No comments about Thirty Years in Australia.

No comments about THE LETTERS AND JOURNALS: A SELECTION (TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS).

No comments about The Life and Adventures of William Buckley: Thirty-two Years a Wanderer Amongst the Aborigines of the Then Unexplored Country Round Port Phillip, Now the Province of Victoria.

No comments about Adam Lindsay Gordon: The Man and the Myth (Melbourne University Press Australian Lives).

No comments about Krazy Hor: A Soldier's Story.

1 comments about The Great Mistakes of Australian History.

1. This book is an interesting collection of 'Blunders, stuff-ups and misjudgements' made over the course of white settlement in Australia, by some prominant academics. Covering areas as diverse as farming, black/white relations, town planning, defence and politics amoung others, it offers an interesting and thought provoking journey through many of the major decision in Australian history.
   
   This book succeeds in providing an insight into those events that made Australia the country it is today, without taking a revisionist view, based on 21st centuary morals and ideals. They explain many of the actions taken, without necessarily judging them.
   
   An interesting and worthwhile read.

3 comments about Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet Frame.

1. At first sight this is a dauntingly long book of 500 pages plus. However, even after reading a few pages, one is quickly drawn into an amazinly frank and totally engrossingly private "interview" with a remarkable writer. There is a vast amount of private detail of the emotional and intellecual life ot Janet Frame. Yet with all the detail, one never has the impression of gratuitious intrusion. The reader is led on by the depth of the feeling and the necessity to reveal all the amazing diversity of this writer. Michael King exposes the rawness and richness of a literary genius. Facts of childhood and young passion satisfy the voyeur. The devastating experince of primitive psychology and brutal mental health treatment give way to her emotional awakening in Europe, far from the strait-jacket of the censure of a puritanical and uncomprehending New Zealand public. This book offers far more than the superficial film of Janet Frame's early life, scarrred by the malady of "being different." The book's supreme achievement is that it allows the reader to understand the psyche of the writer, and thereby, allow a far richer and more rewarding understanding of a truly superb writer. Any reader of this book will gain not only a closer relationship with the literary figure but also, a more informed knowledge of a New Zealand writer who belongs to a world fraternity. Her years in America at Yaddo and her acceptance into an esoteric literary group let the reader share a rare experience of intimacy and brilliance. Michael King is a direct writer. He is clear and direct. There is no pretence of showmanship or precious explanation. This book is a must for those interested in the life and writing of an author who overcomes all obstacles for the sake of true genius.



2. This enthusiastic and respectful biography accomplishes so much. Michael King's affection and deep understanding of Janet Frame - and her cooperation with him - inform this work. She is a very private public figure. In this book one gets to know her quite well, with so sense that her privacy has been compromised. One guesses that is due to King's considerable talent for people as well as for biography.

   King gets the emotional tenor of events just right. He looks into Frame's entire life and work - and focusses on the little things along with the big picture - down to mentioning (for example) that Frame attended one of many dinners in her honor in Wellington, NZ - wearing a formal dress that she had bought for $1.50 from a Salvation Army shop. It's a detail that he could have left out, but that Frame herself would have included. I was grateful for details, for the inclusion of Frame's considerable and insightful analyses (often only a few words long!) of the works of her writing peers, and liberal use of quotations. This biography manages to be comprehensive, graceful, and not wholly uncritical - although clearly and reasonably charmed by its subject. In addition there are great photographs and notes.

   Admirers of Janet Frame and of the art and craft of biography will like this book very much.




3. King takes on no small feat in writing the biography of an author Time magazine once called "the greatest writer of this century" and one who has remained so secluded and private throughout her career. A facinating and rewarding book on an amazing literary talent.

No comments about Roy de Maistre Australian Years.

1 comments about Jean Devanny: romantic revolutionary.(Battlers and Stirrers): An article from: Journal of Australian Studies.

1. Australia's Jean Devanny was an author, political activist and women's liberationist. Biographer Carole Ferrier's Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary is a detailed, engaging, and informative political and literary biography providing the reader with a complete account of her life, times, and accomplishments. Devanny arrived in Sydney, Australia in 1929 from New Zealand. Here first novel, "The Butcher Shop" having been banned in politically turbulent New Zealand at the time. In the 1930s she joined the Communist Party and rapidly gained fame as a redoubtable public speaker. She clashed periodically with the party line under Stalin, and her open marriage and rumored love affairs led to a great many complications for her personal and professional life. Interested in issues of race, gender and sexuality, as well as class, Devanny was decades ahead of her time in her thinking on these questions. An outstanding work, Jean Devanny: Romantic Revolutionary is an impressive and clearly recommended biography which draws upon primary sources, oral history material from people who knew Devanny, as well as unpublished archives and manuscripts.

No comments about Rough With the Smooth: Stories of Australian Men.