Australian literature

Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers (including modern Indigenous Australians inclunding Anglo-Celtic and multicultural migrant Australians) has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature - exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, migrant and national identity, distance from other Western nations and proximity to Asia, the complexities of urban living and the "beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.

Notable Australian writers have included the novelists Marcus , Miles Franklin, Patrick White, Thomas Keneally and Colleen McCullough, the bush poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, historians Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey, the playwright David Williamson and leading expatriate writers Barry Humphries, Robert Hughes, Clive James and Germaine Greer.

Australian writers who have obtained international renown include the Nobel winning author Patrick White, inclunding authors Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, Nevil Shute and Morris West. Notable contemporary expatriate authors include the feminist Germaine Greer, art historian Robert Hughes and humorists Barry Humphries and Clive James.

Part the significant authors of classic Australian works are the poets Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, C J Dennis and Dorothea McKellar. Dennis wrote in the Australian vernacular, while McKellar wrote the iconic patriotic poem My Country. Lawson and Paterson clashed in the famous "Bulletin Debate" over the nature of life in Australia with Lawson considered to have the harder edged view of the Bush and Paterson the romantic. Lawson is widely regarded as of Australia's greatest writers of short stories, while Paterson's poems remain amongst the majority popular Australian bush poems. Significant political poets of the 20th century included Dame Mary Gilmore and Judith Wright. Part the best known contemporary poets are Les Murray and Bruce Dawe.

Novelists of classic Australian works include Marcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life), Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career) and Ruth Park (The Harp in the South). In terms of children's literature, Norman Lindsay (The Magic Pudding) and May Gibbs (Snugglepot and Cuddlepie) are part the Australian classics, while eminent Australian playwrights have included Steele Rudd, David Williamson, Alan Seymour and Nick Enright.

Although historically only a small proportion of Australia's people have lived outside the major cities, a lot of of Australia's most distinctive stories and legends originate in the outback, in the drovers and squatters and people of the barren, dusty plains.

David Unaipon is known as the first indigenous author. Oodgeroo Noonuccal was the first Aboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse. A significant contemporary account of the experiences of Indigenous Australia can be found in Sally Morgan's My Place.

Charles Bean, Geoffrey Blainey, Robert Hughes, Manning Clark and Marcia Langton are authors of significant Australian histories.

Aboriginal writers and themes

At the point of the first colonization, Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aborigines come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact, both violent and friendly. Early accounts by Dutch explorers and the English bucaneer William Dampier wrote of the "natives of New Holland" as being "barbarous savages", but by the time of Captain James Cook and First Fleet marine Watkin Tench (the era of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), accounts of Aborigines were additional sympathetic and romantic: "these people may truly be said to be in the pure national of nature, and may appear to some to be the majority wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than ... we Europeans", wrote Cook in his journal on 23 August 1770.

David Unaipon (1872–1967) provided the first accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by an Aboriginal: Legendary Tales of the Aborigines; he is known as the first Aboriginal author. Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1995) was a famous Aboriginal poet, writer and rights activist credited with publishing the first Aboriginal book of verse: We Are Going (1964). Sally Morgan's novel My Place was considered a breakthrough memoir in terms of bringing indigenous stories to wider notice. Leading Aboriginal activists Marcia Langton (First Australians, 2008) and Noel Pearson ("Up From the Mission", 2009) are active contemporary contributors to Australian literature.

The voices of Indigenous Australians are being increasingly noticed and include the playwright Jack Davis and Kevin Gilbert. Writers coming to prominence in the 21st century include Alexis Wright, Tara June Winch, in poetry Yvette Holt and in popular fiction Anita Heiss.

A lot of notable works have been written by non-indigenous Australians on Aboriginal themes. Examples include the poems of Judith Wright; The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally, Ilbarana by Donald Stuart, and the short story by David Malouf: "The Only Speaker of his Tongue".

Histories covering Indigenous themes include Watkin Tench (Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay et Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson); Roderick J. Flanagan (The Aborigines of Australia, 1888); The Native Tribes of Central Australia by Spencer and Gillen, 1899; the diaries of Donald Thompson on the subject of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land (c.1935-1943); Alan Moorehead (The fatal Impact, 1966); Geoffrey Blainey (Triumph of the Nomads, 1975); Henry Reynolds (The Other Side of the Frontier, 1981); and Marcia Langton (First Australians, 2008). Differing interpretations of Aboriginal history are as well the subject of contemporary debate in Australia, notably between the essayists Robert Manne and Keith Windshuttle.

Letters written by notable Aboriginals leaders like Bennelong and Sir Douglas Nicholls are as well retained as treasures of Australian literature, as is the historic Yirrkala bark petitions of 1963 which is the first traditional Aboriginal document recognised by the Australian Parliament.

AustLit's BlackWords project provides a comprehensive listing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers.

