers – Martin Boyd, Henry Handel Richardson and Ethel Turner – who have never “disappeared” from discussions about Australia’s literary heritage.

While my focus here is fiction, it’s worth noting that many of Australia’s still recognised poets published this year, including Mary Gilmore, Henry Lawson, Dorothea Mackellar, Furnley Maurice and John Shaw Neilson.

The only well-recognised novelist I could find who was born this year was Thea Astley.

The state of the art

As for previous club years, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian fiction. Because 1925 is a century ago, I had already started researching the year for the little Monday Musings Century ago subseries I started in 2022. So far, I have written just one post on 1925. It focused on two literary societies which were active at the time, the Australian Literature Society and Australian Institute of the Arts and Literature, so I won’t repeat that here.

I found a few interesting tidbits to share, including, in a couple of newspapers, a brief report of a talk given to Melbourne’s Legacy Club by local bookseller, C. H. Peters, manager for Robertson and Mullens. He reported that the English publisher, John Murray the Fourth, said

that the Australian consumption of fiction was enormous, compared with the English market, and that, making allowances for differences in population, the Australian read five novels to every one read by the Englishman. 

Some of the other items of interest I found were …

On a cult classic?

One of the surprising – to me – finds during my Trove search was the book Out of the silence by Erle Cox. It was, says The Argus (9 October) and the Sydney Morning Herald (28 November), first published in serial form around 1919, but there were many requests for it to be available in book form, which happened in 1925. The story concerns the discovery of a gigantic, buried sphere, which contains the accumulated knowledge of an ancient civilisation. The Argus’ reviewer says that the sphere’s aim “was to exemplify the perfection attained in a long past era and to assist the human race of the time of discovery towards similar perfection”, with the finder being helped in this goal by the “dazzling Earani”, a survivor of that civilisation.

The reviews at the time were positive. The Argus says that “the story is carried on with much ability”, while The Age (17 October) describes it as “brilliantly conceived and charmingly written … original and weird, maybe a little far-fetched”. Edward A. Vidler writes for the Sydney Morning Herald that “Mr. Cox is to be congratulated on a story of rare interest, which holds the attention from beginning to end”.

It has been republished more than once since 1925, including in other countries. For example, in 1976, it was republished in a series called “Classics of Science Fiction” in 1976, by Hyperion Press, and in 2014 an ePub version was published “with an Historical Afterword by Ron Miller”, who featured it in his “The Conquest of Space Book Series.” The promo for this edition describes it as “the classic lost race novel” in which a pair of amateur archaeologists “inadvertantly revive Earani, the survivor of an ancient race of superbeings”. But this is not all. It was also adapted for radio, and turned into a comic strip. You can read all this on Erle Cox’s Wikipedia page.

On reviewing

I enjoy seeing how reviewers of a different time went about their business. Some reviews in this era – the 1920s – tell the whole story of the novel, and do little else. Others, though, try to grapple with the book, finding positives as well as negatives, and sometimes discussing the reason for their criticisms.

Reviews for Dale Collins’s island adventure The haven are a good example. It seems that Collins had decided to have the main character – the male protagonist – tell his story. The reviewer in The Age (31 October) didn’t feel it worked, writing that Collins

repeats the experiment of blending psychology and sensation which he caried out so successfully in ‘Ordeal.’ It is a very clever and original story, but the reader who wants sensation will find there is too much psychology in it; and the reader who is interested in psychological studies will discover that the author has handicapped himself by making the central figure tell the story. As a result the psychology becomes monotonous …

The Argus (6 November) on the other hand was positive about the technique of Mark telling his own story:

Mr Collins has skilfully worked out the effect of the situation on each one of his characters, but especially on that of Mark, who reveals himself through a diary of their life on the island … The author has set himself a very difficult task in the carrying out of which he has been remarkably successful.

The reviewer in The Age (25 July) – the same one? – was disappointed in Zora Cross’s The lute-girl of Rainyvale, seemingly because of its supernatural subject matter concerning Chinese vases and curses, after the quality of her previous novel Daughters of the Seven Mile, but ended on:

The story has some vivid descriptive writing, which serves to emphasise that Zora Cross’s real gifts are wasted on fiction of this character.

Mollie Skinner’s Black swans was reviewed twice in the same column in The Age (12 September) with slightly different assessments. The first writes that it is “a very readable story founded on historical events in the convict days of Western Australia” and goes on to say that she had collaborated with D. H. Lawrence on The boy in the bush but that “her unaided work is preferable”. The review concludes that Skinner had “drawn her picture strongly and produced a good novel”.

Later in the same column, the reviewer (presumably a different one?) references Skinner’s work with Lawrence and then says of this new book that the story begins in Western Australia’s Crown colony days of 1849. Skinner “sends her childish heroine and hero on adventures amongst blacks and Malays, in company with an escaped convict” then “takes them to England for the social and love interest”. The reviewer concludes that

Miss Skinner writes well, with a special anxiety to set down striking phrases and epigrams. To quote a common, phrase, she is more interesting than convincing. 

Hmm … there’s a sense between the lines here that the story doesn’t hang together, but that Skinner, like Cross, has some writing skills.

As for Henry Handel Richardson, although her novel came out in mid-1925, I found only a couple of brief references to it. Martin Mills (Martin Boyd), on the other hand, fared better with some quite detailed discussions, including in the West Australian (4 July). The reviewer explored it within the context of being part of a rising interest in the “religious novel” and ended with:

Love Gods, with its old story of the unending conflict between the Pagan deities and the restraining influences of Christianity, is a novel of unusual insight, and most uncommon power of literary expression.

There’s more but I’ve probably tired us all out by now! I will post again on this year.

Sources

(Besides those linked in the post)

  • 1925 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia)
  • Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992

Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1937, 1940, 1952, 1954, 1962 and 1970.

Do you plan to take part in the 1925 Club – and if so how?

