Australian literature
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Australian literature in English began soon after the establishment of the country by Europeans. Early popular works tended to be of the 'ripping yarn' variety, telling tales of derring-do against the new frontier of the Australian outback. Writers such as Rolf Boldrewood, Marcus Clarke and Joseph Furphy embodied these stirring ideals in their tales and, particularly the latter, tried to accurately record the vernacular language of the common Australian. These novelists also give valuable insights into the penal colonies which helped form the country and also the early rural settlements. The transportation of prisoners, emigration to this once remote nation and the persecution and prejudice suffered by its indigenous peoples all contribute to a sense of alienation and exile which can be seen to run through at least the early writings of Australia.
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[edit] Poetry
Despite perhaps seeming out of the typical Australian character, poetry played an important part in the founding of Australian literature. Two poets who vie for the position of greatest Australian poet are Christopher Brennan and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Gordon was not born in Australia but the Azores, to Scottish parents. Despite this he is often called the "national poet of Australia" and is the only Australian with a monument in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in England.
Both Gordon’s and Brennan's (but particularly Brennan’s) works conformed to traditional styles of poetry, with many classical allusions, and therefore fell within the domain of high culture. However, at the same time Australia was blessed with a competing, vibrant tradition of folk songs and ballads. Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson were two of the chief exponents of these popular ballads, and ‘Banjo’ himself was responsible for creating what is probably the most famous Australian verse, Waltzing Matilda.
[edit] 20th century
In sharp contrast to these early frontier writers most of the white inhabitants of Australia were city dwellers. Even Banjo Paterson, who wrote of the archetypal swagman was a city lawyer. Nevertheless their romanticised views of the outback and the rugged characters that inhabited it played an important part in shaping the Australian nation’s psyche, just as the American Old West influenced America’s ideas of itself.
Henry Handel Richardson (the nom de plume of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson) was, aside from being one of the first female Australian authors, one of the first to write about urban, middle-class life. The 1920s brought two of the most important proponents of Australian literature, Vance and Nettie Palmer, to the fore. The husband and wife team, Vance working on novels and Nettie on non-fiction, did much to promote their own writings but also to chronicle earlier authors.
Prominent Australian poets of the twentieth century included A. D. Hope, Judith Wright, Kenneth Slessor, Gwen Harwood, David Rowbotham, Les Murray, Jennifer Maiden, John Forbes and Kevin Hart to name but a few. While anthologies of some note include The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991).
[edit] Immigrants and expatriates
One of the most internationally famous Australian novelists Nevil Shute was, like many people in a nation formed on immigration, not native born. Shute moved to Australia and settled there after World War II, portraying world events such as the war and nuclear warfare from an Australian point of view. Some years earlier in the early 1920s D. H. Lawrence visited and in his novel Kangaroo was one of the first foreign writers to depict Australia and its people as something more than a penal colony.
Other writers have felt that the remoteness of Australia needed to be escaped. Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, has spent much of her career in England and has in the past been a fierce critic of her native land but she now regularly lives some of the year in New South Wales. Although Greer is considered a pioneering feminist writer, Louisa Lawson, mother of the poet Henry Lawson, was a suffragist and editor of The Dawn Journal a campaigning publication. Along with Nettie Palmer and Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, Louisa Lawson is Greer’s distinguished forerunner.
[edit] Later developments
Australian literature can be thought of as coming of age in 1973 when Patrick White became the first and so far only Australian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature although he was born and spent a large part of his life overseas. Other notable writers to have emerged since the 1970s include dual Booker Prize winner Peter Carey and David Malouf.
Australian literature has had several scandals surrounding the identity of writers notably the 1944 Ern Malley affair led to an obscenity trial and is often blammed for the lack of modernist poetry in Australia. In the 1990s, Helen Darville used the pen-name “Helen Demidenko” and won winning major literary prizes for her Hand that Signed the Paper before being discovered, sparking a controversy over the content of her novel, a fictionalised and highly tendentious account of the Nazi occupation of the Ukraine.
James Clavell in his collection of works called The Asian Saga discusses an important feature of Australian literature: its portrayal of far eastern culture from the admittedly even further east, but nevertheless western cultural viewpoint, just as Nevil Shute had done. Clavell was also a successful screenwriter and along with such writers as Thomas Keneally, who won the Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark (the book Schindler's List is based on), has expanded the topics of Australian literature far beyond that one country. Other novelists to use international themes are Gerald Murnane and Brenda Walker. To even greater distances, Greg Egan, Joel Shepherd and Traci Harding are just some of the currently popular Australian science fiction and fantasy novelists. The crime genre is currently thriving in Australia, most notably through books written by Kerry Greenwood, Shane Maloney and Peter Temple.
The voice of aboriginal Australians has begun to be noticed and includes the playwright Jack Davis although he is still little known. Writer Sally Morgan's My Place was considered a breakthrough memoir in terms of bringing indigenous stories to wider notice.
Another important milestone was the historian Manning Clark's seven volume History of Australia which is regarded by some as the definitive account of the nation.
Major Australian literary journals include Meanjin, Overland, Island, Heat and Southerly magazines, and the annual publications Verandah, Sleepers Almanac and Going Down Swinging
[edit] Awards
Current literary awards in Australia include:
- Anne Elder Award
- The Australian/Vogel Literary Award
- The Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards
- Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
- Mary Gilmore Prize for a first book of poetry
- Miles Franklin Award
- N. S. W. Premier's Literary Awards
- Patrick White Award
- Queensland Premier's Literary Awards
- Victorian Premier's Literary Award
- Western Australian Premier's Book Awards
- Australian authors are also eligible for the Commonwealth Writers Prize