Early and classic works

For centuries before the British settlement of Australia, European writers wrote fictional accounts of an imaginings of a Great Southern Land. In 1642 Abel Janszoon Tasman landed in Tasmania and after examining notches cut at considerable distances on tree trunks, speculated that the newly discovered country must be peopled by giants. Later, the British satirist, Jonathan Swift, set the land of the Houyhnhnms of Gulliver's Travels to the west of Tasmania.

Part the first true works of literature produced in Australia were the accounts of the settlement of Sydney by Watkin Tench, a captain of the marines on the First Fleet to arrive in 1788. In 1819, poet, explorer, journalist and politician William Wentworth published the first book written by an Australian: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in A lot of Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America, in which he advocated an elected assembly for New South Wales, trial by jury and settlement of Australia by free emigrants rather than convicts

Early popular works tended to be the 'ripping yarn' variety, telling tales of derring-do against the new frontier of the Australian outback. Writers such as Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms), Marcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life) 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 as well gave precious insights into the penal colonies which helped form the country and as well the early rural settlements.

In 1838 The Guardian: a tale by Anna Maria Bunn was published in Sydney. It was the first Australian novel printed and published in mainland Australia and the first Australian novel written by a woman. It is a Gothic romance.

Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career) and Jeannie Gunn (We of the Never Never) wrote of lives of European pioneers in the Australian bush from a female perspective. Albert Facey wrote of the experiences of the Goldfields and of Gallipoli (A Fortunate Life). Ruth Park wrote of the sectarian divisions of life in impoverished 1940s innner city Sydney (The Harp in the South). The experience of Australian PoWs in the Pacific War is recounted by Nevil Shute in A Town Like Alice and in the autobiography of Sir Edward Dunlop. Alan Moorehead was an Australian war correspondent and novelist who gained international acclaim.

Children's literature

Perennial favourites of Australian children's literature include Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding, Ethel Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo, May Gibbs' Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Ruth Park's The Muddleheaded Wombat; Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill and Mem Fox's Possum Magic. These classic works employ Anthropomorphism to bring alive the creatures of the Australian bush, thus Bunyip Bluegum of The Magic Pudding is a koala who leaves his tree in search of adventure, while Dot of Dot and the kangaroo is a little girl lost in the bush, who befriends a group of marsupials. May Gibbs crafted a story of protagonists modelled on the appearance of young Eucalyptus (gum tree) nuts and pitted these gumnut babies, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, against the antagonist Banksia men.

The Children's Book Council of Australia presents annual awards for books of literary merit, for outstanding contribution to Australian children's literature. Notable winners and shortlisted works have inspired several well known Australian films from original novels, including The Silver Brumby series, a collection by Elyne Mitchell which recount the life and adventures of Thowra, a Snowy Mountains brumby stallion; Storm Boy (1964), by Colin Thiele, about a boy and his pelican and the relationships he has with his father, the pelican, and an outcast Aboriginal man called Fingerbone; the Sydney based Victorian era time travel adventure Playing Beattie Bow (1980) by Ruth Park; and, for older children and mature readers, Melina Marchetta's 1993 novel about a Sydney high school girl Looking for Alibrandi.

Paul Jennings is a prolific writer of contemporary Australian fiction for young people whose career began with 1985's collection of short stories Unreal! and whose popular works include Round The Twist which was adapted for television.

A generation of leading contemporary international writers who left Australia for Britain and the United States in the 1960s have remained regular and passionate contributors of Australian themed literary works throughout their careers including: Clive James, Robert Hughes, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Robertson and Germaine Greer. Several of these writers had links to the Sydney Push intellectual sub-culture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early '70s; and to Oz, a satirical magazine originating in Sydney, and later produced in London (from 1967 to 1973).

A generation of expatriate authors

After a long media career, Clive James remains a leading humourist and author based in Britain whose memoir series is rich in reflections on Australian society (including his recent book Cultural Amnesia). Robert Hughes has produced a number of historical works on Australia (including The Art of Australia (1966) and The Fatal Shore (1987)). Barry Humphries took his dadaist absurdist theatrical talents and pen to London in the 60s, becoming an institution on British television and later attaining popularity in the USA. Humphries' outlandish Australian caricatures, including Edna Everage, Barry McKenzie and Les Patterson have starred in books, stage and screen to great acclaim over decades and his biographer Anne Pender described him in 2010 as the majority significant comedian since Charles Chaplin. His own literary works include My Gorgeous Life. As Edna Everage., 1989 and My Life As Me: A Memoir, 2002. Geoffrey Robertson QC is a leading international human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster whose books include The Justice Game, 1998. Leading feminist Germain Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, has spent much of her career in England but continues to study, critique condemn and adore her homeland (recent work includes Whitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way To Nationhood, 2004).

