Australian Literature

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Introduction; Poetry; Early Fiction; Later Fiction; Other Genres

Introduction

Australian Literature, literature written by English-speaking inhabitants of the continent of Australia.

Australian literature has developed certain well-defined qualities: a love of the vast, empty land, with its unique flora and fauna, a compelling sense of the worth of the common people, and freedom from the bondage of European traditions. Although the English language has not been radically transformed in Australia, it has undergone distinctive changes of style with colorful additions to vocabulary, about which Australians were once apologetic but which are now regarded as a dynamic and valuable contribution to the language. Indeed, several studies of Australian transformations of the English language have appeared. Some of these are short vocabulary lists, with a history of the first appearance and subsequent usage of a certain word or phrase; others are studies of the pronunciation or intonation that is peculiarly Australian.

Poetry

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Among the earliest poetry published in Australia was First Fruits of Australian Poetry (1819) by Barron Field, an Englishman serving in the Australian judiciary. Four years later the founder of Australian colonial self-government, William Charles Wentworth, a native-born Australian, published a single poem, “Australasia, an Ode,” which is invariably cited as the first poetic expression of a national spirit. The first volume of poetry by a native-born Australian was Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel (1826) by Charles Tompson, who spent the greater part of his life as a government official. Charles Harpur, also a native-born government employee and a farmer as well, was the author of Thoughts: A Series of Sonnets (1845). He continued to publish occasionally during the rest of his life and was the earliest poet of merit. It was not, however, until the time of Henry Clarence Kendall, an Australian by birth, and Adam Lindsay Gordon, an English immigrant, that Australian poetry really became significant. Gordon's sporting poems and narratives, which had great popularity, are at their best in Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867) and Ashtaroth (1867). Kendall, often called the national poet, developed a personal idiom equipped to deal with Australian subjects in Leaves from an Australian Forest (1869) and Songs from the Mountains (1880); he was especially successful in describing the scenery of the wooded valleys along the Pacific coast.

These pioneers prepared the ground for a number of poets whose work shows greater distinction. Bernard (Patrick) O'Dowd, a lawyer by profession, was a didactic poet of wide learning who published verses in pamphlet form after 1903. Little emotion is displayed in his work; he is rather a rhetorician of ideas, notably of the belief that Australia has the opportunity to build a nation free from such evils of European culture as economic, political, and social inequities. The classical scholar Christopher (John) Brennan was the most learned poet Australia produced at this time. His work, largely in the symbolist tradition, is characterized by depth of feeling and force of imagery. Not popularly known, Brennan's poetry is esteemed by a small group of discriminating readers. (John) Shaw Neilson, who is considered by some critics to be the best poet of his era, reflects the experience of ordinary people in the simple lyricism of his verse.

Early Fiction

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An early Australian fictional work is Tales of the Colonies (1843) by Charles Rowcroft; but the most frequently reprinted is Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859) by Henry Kingsley, brother of the English novelist Charles Kingsley. Kingsley originated the novel of Australian pastoral life. His main characters are, however, Englishmen who come to Australia for colonial experience and then return to England, as he did. Two fairly prolific early novelists were Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke and Thomas Alexander Browne, the latter of whom wrote under the name of Rolf Boldrewood. Clarke is most famous for his classic story of the convict era, For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), which exploits the horrors of convict life in the heightened realistic manner of Charles Dickens. Browne's reputation rests on Robbery Under Arms (1888), a classic story of bushranging. It may be described as an Australian Western, a narrative about bush life full of vivid adventures.

Recently two important early works on Australian themes, both on the borderline between fiction and reportage, have come to notice. These are Ralph Rashleigh (1952), probably written in the early 1840s by James Tucker, but belatedly discovered, and Settlers and Convicts (1852), written under the pen name “An Emigrant Mechanic” by Alexander Harris.

Among authors who wrote in the first decades of the 20th century, Henry Hertzberg Lawson is noteworthy as a writer of sketches. Poorly educated, he identified himself with the working people and wrote prolifically about them and their feelings toward Australia. His best work appeared during the 1880s in the weekly newspaper The Bulletin. Humor as well as bitterness is evident in his sketches, which range from sentimental vignettes to strongly realistic studies. Perhaps the volume for which he is best known abroad is While the Billy Boils, published in Travellers' Library in 1927. Miles Franklin (full name Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin; 1879-1954) is best known for her feminist novel My Brilliant Career (1901); an unsparing picture of outback life and a woman writer's beginnings, it was later made into a highly successful film. The finest single work of fiction expressing basic Australian attitudes is Such Is Life (1903) by Joseph Furphy, who used the pen name Tom Collins. Furphy's life was spent as a farmer and driver of bullock teams before the days of the railroad. His book, written in diary form, is a compound of episodic adventures, philosophic and literary opinions, and homely observations about people and conditions in Australia. Katharine Susannah Prichard, whose work began to appear before World War I, interprets Australian life in terms of class struggle. Her best fiction is contained in Working Bullocks (1926), a story of lumbering in western Australia, and Coonardoo (1929), a study of intermarriage.

Later Fiction

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One of the finest craftsmen of Australian fiction was Frank Dalby Davison, known primarily for his animal stories. The most distinctive of these, Man-Shy, was published in the United States as Red Heifer (1934). It is a subtly conceived story of a maverick on a Queensland cattle station. He is quite as discerning in his stories of human character, as, for example, in his study of pre-World War II suburban life in Sydney, the novel The White Thorn Tree (1968). Eleanor Dark wrote excellent historical novels, especially The Timeless Land (1941), which is about the founding of Australia; she also wrote novels of contemporary life. Both types of her fiction are distinguished by psychological perception and brilliant descriptions of the landscape. Xavier Herbert showed his passionate concern for the plight of Aboriginal Australians in such novels as Capricornia (1938).

The Australian writer of the middle generation who was best known abroad was Henry Handel Richardson, the pen name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson. Her earliest novel of note was Maurice Guest (1908), an autobiographical story of an Australian studying music in Germany, but her trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917, 1925, 1929), is by far her most widely appreciated work. The latter novel, based on the life of the author's father, begins with the gold rushes of the 1850s and then penetratingly describes various aspects of Australian life in later decades. The main character, after whom the trilogy is named, is an unstable Irish doctor who intensely dislikes Australian life; he is considered one of the major creations of Australian literature. With profound insight, Richardson develops Australian themes in the European tradition of psychological realism.

Several other 20th-century Australian novelists enjoy reputations outside their own country. One of them is Kylie Tennant, whose first novel, Tiburon (1935), was a distinguished achievement. Among her major works are The Joyful Condemned (1953), a novel concerned with working women in the Sydney slums, and The Battlers (1954), a regional novel of caravan life in southwestern Australia. These hardheaded realistic studies are characterized by a fine sense of comedy and are written in a racy Australian idiom. Tennant's nonfiction includes Australia: Her Story; Notes on a Nation (1953).

The major figure among contemporary Australian novelists was Patrick White, the first Australian to win a Nobel Prize in literature (1973). His Tree of Man (1954), set in the Australian bush country, is an ambitious attempt to describe the courage, dignity, and essential loneliness of the people of the open farmlands. Voss, written in 1957, is a novel about a 19th-century German explorer who tries unsuccessfully to penetrate to the remote interior of the continent. It is written in White's very individual style with great imaginative boldness. His novels, such as The Solid Mandala (1966), The Vivisector (1970), and The Eye of the Storm (1973), another of his powerful character studies, also attained favor outside Australia.

Jon Cleary, author of The Sundowners (1952), scored notable popular success. John O'Grady, under the pen name Nino Culotta, wrote They're a Weird Mob (1957), a comic novel that became one of the best-sellers of all Australian novels. International bestsellerdom was achieved by Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds (1977), a family saga translated into many languages and made into a television drama. Worldwide fame was achieved by Christina Stead and Morris West. Stead's finest novel was a bitter depiction of a failed marriage, The Man Who Loved Children (1940; revised ed. 1965); among her other fiction was The Little Hotel (1973). West wrote several international best-sellers, including The Devil's Advocate (1959) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963). Thomas Michael Keneally has received overseas acclaim for The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972), the story of an Aborigine's revenge, which was made into an equally powerful film; and Schindler's Ark (1982), which won the prestigious Booker Prize in England. Other important recent novelists are Elizabeth Jolley, whose Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1984) and Foxybaby (1985) have excited interest abroad; and David Malouf, whose fiction includes An Imaginary Life (1978), designated by the National Book Council as one of Australia's Ten Best Books of the Decade, and Harland's Half Acre (1984), the story of an Australian artist and the cultural life of his country.

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Australian Literature

Introduction

Poetry

Early Fiction

Later Fiction