Advances: Literary News

The Fortunes of HHR Last month, in his critique of Bruce Beresford’s memoir (whose title is far too long to reproduce here), Peter Craven, in addition to expressing surprise at film producers’ unwillingness to finance Beresford’s proposed film of Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, deplored the fact that the great trilogy (1917–29) was out of print. Well, abracadabra! Australian Scholarly Publishing has come to the rescue with a three-volume edition of Fortunes. (Penguin informs us that it will publish a new Penguins Classics edition in 2008.) The Australian Scholarly Publishing edition marks the culmination of Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele’s scholarly edition of the works of HHR: six novels, a novel translated from the Danish, her music and her complete correspondence. Professor Probyn, of Monash University, writes about the trilogy and the vicissitudes of HHR’s career in this month’s Profile in World Literature and Ideas (beginning on p. 30). Scholarly editions of this kind are the rara avis of Australian literature. What this country badly needs is an equivalent of the Library of America, that redoubtable, non-profit enterprise which brings readers – in handsome, relatively inexpensive, hardback editions – novels, stories, poetry, plays, essays, journalism, historical writing, speeches and more. The Library – long dreamt of by Edmund Wilson, inspired by La Pléiade in France – was founded in 1979 and now runs to more than 150 volumes. The authors range from Edgar Allan Poe and Edith Wharton to James Baldwin and Philip Roth. The aim is a simple one: to keep classics in print in order to preserve the country’s literary heritage. Now there is an ambitious project for a visionary Australian philanthropist or philanthropic trust. Calibre on air While the judges plough through the entries for this year’s Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay, they and others will be able to enjoy a broadcast of the first essay to win the Calibre Prize. Elisabeth Holdsworth reads ‘An die Nachgeborenen: For Those Who Come After’ over five successive days, commencing at 10.45 a.m. on Monday, October 8. Advances has already listened to the Radio National recording: beautifully read and very moving. Meanwhile, Elisabeth Holdsworth’s essay, printed in the February 2007 issue, is still available from ABR. The judges look forward to announcing the winner of this year’s Calibre Prize in the December issue. Arise and go now It’s easy to forget, in a virtual age, that poetry began as, and to a large extent remains, an oral art. An all-star cast runs the Poetry Archive website (the impresario–president is Seamus Heaney). There you can listen to hundreds of recordings of poets reading their own work. The patriots among us will find Peter Goldsworthy, Peter Porter and Les Murray, alongside the likes of T.S. Eliot and that old crooner, W.B. Yeats. The 2007 Man Booker Prize Lloyd Jones’s novel Mister Pip (Text) has been short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Text published Mister Pip in Australia in 2006 (Brian McFarlane reviewed it in the December 2006–January 2007 issue of ABR) and has sold rights in fifteen countries. Earlier this year, Mister Pip won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Montana Medal, New Zealand’s major fiction prize. The winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced in London on October 16. The Australian/Vogel Literary Award Stefan Laszczuk is the winner of this year’s The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for his I Dream of Magda. Mr Laszczuk’s first novel, The Goddamn Bus of Happiness, won the 2004 South Australian Festival of Literature Award for an unpublished manuscript, and was later published by Wakefield Press. Allen & Unwin will publish I Dream of Magda in 2008.

Hidden Author

From the New Issue

Transgender Australia: A history since 1910 by Noah Riseman

Tremor by Teju Cole

Our Moon: A human history by Rebecca Boyle

Frank Moorhouse: Strange paths by Matthew Lamb