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Sister Josepha (#Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 9 Comments

It’s a year since I’ve posted on a Library of America (LOA) story, but I was driven to post on this one for two reasons. I have just posted a review of “The scapegoat” by Dunbar-Nelson’s first husband, Paul Dunbar, and, earlier this year, I reviewed “A carnival jangle”, written by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, before marriage when she was Alice Ruth Moore.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

In my post on “A carnival jangle”, I provided a brief biography of Dunbar-Nelson, so I won’t repeat that here, except to remind us that she was a poet, journalist and political activist, born to a black mother and white father. She was prominent in the Harlem Renaissance, and lived in New Orleans for 21 years, as well as Boston, New York, and elsewhere.

In that bio, I also wrote that racism was an important issue for her, but that she also took a wider view of human rights. It is this point that I would like to explore further in this post, due to some ideas raised in LOA’s introduction to her story. They focus quite a bit on her relationship with Paul Laurence Dunbar, noting that the two communicated with each other by letter for a couple of years before meeting. Dunbar asked for her opinion on using “Negro dialect in Literature”, which he sometimes did. LOA shares her response, which was that she saw no problem with using dialect if you knew it and had “a special aptitude for dialect work” but that she saw no necessity to do so just because “one is a Negro or a Southerner”, and if, like her, you were “absolutely devoid of the ability to manage dialect“. This makes good sense, but the main thing I want to share is what she says next:

Now as to getting away from one’s race—well I haven’t much liking for these writers that wedge the Negro problem and social equality and long dissertations on the Negro in general into their stories. It’s too much like a quinine pill in jelly—I hope I’m not treading on your corns. Somehow, when I start a story, I always think of my folks (characters) as simple human beings, not as types of a race or an idea—and I seem to be on more friendly terms with them.

After detailing more of Dunbar-Nelson’s biography, LOA returns to the issue of subject matter, saying that “the ambiguity of racial identity for the Creole characters” in her stories resulted in several critics in recent decades arguing that

she “camouflaged the issue of race,” that she “spurned that racialized element of her identity,” or that she “shaped her tales of Creole life for white audiences.” In “Sister Josepha,” which we reprint below as our Story of the Week selection, the reader realizes that the lead character is not white only through descriptive hints (“brown hands,” “tropical beauty”) and by what the other nuns do not say about her.

However, continues LOA, another commentator, Caroline Gebhard had noted in a recent article that Dunbar-Nelson

“presumes that readers already read her work as ‘black.’” In the 1890s and early 1900s, most of Dunbar-Nelson’s stories, essays, and poems appeared in Black newspapers and magazines; The Monthly Review, for example, advertised itself as “the only illustrated periodical published by Negroes in this country.” … “Dunbar-Nelson knew she would be read as a Black author and never tried to pass in print,” Gebhard concludes. “To read Dunbar-Nelson’s fictions as addressing only white readers, which the accusation of passing implies, is to dismiss the fact that Dunbar-Nelson’s first and most loyal readers were African Americans.”

This point reminded me of the discussion my American friend Carolyn and I had about “The scapegoat” concerning the fact that it is almost completely set in the black community. White people are not identified, except for the Judge, so we have to work out, between the lines, who else might be white in that story. I think Paul Dunbar assumed we’d know – just as Alice Dunbar-Nelson did, according to Gebhard. It’s a lesson in how difficult it is to read out of one’s own time and culture.

It also reminded me of something more contemporary, a post I wrote in 2021. The focus was memoir, but the point was that ‘diverse writers’ are expected to write narrowly about their diversity, and their frustration that they are not encouraged to write, as Dunbar-Nelson explained, about “simple human beings, not as types of a race or an idea”.

“Sister Josepha”

“Sister Josepha” appeared in Dunbar’s 1899 short story collection, The goodness of St Rocque and other stories, and can be read at the link below. It tells the story of a young three-year-old orphan named, Camille, who was left at a convent orphan asylum. The story opens 15 years later when this orphan has just finished her novitiate and is a fully-fledged sister, but she’s unsettled.

Dunbar tells us that when she was 15, and still Camille, she had “almost fully ripened into a glorious tropical beauty of the type that matures early” and had attracted the attention of a couple who offered to take her in. Her Mother Superior calls her in and makes the offer:

Camille stole a glance at her would-be guardians, and de­cided instantly, impulsively, fi­nally. The ­ woman suited her; but the man! It was doubtless intuition of the quick, vivacious sort which belonged to her blood that served her. Untutored in worldly knowledge, she could not divine the meaning of the pronounced leers and admiration of her physical charms which gleamed in the man’s face, but she knew it made her feel creepy, and stoutly refused to go.

To justify her decision to Mother Superior, who did not force her to go, she announces that she loves the convent and sisters, and would like to be one too. However, three years later, the life is palling for this lively young woman. She’s tired, and bored, and plans her escape, but this is a story about the few opportunities available to a young woman in her situation. Should she live the confining but secure life of a nun, or could she make it out in the world where she has no identity, no name other than Camille, and “a beauty that not even an ungainly bonnet and shaven head could hide”.

What lifts this story out of the large body of often cliched stories about young nuns like Camille/Sister Josepha is the situation and Dunbar’s expressive writing that subtly conveys the reality of our sister’s position. Race is never mentioned but there are hints regarding Camille’s background. This is a different story to “A carnival jangle” but no less powerful.

Alice Dunbar Nelson
“Sister Josepha” (1899)
First published: in The goodness of St Rocque and other stories
Available online: Library of America

Monday musings on Australian literature: Quiet achievers 2, Barry Scott of Transit Lounge

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

Back in August, I wrote the first post in my Monday Musings sub-series on Quiet Achievers in Australia’s literary landscapes, meaning people like publishers, for example. My first post was on Terri-ann White from Upswell Publishing.

Of course, most of these people aren’t really Quiet Achievers. Those in the industry will know them, often well. However, for the general reading public, people in the industry are not necessarily well-known, hence this new little sub-series.