Writing and identity

A complicated, multi-faceted relationship to Australia is displayed in much Australian writing, often through writing about landscape. Barbara Baynton's short stories from the late 19th century/early 20th century convey people living in the bush, a landscape that is alive but as well threatening and alienating. Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright (1961) portrayed the outback as a nightmare with a blazing sun, from which there is no escape. Colin Thiele's novels reflected the life and times of rural and regional Australians in the 20th century, showing aspects of Australian life unknown to a lot of city dwellers.

In Australian literature, the term mateship has often been employed to denote an intensly loyal relationship of shared experience, mutual respect and unconditional assistance existing between friends (mates) in Australia. This relationship of (often male) loyalty has remained a central subject of Australian literature from colonial times to the present day. In 1847, Alexander Harris wrote of habits of mutual helpfulness between mates arising in the "otherwise solitary bush" in which men would often "stand by another through thick and thin; in fact it is a universal feeling that a man ought to be able to trust his own mate in anything". Henry Lawson, a son of the Goldfields wrote extensively of an egalitarian mateship, in such works as A Sketch of Mateship and Shearers, in which he wrote:

They tramp in mateship side by side -
The Protestant and Roman
They call no biped lord or sir
And touch their hat to no man.

What it means to be Australian is another issue that Australian literature explores. Miles Franklin struggled to find a place for herself as a female writer in Australia, fictionalising this experience in My Brilliant Career (1901). Marie Bjelke Petersen's popular romance novels, published between 1917 and 1937, offered a fresh upbeat interpretation of the Australian bush. The central character in Patrick White's The Twyborn Affair tries to conform to expectations of pre–World War II Australian masculinity but cannot, and instead, post-war, tries out another identity—and gender—overseas. Peter Carey has toyed with the idea of a national Australian identity as a series of 'beautiful lies', and this is a recurrent theme in his novels. Andrew McGahan's Praise (1992) and Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (1995) introduced a 'gritty realism' take on questions of Australian identity in the 1990s, though an significant precursor to such work was Helen Garner's Monkey Grip (1977).

Australian literature has had several scandals surrounding the identity of writers. The 1944 Ern Malley affair led to an obscenity trial and is often blamed for the lack of modernist poetry in Australia. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Ern Malley affair, another Australian writer, Leon Carmen, set out to make a point about the prejudice of Australian publishers against white Australians. Unable to find publication as a white Australian he was an instant success using the false Aboriginal identity of Wanda Koolmatrie with My Own Sweet Time. In the 1980s Streten Bozik as well managed to become published by assuming the Aboriginal identity of B. Wongar. In the 1990s, Helen Darville used the pen-name "Helen Demidenko" and won 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. Mudrooroo—before known as Colin Johnson—was acclaimed as an Aboriginal writer until his Aboriginality came under question (his mother was Irish/English and his father was Irish/African-American, however he has strong connections with Aboriginal tribes); he now avoids adopting a specific ethnic identity and his works deconstruct such notions.

Poetry

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Both Gordon's and Brennan's (but particularly Brennan's) works conformed to traditional styles of poetry, with a lot of 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 of the chief exponents of these popular ballads, and 'Banjo' himself was responsible for creating what is probably the majority famous Australian verse, "Waltzing Matilda". At point, Lawson and Paterson contributed a series of verses to The Bulletin magazine in which they engaged in a literary debate about the nature of life in Australia. Lawson said Paterson was a romantic and Paterson said Lawson was full of doom and gloom.Lawson is widely regarded as of Australia's greatest writers of short stories, while Paterson's poems The Man From Snowy River and Clancy of the Overflow remain amongst the majority popular Australian bush poems. Romanticised views of the outback and the rugged characters that inhabited it played an significant part in shaping the Australian country's psyche, just as the cowboys of the American Old West and the gauchos of the Argentine pampa became part of the self-image of those nations.

Other poets who reflected a sense of Australian identity include C J Dennis and Dorothea McKellar. Dennis wrote in the Australian vernacular ("The Sentimental Bloke"), while McKellar wrote the iconic patriotic poem My Country

Prominent Australian poets of the 20th century include Dame Mary Gilmore, A. D. Hope, Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Kenneth Slessor, Les Murray, Bruce Dawe and additional recently John Forbes and John Tranter. Additional recent and emerging Australian poets include Peter Minter and Judith Beveridge.

Contemporary Australian poetry is mostly published by small, independent book publishers. However, other kinds of publication, including new media and online journals, spoken word and live events, and public poetry projects are gaining an increasingly vibrant and popular presence. 1992-1999 saw poetry/art collabotrations in Sydney/Newcastle buses & Ferries - Artransit from Meuse Press. Some of the additional interesting and innovative contributions to Australian poetry have emerged from artist-run galleries in recent years, such as Textbase which had its beginnings as part of the 1st Floor gallery in Fitzroy. In addition, Red Room Company is a major exponent of innovative projects.