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Hidden Author

Letters May 2003

May 2003, no. 251 01 May 2003
The missing five years Dear Editor,   Kerryn Goldsworthy’s valuable piece on the early years of ABR (‘The Oily Ratbag and the Recycled Waratah’, ABR, April 2003), giving details of Australian Book Review under Max Harris and Rosemary Wighton from 1961 to 1973, does not mention what caused its disappearance from 1973 to 1978, when John McLaren and the National Book Council revived it. ... (read more)

Letters - December 1997 - January 1998

December 1997–January 1998, no. 197 01 December 1997
From Paolo Bartoloni Dear Editor, As the convenor of the conference ‘The Public, the Intellectuals and the Public Intellectual’ (La Trobe University, May 1996), and as co-editor of the collection of essays, Intellectuals and Publics: Essays on Cultural Theory and Practice, I have followed the discussion generated by the publication of Mark Davis’s book Gangland with great interest. Besides ... (read more)

Letters Extra - November 1994

November 1994, no. 166 01 November 1994
Dear Editor, It has always been my understanding that the National Book Council’s principal function is the promotion of Australian books. Therefore I cannot understand why the Council has allowed the publication of a review in its Australian Book Review journal which calls for the public destruction of a book. To quote from Meredith Sorensen’s review (ABR, October 1994, p.67): take one Big ... (read more)

Letters - November 1994

November 1994, no. 166 01 November 1994
Dear Editor, In a generous review of my recently published novel, A Grain of Truth (Penguin), Andrew Peek mentioned an article I wrote for ABR two years ago, in which I suggested that the hostility of critics and reviewers in this country to novels dealing with current social issues threatens to suppress political fiction in general and the contemporary novel of ideas in particular. ... (read more)

Books of the Year 2001

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 01 December 2001
Don Anderson Donald Home’s Looking for Leadership: Australia in the Howard Years (Viking) gives us an octogenarian social commentator in youthful form. Unlike our leaders, Home translates difficult ideas into something with connections to human lives. John Forbes’s Collected Poems (Brandl & Schlesinger) is an invaluable collection of work by a major poet – Sydney’s finest since Sles ... (read more)

Letters - August 1987

August 1987, no, 93 01 July 1987
Dear Madam, I don’t usually believe in responding to reviews, but Kenneth Gelder’s review (ABR June 87) of The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Stories, which I edited, raises a few points which are worth a reply. Gelder may have his fantasies of Adelaide as a city of ‘beautiful spaces’, greys and pinks, colour-coordinated, but I wish he would leave me out of them. I never lived in Ade ... (read more)

Advances: Literary News - December 2007–January 2008

December 2007–January 2008, no. 297 01 December 2007
Three Companions It is now thirteen years since OUP Australia published the second edition of The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (nine years after ‘Whitlam, Edward Gough’ launched the first edition). Peter Pierce, generally welcomed OCAL2 in his ABR review (‘A bountiful companion’, December 1994– January 1995): ‘The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature may be a touch t ... (read more)

Advances: Literary News - October 2007

October 2007, no. 295 11 May 2022
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, abracadab ... (read more)

Letters to the Editor - August 2001

August 2001, no. 233 01 August 2001
Better off without him Dear Editor, James Griffin, in his effort to rehabilitate John Wren (ABR, June 2001), attacks me and other historians. Stuart Macintyre has replied strongly; and Manning Clark, the main target, is unfortunately dead. My turn now. Griffin refers to a book by me and two co-authors, Doc Evatt (1994), and says that ten letters from Evatt to Wren were ‘made available’ for ... (read more)

Letters to the Editor - July 2001

July 2001, no. 232 01 July 2001
James Griffin and John Wren Dear Editor, Some of your readers will be familiar with the problem. You set aside a few days to get to the National Library to pursue a research project. You obtain the manuscripts, order the material in the Petherick Room, and settle down to uninterrupted industry, when an avuncular bore with too much time on his hands buttonholes you and bangs on about his own proj ... (read more)