Barry Scott (Transit Lounge)

I have read and reviewed many books published by Transit Lounge over the years because they publish the sorts of books and authors I like. According to Wikipedia, Transit Lounge was founded in Melbourne in 2005 – 20 twenty years ago – by two librarians Barry Scott and Tess Rice. It is an independent Australian literary small press, which publishes literary fiction, narrative and trade non-fiction. Its focus is to “show the diversity of Australian culture”. Their website says they are

dedicated to the publication of exciting new fiction and non-fiction.  Our tastes are broad and encompass literary fiction and upmarket genre writing such as  psychological thrillers.  We have a particular interest in creative literary publishing that explores the relationships between East and West and entertains and promotes insights into diverse cultures.

As far as I can tell, Scott works full-time on the press, while artist and photographer Rice works part-time. In 2018, Scott was interviewed by Books+Publishing, and said their books:

go in search of the outsider, the marginalised, the immigrant, the different or the disappearing. We are always searching for what seems beautiful, unique, true, and isn’t afraid to push beyond the current zeitgeist in terms of themes or genre tweaking.

AS Patric, Black rock white city

And, they have been successful in doing so. AS Patrić won the Miles Franklin Award in 2016 for his immigrant story, Black rock white city (my review), and Jane Rawson’s “genre-tweaking” From the wreck (Bill’s review), won the 2017 Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel, with its blend of historical and science fiction. Many other Transit Lounge books have been listed or won significant awards, including, recently, Lisa Kenway winning the Ned Kelly Award for Debut Crime Fiction with All you took from me (my post).  We often wonder about the impact of awards on sales, so I was interested to see a comment by Scott, in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) after Patrić’s win, that the company overall “will be more visible” and that he had “already noticed more people following the company on Twitter and wanting to see its books”.

In 2023, Scott was interviewed by ABR (the Australian Book Review), and here we hear his motivation for getting into publishing:

I was involved with administering the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards in 2003 when the Unpublished Manuscript Prize was conceived. … I became acutely aware that there were many talented writers unable to achieve publication. Transit Lounge always has been and always will be about giving some of those new writers a voice, as well as publishing more established authors.

A bit like Terri-ann White! That said, Transit Lounge’s focus in terms of what they publish has changed a little over the years. In the above-mentioned SMH article, Scott said that he initially ‘wanted to publish Australian authors writing about other cultures and people writing from overseas about here. “We have moved away from that a bit; we were a bit more travel based than we are now”.’

Once in the publishing game, it seems that Barry Scott was fully invested, that is, he became involved in the industry. He was a director of the Board of the now-unfortunately-defunct Small Press Network. In 2009, he visited the US for several weeks, under a Copyright Agency Limited grant to find out about small independent publishers there, including the state of the industry. You can read his report at Overland.

Meanwhile, I’ll return to the ABR interview. Over the years, it has run several interviews with publishers, and I will refer to those – if or when I focus on those people. It’s illuminating to see their different reactions to the questions. For example, when asked about the significance of book reviews, Scott replied:

They are gold, even when negative. As Oscar Wilde said, ‘There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’

Not all publishers responded so positively to this question, although most recognised that reviews mean something to authors. I recently listened to the interview with Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist on the Secrets from the Green Room podcast, and Simsion, a “data person” who has researched bookselling at some length, said that the main impact on sales comes from “word of mouth”. He didn’t talk about how you get that word-of-mouth started, but surely reviews, as Scott implies, are a contributing factor? I wonder whether the current fragmentation of book “reviewing” across traditional media, websites, blogs and social media, is, in fact, resulting in increased “word of mouth” exposure?

I have a few Transit Lounge books on my TBR, as I write, including Carmel Bird’s latest novel – a foray into historical fiction with Crimson velvet heart, set in Versailles at the end of the 17th century.

I’ll conclude, however, with a comment made by another author. In the blog, In Their Own Write, Mandy Sayer says

Barry Scott at Transit Lounge is a truly collaborative publisher, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with him.

This was August 2025, just before the publication of her memoir, No dancing in the lift. It seems that the fire is still burning in Scott.

Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize 2025: Winners announced

/ Whispering Gums / 6 Comments

In August I wrote a progress report on Finlay Lloyd’s 20/40 Publishing Prize, a prize in which I have special interest because I love novella-length writing and the publisher behind this prize, Finlay Lloyd.

So just a quick recap on the prize: 20/40 is a manuscript award, with the prize being publication. It is not limited to debut or young or women or any other subgroup of writers, as some manuscript awards are. However, it does have its own criteria, which is implied in its name. It is for prose writing that is between 20,000 and 40,000 words. Outside these criteria – prose and length – the submissions can be from “all genres … including hybrid forms”. The aim is to choose two winners, preferably one fiction and one non-fiction, as they did last year.

And now, the Shortlist and Winners

The shortlist, announced on Finlay Lloyd’s website, was:

  • Angus Gaunt, Anna: a novel which “steps with deep insight into the dire circumstances of a girl who has little more than her own inner resources to deal with sustained privation and the threat of violence”.
  • Kim Kelly, Touched: “a memoir that uses self-deprecation and humour to turn her own experience of intense panic attacks into a lively and profound reflection on the prevalent role of anxiety in so many of our lives.”
  • Monica Raszewski, Mystic Vera and Lottie the shadow puppet: another novel, this one “centred on eccentric, flighty, Vera who dances with happy abandon around her sister, Lottie’s flailing attempts to control her excesses.
  • Paul Toohey, Bad face: an historical novel “set on the late 19th Century US frontier, where totemic violence between settlers, cattle ranchers and rustlers, and native Americans is played out with vital gothic intensity”.

And the winners are Angus Gaunt’s Anna and Kim Kelly’s Touched. You can read more about them on the Winner Announcement page. The judges were last year’s winners – Sonya Voumard, Penelope Cottier and Nick – plus Finlay Lloyd author John Clancy and the publisher Julian Davies.

