Melbourne University Press
Graham Little reviews 'Sailing to Australia: Shipboard diaries by nineteenth-century British emigrants' by Andrew Hassam
‘There was nothing in particular to write about either yesterday or the day before, as, indeed, there is not today.’ Fifteen-year-old Arthur Clarke speaks, in 1868, for many of us whose diaries didn’t live up to our hopes of them. Why do we write them?
... (read more)Oscar Spate reviews 'An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne: South Sea Explorer, 1724–1772' by Edward Duyker
The title of this book has a faint dash of Ouida, but actually it signifies not a dashing cavalry regiment but the officiers bleus of the French navy under the Ancien Regime, who were not of the nobility and so socially inferior to their aristocratic colleagues, though often (or usually) superior as seamen. Duyker has written a good businesslike account of a remarkable career. The book is very well presented, with genealogies, bibliography and glossary, many plates (some in colour), and above all plenty of maps. An appendix by Rex Nan Kivell recounts his rescue, in the confusion at Calais when the German’s were overrunning France in 1940, of the painting of Marion’s death. He rolled up the canvas and stuffed it down his trouser leg, doubtless walking rather stiffly. A wry footnote to history.
... (read more)Helen Elliott reviews 'A Wish of Distinction: Colonial gentility and femininity' by Penny Russell
Penny Russell could not have chanced upon a better phrase than Jane Austen’s ‘It was rather a wish of distinction … It was the desire of appearing superior to other people’ when she was seeking a title for this book. The colonial gentility of Melbourne, or ‘Society’ if you want to use their understanding of who they were, could only define themselves in terms of who they were not – or who they would never wish to be.
... (read more)Ian Buchanan reviews ‘Six Aces’ by Lex McAulay, ‘Laughing Gunner and Selected War Stories’ by Geoffrey C. Bingham, ‘Maverick Soldier’ by John Essex-Clark, ‘The Devils’ Garden’ by Peter Pinney, ‘Making the Legend’ by Denis Winter
These five books are about war and are all written by veteran infantrymen (except Making the Legend), a fact which is quite relevant. The fiction is every bit as gritty as the non-fiction. There’s none of the glamour that popular thrillers attach to war, and there’s none of the abject horror that literature generally attributes to war. Instead, there is what can only be described as honesty. These books are truly about the work of winning wars; not the glory or triumph, but the face-in-the-mud labour of it.
... (read more)Jonathan Holmes reviews 'Imagining the Pacific in the Wake of the Cook Voyages' by Bernard Smith
The chapter explores the influence of William Wales on the young Coleridge when he was a student at Christ’s Hospital, London, Wales, the scientist-navigator who travelled with Cook on the Resolution, was appointed Master of Mathematics at Christ’s Hospital in 1775 and Smith, in this engaging essay, argues that the young Coleridge would have heard the stories of their momentous journey in search of the great South Land. For not only was Wales a teacher of mathematics but his job also included drumming up midshipmen recruits from the Lower School for the Royal Navy. He was ideally suited for this – a man of great stature and intellect who could deliver an exhilarating first-hand account of what it was like to be pushing to the very frontiers of knowledge through maritime exploration.
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From the very beginning of The Rearrangement the reader is involved in themes which will play repeatedly through the poems: learning, knowledge and memory, and the way in which these work to satisfy, or frustrate, a metaphysical sense of order, even truth.
... (read more)Brian McFarlane reviews 'Martin Boyd: A life' by Brenda Niall
When Martin Boyd returned to Australia in 1948 after twenty-seven years in England, he set about restoring the Grange, the derelict former home of his mother’s family, the à Becketts. He had been disappointed to find how little known his novels were in Australia and he had difficulty in re-establishing himself with the Boyd family. Nevertheless he persevered with his impulsive scheme until he could draw ‘the curtains at night in the little sitting room ... [and] indulge the illusion of being in an English manor house.’ Among the à Beckett portraits and eighteenth-century furniture were his nephew Arthur’s biblical frescoes. In trying to be an English squire in the Australian countryside, surrounded by the artefacts of two continents and centuries, Boyd presents the image of a man who never quite found himself wholly at home anywhere.
... (read more)John Hanrahan reviews 'Teacher Learning' edited by Gwyneth Dow, 'Melbourne Studies in Education 1982' edited by Stephen Murray-Smith and 'Melbourne Studies in Education 1983' edited by Imelda Palmer
Gwyneth Dow has edited a collection of essays that forms a relevant and coherent whole. The authors seek to salvage what they see as ‘the good things’ in education reform of the late sixties and early seventies, reform that had weaknesses which were the result of ‘faulty thinking, poor social analysis, romantic psychological theories, slip-shod pedagogy’. The contributors to this book are Rory Barnes, Gwyneth Dow, Rod Foster, Noel P. Gough, Bill Hannan, and Doug White. Gwyneth Dow points out they do not all share the same ideological positions, but they are clearly in fundamental agreement about curriculum reform, a more democratic approach to teaching and to the running of schools, and a more socially aware view of teaching and teacher education.
... (read more)Don Watson reviews 'The Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 7 1891–1939, A–Ch' edited by Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle
