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At a time when one is reading of Cabinet decisions to cut many of the remaining constitutional links with Britain (Premiers’ Conference, June), thus moving Australia closer to national sovereignty, it is timely to be reminded of events only just over the contemporary horizon which could be said to have matured this nation into quickening the pace towards that independence of British dominion – no matter how tenuous politically, yet still incipiently present in the Statute Books and by Privy Council.

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With the reissue of The Beauties and Furies (1936) this month by the British feminist press Virago, virtually all of Christina Stead’s work is in print for the first time in the half century long career of this distinguished writer.

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From August 1978 through January 1979 I read the complete fiction of Christina Stead, as well as those of her critical writings I could locate. A writing career of more than forty years consumed by a voracious reader in six months! I trust that I was as scrupulous and sympathetic a reader as Christina Stead is an ethically and technically scrupulous, sympathetic novelist.

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Christina Stead can take comfort, if such were to give comfort and if comfort were what she needed, that the publication of a reader of extracts from her work must signify that she is established not only on the reading lists of our universities – a dubious honour she has had for some time – but also, I presume, in our high schools. I cannot imagine who else this sort of book can possibly be aimed at. Perhaps at people who want to appear to have read Christina Stead but do not relish the work of reading her admittedly lengthy novels. In which case they deserve all that they miss. Is the next step towards the heights of literary honour to be, like Dickens, condensed? Our school children, at any rate, deserve better. Christina Stead certainly does.

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The problems of children’s book publishing are not really different in kind from those which beset other types of publishing; they are the familiar problems exacerbated by the fact that these books are designed for a group of second-class citizens who, being young and dependent, have little influence on what is produced for them, and little financial clout.

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ABR is very proud to present its readers with this special supplement in honour of the eightieth birthday of one of Australia's most significant writers, Christina Stead, whose birthday falls on July 17. I am particularly grateful for John McLaren for asking me to edit this supplement and for thus allowing me to be associated with this gesture of respect and esteem towards one whom I regard as a most valued friend.

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Children’s Book Week is traditionally a time to take an overall view of the last year’s output of children’s books. Such an overall view is necessarily superficial but it can be interesting to note the appearance of new authors and illustrators, new themes, or different treatment of old themes. This article will look at the picture books and fiction of the last twelve months.

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How good to receive Gwen Harwood’s latest book of poems, The Lion’s Bride! Though Harwood seems to be continually active making words for music for Australian composers, a five to seven year interval lies between the appearance of each volume of poems –·here I include the 1975 Selected Poems because it gave us twenty-seven New Poems, including many that caught the imagination of readers and are already well-known: ‘The Blue Pagoda’, ‘At Mornington’, ‘Father and Child’. Selected Poems also included the tragic sonnet ‘Oyster Cove’, which, though we could not know, anticipated courageous series in The Lion’s Bride which mourns and confronts the guilt bequeathed by the black Tasmanian dead.

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If James Joyce had ever visited Australia it is unlikely that he would have come up with anything like D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo. For one thing, as with most Irishmen, his interest in landscape was negligible; for another, his sense of play and his myopia would not have allowed him to romanticise the great Australian bush, much Jess the suburban sprawl. He might have felt somewhat at ease in the ‘Loo or the Rocks area, in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy or Little Dorritt Street in Carlton, or perhaps by the Yarra at Burnley. But why fantasise?

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For those who think that opera in Australia only began to get off the ground this book will come as something of a shock. There was a time, over a hundred years ago, when enthusiastic audiences drawn from across the social spectrum supported ‘regular seasons of the world’s best musical theatre’ by a resident, commercial opera company which played in all the major capital cities.

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