The judges liked Gaunt’s novel because “the extreme circumstances of this story are written with a quiet yet incisive humanity”. Gaunt as born and educated in England, coming to Australia in 1987. He now lives in Dharug/Guringai country on the northern edge of Sydney. He has been published and nominated for awards in Australia, England and Ireland.

They liked Kelly’s memoir because of its “breadth of understanding—of the author’s own crazily complex family, of the wider issue of anxiety across society, and of her own voyage as a highly competent yet vulnerable being in a worryingly unhinged world”. Kelly was one of the two inaugural winners of this prize with her historical fiction novella, The Ladies Rest and Writing Room (my review). She lives and works on Wiradjuri and Eora lands in central west NSW and Sydney. Kelly has written historical fiction, short stories and essays, and is completing a PhD in Literature at Macquarie University. She is also a book editor (as Kim Swivel).

I was able to attend the launch of the 2023 and 2024 winners, as they were held in Canberra. This year, however, because both authors have Sydney bases, the launch will be held there next week when I’m in Melbourne, so I will not be able to report on the winners’ conversation, unfortunately. However, I do have the books and plan to read both for this year’s Novellas in November. And, there is an excellent interview with the authors available RIGHT NOW on the above-linked Winner Announcement page!

I am thrilled that this prize has now passed its third year, and hope it continues for many years more. If you like the sound of these books, and would like to support them (and the prize), you can order the books at Finlay Lloyd (though great bookstores will carry them too.) The recommended retail price is AUD26, but you can buy them from FL at AUD23.40 each (plus postage).

Congratulations to Finlay Lloyd and this year’s winners.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, The scapegoat (#Review)

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s short story “The scapegoat” is the fourth in the anthology Great short stories by African-American writers, which my American friend Carolyn sent me. Compared with the previous author, Gertrude H. Dorsey Browne, Dunbar is much better known.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Dunbar c. 1890, from The African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The biographical note at the end of the anthology provides good background, and Wikipedia has a detailed article on him. Dunbar (1872-1906) was, says Wikipedia, “an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries”, and “became the first African-American poet to earn national distinction and acceptance”. In fact, it is through his poetry, which is frequently anthologised, that I recognised him when he popped up in the book. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been slaves. Indeed, his father had escaped slavery before the Civil War ended, and fought with the Union Army.

Dunbar, says Wikipedia, wrote his first poem when he was six, and gave his first public recital at nine. Both sources say he was the only African-American in his high school. He was apparently well-accepted, being elected president of the school’s literary society, as well as being the editor of the school newspaper and a debate club member.

Wikipedia provides much detail about his work and publishing history, his health issues (particularly with tuberculosis which killed him), and his failed marriage to Alice Ruth Moore, whose story, “A carnival jangle” (my review), opened this anthology. He was a prolific writer, and was famous for his use of dialect, although he also wrote in standard English. Recognised in his own time, his influence and legacy continues. Maya Angelou titled her book I know why the caged bird sings, from a line in his poem “Sympathy“. But I will conclude with an assessment from his friend, the writer James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), who wrote in his 1922 anthology, The book of American Negro poetry:

He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form.

We see some of this in the short story chosen for this anthology.

“The scapegoat”

“The scapegoat” is the opening story in Dunbar’s 1904-published collection The heart of Happy Hollow. My anthology describes it as “Dunbar’s story of an ambitious and intelligent young man who sees no reason to sell himself short or accept defeat”. This is accurate, but only half the story.

It is told in two parts, the first before the protagonist Mr Robinson Asbury goes to prison, and the second after his release. The opening paragraph, after referencing the saying that the law is “a stern mistress”, chronicles young Asbury’s fast rise from a bootblack, through porter and messenger in a barber shop, to owning his own shop. The second and third paragraphs describe the story’s setting, the “Negro quarter” of “the growing town of Cadgers”. Here Asbury sets up his barber shop, and attracts customers with his ‘significant sign, “Equal Rights Barber Shop”‘, which our third person narrator says

was quite unnecessary because there was only one race about to patronise the place but it was a delicate sop to the peoples vanity and it served its purpose.

Whatever the reason, he was successful, and his shop became “a sort of club”, where the men of the community gathered to socialise and discuss the news. As a result Asbury soon comes to the notice of “party managers” who, seeing his potential to win them black votes, give him money, power and patronage. This Asbury accepts, and his power and status in the community grows. He then decides he’d like to join the bar, which, with the help of the white Judge Davis, he does.

And so the story continues. With success, he does not “leave the quarter” to “move uptown” as expected, though Judge Davis is prescient:

“Asbury,” he said, “you are–you are–well, you ought to be white, that’s all. When we find a black man like you we send him to State’ prison. If you were white, you’d go to the Senate.”

By now, Asbury’s success is arousing jealousy among his peers, particularly at a local coloured law firm. Two, Bingo and Latchett (great names eh?), are alarmed by Asbury’s fast rise to the top, but his putting out his shingle is “the last straw”. They plan to pull him down, and engage the services of another to lead an opposing faction in the community. However, with the continued help of the “party managers”, Asbury holds the day.

Now politics is messy, and allegiances switch. Along the way Bingo comes over to Asbury’s side. There’s an election, and Asbury’s side wins, but our narrator says:

the first cry of the defeated party was, as usual, “Fraud! Fraud!”

Was there fraud? Certainly there’s intimation of skulduggery, but without evidence it’s decided a “scapegoat” must be found – a big man – and so Asbury is deserted by the party “Machine”, and by his peers including Bingo, and charged. After the jury finds him guilty, Asbury seeks leave to make his statement, which Judge Davis allows:

He gave the ins and outs of some of the misdemeanours of which he stood accused showed who were the men behind the throne. And still, pale and transfixed Judge Davis waited for his own sentence.

It doesn’t come, because Asbury recognises Davis as “my friend”, but he exposes “every other man who had been concerned in his downfall”. He is sent to prison, for the shortest sentence the Judge can give, and is away for ten months, just long enough for him not to have been forgotten and, in fact, to be recognised as “the greatest and smartest man in Cadgers”. (This rehabilitation of Asbury in the eyes of the community while he is absent is just one of the many astute insights Dunbar makes about the way humans think and behave.) Part Two details Asbury’s revenge, but you can read it for yourself at the link below.

“The scapegoat” is a well-written, well-structured story set primarily within the black community, though the “party managers” who want the “black vote” are clearly white. Its main theme concerns political ambition and corruption, and racial oppression. It shows Asbury’s peers working to bring him down, putting their own ambition ahead of the good of the community, and overlays this with oppression by the string-pulling “Machine” uptown. I particularly liked the measured, neutral tone Dunbar employs which, together with his frequent insights into political behaviour and human nature, enables this story to read almost like a fable, a morality tale that says something in particular about this community, about the unfortunate behaviour of people who should support each other, but also something universal about politics and oppression.

It’s unemotional, clever, true – and, unfortunately, still relevant.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
“The scapegoat” (first published in The heart of Happy Hollow, 1904)
in Christine Rudisel and Bob Blaisdell (ed.), Great short stories by African-American writers
Garden City: Dover Publications, 2015
pp. 45-56
ISBN: 9780486471396
Available online (you can find the whole collection at this site)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Australian writers and AI

/ Whispering Gums / 26 Comments

Today I saw an Instagram post promoting the latest interview on Irma Gold and Karen Viggers’ podcast, Secrets From the Green Room. The interview was with Emily Maguire, and the promo shared this:

Other people of my age who’ve been working at something for as long as I’ve been working at writing – they have a better lifestyle than me. They’re able to live in a way that I can’t, even though I feel successful. (Emily Maguire)

Emily Maguire, An isolated incident

Emily Maguire should indeed feel successful. She has written seven novels, and three works of nonfiction. In 2013 she was named one of The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelists. Her fifth novel, An isolated incident (my review) was shortlisted for several significant literary awards including the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her latest novel, Rapture, won the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction and was listed for other awards.

And yet, she doesn’t have the same lifestyle as her peers. This brings me to the issue which is currently causing concern among writers internationally, including those in Australia. I’m talking of course about the AI industry’s use of copyrighted material to “train AI models”. This issue has been bubbling along for some time now and I’m not going to track it all here. The Conversation published an article in September summarising the current state of play in Australia, including these points:

  • The Productivity Commission’s interim report (published in August) “proposed a text and data mining exception to the Australian Copyright Act, which would allow AI training on copyrighted Australian work”.
  • The Minister for the Arts, Tony Burke, said in that same month that the government had “no plans, no intention, no appetite to be weakening” our copyright laws. 
  • Both the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) and the Australian Publishers Association oppose the the Productivity Commission’s proposal. The publishing industry is not entirely opposed to AI, but recognises significant legal and ethical challenges. The Australian Publishers Association wants government policies on AI to prioritise “a clear ethical framework, transparency, appropriate incentives and protections for creators”. They want a balanced policy which enables both AI development and cultural industries to flourish.

The concerns make sense to me. I am a librarian by profession, which means that freedom of information is one of my founding principles. It also means that I love the Internet and all that it offers us in terms of being able to find (discover) the things we want to know. However, this doesn’t mean that I believe these things should come at a cost to others.

So, what do librarians think about this? In February this year, the National Library of Australia published its Artificial Intelligence Framework. It recognises that “AI technologies present opportunities for developing new ways to collect, understand and share the collection” (p. 3) but also that:

Responsible AI governance includes recognition of legal rights holders and their valid commercial interests. Where legal frameworks for AI are evolving or unclear, any development will proceed with caution and consent from relevant stakeholders and copyright owners will be sought. This includes engaging with external stakeholders such as the NED Steering Group, publishers and independent publishing communities. We will not on-sell or share in-copyright data under any circumstances. As discussed below, we recognise the rights of Indigenous peoples to control their own cultural and intellectual property.

And, under their principles, they include that “We will always respect Australian copyright law and protect valid commercial interests”.

Meanwhile, Australian authors and musicians spoke last week at a Senate committee hearing on the Productivity Commission proposal to introduce the exception to the Copyright Act to allow AI training. Anna Funder, Thomas Keneally and other authors spoke powerfully on the importance of copyright to sustaining writers’ careers. I loved that Keneally invoked Frank Moorhouse, the author who was significant in the development of Copyright law in Australia, but he also made his own points:

It’s not copy-charity. It’s not copy-privilege. It’s not copy-indulgence. It’s copyright.

Anna Funder concluded her comments with:

If Australia would like books to delight itself, to know itself, to be itself, and not a source of raw materials for American or Australian computer companies, we will need books. But without copyright, no one will write them.’

(I saw these on Instagram, but you can read a summary on the ASA’s page.)

AMPAL, the Australia Music Publishers Association Limited, posted on Instagram that:

If AI needs our songs to learn … then our songwriters deserve to earn.

Life is tough for creatives, and yet what they create for us is, as one person told me many years ago, what makes life worth living! (Besides our family and friends of course.) So, I stand with Australian creatives in their fight to retain the right to say who can use their material, and how, and to be recompensed for that.

Six degrees of separation, FROM I want everything TO …

/ Whispering Gums / 41 Comments

We are now in spring, not my favourite season of the year, but it’s also Daylight Savings Weekend here in Australia, which is a favourite time for me. I love longer evenings and mornings being not so quickly light! I’m not sure why I frequently start these posts with the weather, but perhaps it’s because we six-degrees participants are from all parts of the world and it sets the scene for where I’m from! I’ll leave that thought there, now, and just get onto the meme. If you don’t know how the #SixDegrees meme works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, it’s a recent Australian debut novel, Dominic Amerena’s I want everything. I have clearly been out of touch because I didn’t know this author or book, but my research found that it was inspired by Australia’s rich tradition of literary hoaxes.

So that is where I am going, and I wonder whether others – particularly Australians – will too. The book I’m linking to is Stephen Orr’s Sincerely, Ethel Malley (my review). It is about what is probably Australia’s most famous literary hoax, the Ern Malley affair, when two poets who disliked modernist poetry wrote and submitted such poetry to a literary magazine under the name, Ern Malley.

David Mitchell, The thousand autumns of Jacob de Poet

Now, I don’t want to stick to hoaxes, so I’m going on title for my next link, that is, on a book titled with the main character’s full name, David Mitchell’s The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet (my review). This book felt appropriate too, because it is set in Japan where I have just been. It is set during that time in history when most of Japan was closed off from the rest of the world. However, Japan and history are not related to my next link so let’s move on …

My next link is a bit cheeky. David Mitchell writes big books, and I referred in my post on his novel that he wasn’t one of Kate Jennings’ “taker-outers” or “takers-out”. Jennings wrote in praise of takers-out and I like them too, so my next link is to such a work, as an antidote to Mitchell, much as I enjoy him too. It’s a work of autofiction by Kate Jennings herself, Snake (my review). It’s a tight, memorable read.

Book cover

I do like to mix up the sorts of links I make, so we are shifting again, this time to genre or form, that is, to autofiction. My link is to a recent autofiction work that I’ve posted on, Winnie Dunn’s Dirt poor islanders (my review). It is the first book published in Australia by a Tongan Australian, and it makes a significant contribution to our body of migrant literature.

I’m not sticking with migrant literature, however, despite that hint. My next book is about islanders, albeit on their home soil. It’s Audrey Magee’s The colony (my review). This is one of those memorable books (for me) that captures at the micro level what colonisation means for those in the sights of colonisers.

For my final book, we are shifting again, and looking at the name Audrey, but not as author. I like the name Audrey. It was one of my mother’s middle names. It’s also the name of one of the voices telling Karen Viggers’ most recent novel, Sidelines (my review). Given it’s footy final fever time in Australia (albeit a different sort of football), this novel about the challenges of youth sport seems a fitting way to close out this month’s Six Degrees.

Four of my six selections this month are by women, but we have moved a little across the globe, including spending time on three islands (in Mitchell, Dunn, briefly, and Magee). We have also confronted the challenges of growing up (in Jennings, Dunn, Magee, to some degree, and Viggers), of colonisation and migration, and of course of literary hoaxes and heists!

Have you read I want everything and, regardless, what would you link to?

Louise Erdrich, The night watchman (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 30 Comments

Louise Erdrich’s Pulitzer Prizewinning The night watchman is historical fiction about a community fighting back against a government set on “terminating them”. Erdrich, whom I have reviewed before, is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians of North Dakota and it is the story of this community’s response to something called the House Concurrent Resolution 108 that she tells in The night watchman.

Passed by Congress on August 1, 1953, this Resolution would, says Erdrich in her Afterword, “sever legal, sacred, and immutable promises made in nation-to-nation treaties”. Or, as Wikipedia explains, it would “end reservations and tribal sovereignty” and “integrate Native Americans into mainstream American society”.

As it happens, Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, was Chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee at the time and recognised this resolution for what it was. He is the inspiration for Thomas Wazhushk, one of Erdrich’s two protagonists. Thomas is a man of two cultures:

Watching the night sky, he was Thomas who had learned about the stars in boarding school. He was also Wazhashk who had learned about the stars from his grandfather, the original Wazhashk. (p. 17)

Throughout the novel Thomas strategically draws on these two selves in order to perform his role, which is to keep the community safe (or, at least, safer, than they would be if the Government’s plans came to fruition).

This is both a sophisticated and a grounded novel. Grounded in the way Erdrich uses her storytelling ability to create a compelling narrative peopled by a large cast of wonderfully individuated characters. We are interested in them all, and this makes the novel a darned good read. Sophisticated in how Erdrich subtly layers her story to enrich its meaning. The overall structure comprises two parallel but related stories or journeys: Thomas’s fight for his community’s survival, and his niece Patrice’s journey to find both her missing sister and her own path in life. Erdrich’s writing is simple, plain, but also imbued with gorgeous lyricism, metaphor and symbolism. The novel is threaded, for example, with physical holes, wells, caves, ship holds, and falls, which never let us forget the precariousness of these people’s lives.

She also peppers the story with humour, which reminds us no matter how serious things are, people can still have a laugh. There are many laugh-out-loud moments, alongside a recognition of humour’s role in how we navigate the things we confront. In Minneapolis, Patrice finds herself in a strange and potentially dangerous situation, and has

the sort of feeling and thinking that could only be described in Chippewa, where the strangeness was also humorous and the danger surrounding this entire situation was of the sort that you might laugh at, even though you could also get hurt… (p. 131)

“Survival is a changing game” (Biboon)

Overlaying all this is Erdrich’s exploration of how language works, how it can be used to clarify or obfuscate, to inspire or deflate. Her writing embodies this knowledge. So, for example, Thomas receives the Resolution papers and reads them carefully. He sees

their unbelievable intent. Unbelievable because the unthinkable was couched in such innocuous dry language. Unbelievable because the intent was, finally, to unmake, to unrecognize. To erase as Indians … his people, all of us invisible and as if we never were here, from the beginning, here. (p. 79)

His people were being targeted, the papers said,

for emancipation. E-man-ci-pation. Eman-cipation. This word would not stop banging around in his head. Emancipated. But they were not enslaved. Freed from being Indians* was the idea. Emancipated from their land. Freed from the treaties that Thomas’s father and grandfather had signed and that were promised to last forever. (p. 80)

Later, the once dapper but now frequently drunk Eddy Mink cuts to the chase, stunning officialdom with his plain language statement:

The services that the government provides to Indians might be likened to rent. The rent for use of the entire country of the United States. (p. 200)

Meanwhile, as Thomas builds his case, Patrice, who works in the Turtle Mountain Jewel Bearing Plant where Thomas is the titular night watchman, sets off for Minneapolis to look for her sister. Vera had gone there with her new husband but had not been heard of since. What Patrice finds in the city, how people can be exploited, is shocking, and she returns home somewhat wiser but with more to learn about herself and the ways of humans.

Surrounding Thomas and Patrice is a large community of people – family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, teachers, coaches, visiting missionaries, and even a ghost. The interactions between these people build up a picture of a community that functions despite external stresses and the usual internal disagreements. This makes engrossing reading because these characters are so real, including the two Mormon missionaries who not only add humour and pathos but also represent the naiveté of supporters of a faith – in the form of Utah Senator Arthur V. Watkins – that was driving the Resolution.

Similarly, our protagonists’ interactions with specific individuals make great reading while also advancing the narrative and the ideas. When Thomas is with his father Biboon and Patrice with her mother Zhaanat, we feel their spiritual connection with their culture, and their desire to learn from their elders. When Thomas is with the white teacher and boxing coach, Barnes, we see how little non-Indian society understands the existing situation and the implications of the Resolution. Thomas patiently – and generously – explains to the clueless Barnes why Indians are not, and can never be, “regular Americans”. And, why he, Barnes, cannot be an Indian! Just look at this writing:

“If I married an Indian woman,” said Barnes, “would that make me an Indian? Could I join the tribe?”
He was awed at the possible sacrifice he could be making.
Thomas looked at the big childish man with his vigorous corn-yellow cowlicks and watery blue eyes. Not for the first time, he felt sorry for a white fellow. There was something about some of them—their sudden thought that to become an Indian might help. Help with what? Thomas wanted to be generous. But also, he resisted the idea that his endless work, the warmth of his family, and this identity that got him followed in stores and ejected from restaurants and movies, this way he was, for good or bad, was just another thing for a white man to acquire.
“No,” he said gently, “you could not be an Indian. But we could like you anyway.”

In statements like “he was awed at the possible sacrifice he could be making”, Erdrich conveys more about cultural superiority than just this man’s thoughts.

When Patrice is with her girlfriends and workmates, Valentine and Doris, we see how her goals diverge from their more girlish ones, and when she is with Wood Mountain we see her inner conflict about her chosen direction. As a young person, her journey is more personal than Thomas’s but they coalesce when it comes to saving the community.

“Assimilation. Their ways become your ways.” (Roderick)

I loved spending time with these characters. In fact, so did most of my reading group, as this novel was our September read. We enjoyed her vividly drawn characters – and their perfect names, like Juggie Blue, Wood Mountain, Louis Pipestone, Millie Cloud, and Patrice not Pixie. We teased out the complexity of the storytelling, the way Erdrich seemed to effortlessly incorporate complex ideas into a compelling narrative. This starts right at the title, The nightwatchman, which is both literal, Thomas’ job, and metaphorical, in his role of keeping watch as the community’s Chairman. I was reminded a little of Melissa Lucashenko’s novels, in which tough stories are told with compassion and humour to paint a picture of real people confronting a world that’s against them.

Early in the novel, Thomas moves that the Committee call the Resolution the “Termination Bill [because] Those words like emancipation and freedom are smoke”. This bill heralded what is now called the Termination Era (1953-1968). As Erdrich explains in her Afterword, this is what happened to 113 tribal nations. Although some regained recognition, “31 are now landless” and “24 are considered extinct” (p. 447).

The night watchman is one of those books that hits the spot – the heart spot and the mind spot. Recommended.

* The novel is set in 1953, and Indian is the term most commonly used when the specific Chippewa is not.

Louise Erdrich
The night watchman
London: Corsair, 2020
453pp. (Kindle edition.)
ISBN: 9781472155337

Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2025, Winners

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

In lieu of my usual Monday Musings post, I am reporting on the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards which were announced this evening, and which I attended via the live-stream from the Creative Australia website. I shared the short list several weeks ago, so I won’t repeat those here.

The awards ceremony was a long one, and I suspect longer than planned, because Mr Gums saw the winners come through on his phone before they had all been announced. The problem, I’m guessing, of automatic scheduling!

The event was emceed by an Australian comedian, writer, actor, and television presenter, Alex Lee, whom I don’t know. (I guess you are going to say, “where have you been?”) She injected lightness and humour into the opening, a bit like you see at America’s Academy Awards. Like the Academy Awards, some of the jokes worked and some didn’t. The thing is, I suppose, different jokes will work for different people.

She did say, however, that there were 645 entries this year, 100 more than last year. That says something, I presume, about the health of writing and publishing in Australia.

 There were then two speakers, the Chair of the Writing Australia Council, Larissa Behrendt, who commented on the appropriateness of holding the Awards at the NLA which embodies the “the heart of our nation’s stories”. She said that the Awards “celebrate writing, reading ideas and the voices that shape who we are”, and she thanked Selina Walker for her welcome. She reminded us of the 65,000 years of storytelling in our country.

Behrendt then introduced the Minister for the Arts (among his many hats), Tony Burke, whose passion for the arts is palpable to anyone who hears him speak. Behrendt noted his appreciation of the centrality of First Nations Arts to Australia’s cultural policy. And said that this is a minister who shows up at opening nights, awards nights, festivals and so on, because he deeply understands why the Arts matter.

I couldn’t possibly share all that Burke said. He recognised the main players, commenting first on the generosity of the word “welcome” Selina Walker’s Welcome to Country. He thanked Australian Greens leader, Sarah Hanson-Young, who was present and who has been there, in support, through the whole cultural policy journey. He thanked Alex Lee for injecting a bit of fun, and he acknowledged Larissa Behrendt (who is Chair of the National Library of Australia Council) and Clare Wright (who is Chair of the Council of the National Museum of Australia.) He noted that it has been a long time since a writer has chaired the NLA’s Council, and an historian that of the NMA. (I groaned inwardly as we are still waiting for an archivist – or appropriate professional – to chair the council of the National Film and Sound Archive!) But all progress in this sphere of Boards/Council appointments is good!

Burke talked at some length about the importance of the arts and, what he believes to be the strength of the Government’s Creative Australia cultural policy. He talked particularly about writing. he argued that the ability to learn from writing is the gift “we celebrate tonight”. He suggested that writing is the only art form that we don’t react to with physicality. Music, Dance, Visual Arts, and so on, engage through the senses – sight, hearing – but writers work on our imaginations, writing lives within our minds. (There are some debates in this, I think, but I still like his point.)

He also quoted from three books to illustrate his points. First was from Kelly Canby’s children’s book, A leaf called Greaf, which ends on the idea of things being held in the heart forever, and which is the gift writers give us. Then he mentioned Fiona McFarlane and Michelle de Kretser who spoke to untold stories. Highway 13 deals ingeniously with the fact that we hear more about the person who should not be remembered rather than the stories of those affected by that person’s actions. Then he quoted from Theory and practice, which I will abbreviate to “that was the meaning of assimilation … it trained us to disappear”. Writers, he said, make sure that people are seen. (For me, though, he raised yet another idea to explore in this wonderful novel.)

There was more, but I think that’s a great point on which to end the introductions.

And the winners

  • Fiction: Michelle de Kretser, Theory & practice (Text, my review)
  • Poetry: David Brooks, The other side of daylight: New and selected poems (UQP)
  • Nonfiction: Rick Morton, Mean streak (Fourth Estate)
  • Australian history: Geraldine Fela, Critical care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis (UNSW Press)
  • Children’s literature: Peter Carnavas, Leo and Ralph (UQP)
  • Young adult: Krystal Sutherland, The invocations (Penguin)

Links on authors’ names are to my posts on these authors. (I loved that Children’s Literature winner, Peter Carnavas, is a teacher-librarian. Go him.)

Now, this being the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and, anyhow, this being a gathering of writers who as a group are passionate about ideas, many political comments were made, lengthening the supposedly short speeches. These comments addressed what is happening in Gaza, the issue animal rights, the treatment of human beings by government social policy, and the gutting of humanities and humanities research in Australian universities. In the case of the last, Geraldine Fela’s video speech had been cut off at the allotted time, but she had asked Clare Wright to complete her speech, which Wright did!

Thoughts anyone?

Monday musings on Australian literature: Creative Australia Awards in Literature

/ Whispering Gums / 10 Comments

Creative Australia is the – how shall we say it – rebranded Australia Council for the Arts / Australia Council. Under whatever name it has, this is the body that serves as the major arts funding and advisory body for the Australian Government. You can read its history on Wikipedia if you are interested.

The Australia Council Awards were established around 1981, and over time have been offered in various categories, but Literature has been one of them since at least 1987, again under different guises. These awards recognise outstanding and sustained contributions to arts and culture across a range of disciplines, including literature, music, dance, but sorting out a full and proper history of these awards is not easy. They are now named under the Creative Australia umbrella. The writers who have been given these awards include novelists, poets, nonfiction writers and children’s literature writers. They include First Nations Writers, like Ruby Langford Ginibi, Herbert Wharton and Bruce Pascoe as well as Alexis Wright.

In the lists below, links are to posts I have written on the writers.

Creative Australia Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Literature

As far as I can gather, the “Creative Australia Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Literature” dates just from 2023, and acknowledges “the achievements of eminent literary writers over the age of 60 who have made an outstanding and lifelong contribution to Australian literature”.

Australian Council Awards for Lifetime in Literature

ArtsHub calls the 2021 award that went to Arnold Zable a “Lifetime Achievement in Literature” award, and says he follows writers like Malouf and Garner in receiving this award. Earlier research I did suggested that in 2015 it was also called a “Lifetime Achievement award”.

Previous Award Recipients

You will see that this section of my list includes “awards” and “fellowships”. I could have just included the “award” but decided the fellowships might be interesting too. You might notice that some women are listed under their “married name”, like Judith Wright as Judith Wright McKinney, and Mary Durack as Mark Durack Miller. In the 1990s!

  • 2013: Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature: Frank Moorhouse
  • 2012: Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature: Herbert Wharton
  • 2011: Emeritus Award: Robert Gray
  • 2010: Emeritus Award: Peter Kocan
  • 2007: Emeritus Award: Christopher Koch and Gerald Murnane
  • 2006: Emeritus Award: Alice Wrightson
  • 2005: Emeritus Award: Ruby Langford Ginibi
  • 2004: Emeritus Award: Margaret Scott
  • 2003: Emeritus Award: Don’o Kim and Barry Oakley
  • 2001: Emeritus Award: Dimitris Tsaloumas and Amy Witting 
  • 2000: Emeritus Award: Donald (Bruce) Dawe and John Hooker
  • 2000: Emeritus Fellowship: Eric Charles Rolls
  • 1999: Emeritus Award: James Henderson and Eleanor Witcombe
  • 1998: Emeritus Award: Peter Porter
  • 1997: Emeritus Award: Boro Wongar
  • 1996: Emeritus Award: Rosemary Dobson and David Martin
  • 1996: Emeritus Award: Dorothy Hewitt
  • 1995: Emeritus Fellowship: Victor Beaver, Michael M Cannon, Barbara Jefferis, Ray Lawler, Vincent Noel Serventy, Ivan Southall, and Maslyn Williams
  • 1993: Emeritus Award: Ivan Southall and Judith Wright McKinney
  • 1993: Emeritus Fellowship: Hugh Geddes Atkinson 
  • 1992: Emeritus Award: Mary Durack Miller
  • 1992: Emeritus Fellowship: John Blight, Beatrice Bridges, David Rowbotham, Harold Stewart
  • 1990: Emeritus Fellowship: Dorothy Green and Roland Robinson
  • 1989: Emeritus Fellowship: Jack Lindsay
  • 1987: Emeritus Fellowship: Olaf Ruhen