A Certain Style
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19 B.D. to Ernestine Hill, 23 October 1960.
20 B.D. to Ernestine Hill, 20 March 1961.
21 Robert Hill to B.D., 5 March 1969.
22 B.D. to Robert Hill, 14 March 1969.
23 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 22 March 1969.
24 Ernestine Hill’s papers are now in the National Library of Australia and the Fryer Library, University of Queensland.
25 Charles Bateson to B.D., 29 January 1973.
‘Like a Bird Singing, She Sings for Herself ’: Eve Langley
1 The S.H. Prior Memorial Prize was named after Samuel Henry Prior, editor of the Bulletin from 1915 to 1933 and an enthusiast for new Australian writing. It was awarded annually between 1935 and 1946.
2 Eve Langley, The Pea Pickers, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1942, p. 6.
3 Ruth Park, A Fence Around the Cuckoo, Viking, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 233–4.
4 Interview Douglas Stewart with Meg Stewart for The Shadows are Different, Meg Stewart’s ABC radio portrait of Eve Langley, in the Stewart papers, Mitchell Library.
5 Miles Franklin to Mary Fullerton, 4 July 1943, quoted in Jill Roe (ed.), My Congenials, Vol. 2, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1993, p. 94.
6 June Langley to B.D., 24 June 1950.
7 B.D. to Eve Langley, 26 October 1950.
8 Eve Langley to B.D., 17 September 1951.
9 Nan McDonald, reader’s report, March 1952.
10 B.D. to Eve Langley, 19 March 1952.
11 Eve Langley to Nan McDonald, 13 October 1952.
12 Nan McDonald to Eve Langley, early October 1953.
13 Eve Langley to Nan McDonald, 12 April 1954.
14 Eve Langley to Nan McDonald, 14 April 1954.
15 B.D. to Hal Porter, 5 December 1956.
16 This account of Hal Porter’s meeting with Eve Langley is taken from his interview with Meg Stewart, broadcast on ABC radio in 1977 as Hal Porter Remembers Eve Langley.
17 B.D. to Hal Porter, 30 May 1957.
18 Nan McDonald, reader’s report, early 1960.
19 B.D. to Eve Langley, 7 January 1960.
20 Eve Langley to B.D., 9 June 1960.
21 Douglas Stewart to H.B. Gullett, 29 September 1965.
22 Interview Meg Stewart with J.K., 12 February 1997.
23 B.D. said this several times: in an interview with Elizabeth Riddell, the Australian, 9 February 1974; in a taped interview with Suzanne Lunney for the National Library of Australia’s oral history project, May 1977; in an interview with Meg Stewart for the ABC radio program The Shadows Are Different, broadcast 18 September 1977.
24 Interview Douglas Stewart with Meg Stewart for The Shadows are Different, Stewart papers, Mitchell Library.
Mrs Frederick Bridges and Miss Beatrice Davis
1 According to Professor Charles Kerr of the Department of Public Health, University of Sydney (communication with J.K., 30 June 2000), TB infection was spread by oral means. Being a doctor, Frederick Bridges would have been careful to disinfect such things as glasses and toothbrushes. People often took such risks with TB in its manageable stages, and did not greatly compromise their sex lives.
2 B.D. to Lawson Glassop, 28 July 1944.
3 Interview Harry Heseltine (who was also present at the talk concerned) with J.K., 16 February 2000.
4 B.D. to Miles Franklin, 22 August 1945.
5 Walter Cousins to Rebecca Wiley, 28 April 1948.
6 ‘The case for Australian Authors and Artists’, prepared by the Australian Journalists’ Association and the Fellowship of Australian Writers, no date, but internal evidence suggests 1946–47.
7 In 1953, according to the (UK) Publishers Association, the traditional British market was Aden, Australia, Burma, Canada, Ceylon, Cyprus, Egypt, Republic of Ireland, Hong Kong, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, New Guinea, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Pacific Islands, Pakistan, Palestine, South Africa, Uganda. Figures from the same source for approximate values of book trade exports for the UK in the calendar year 1953 include Australia £3 500 000; USA £2 300 000; South Africa £2 100 000.
8 At the end of the war other players in the Australian publishing scene included Consolidated Press, Melbourne University Press, Robertson and Mullens, Lothian, Ure Smith, Cheshire, Shakespeare Head Press, Currawong, and Whitcombe and Tombs. Most of these published educational books.
9 Elizabeth Wood-Ellem to J.K., 5 December 1999.
10 Elisabeth Hughes to J.K., 30 May 1999.
11 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 10 August 1956.
12 According to Robert Grundy, a young accountant at A&R during the late 1960s, who handled the typists’ invoices.
13 Walter Cousins to Rebecca Wiley, 28 April 1948.
‘My Tonnage Cannot be Ignored’: Miles Franklin
1 Miles Franklin to Dymphna Cusack, 28 April 1953.
2 Quoted in Nancy Keesing’s memoir Riding the Elephant, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988, p. 74.
3 Beatrice Davis, ‘An enigmatic woman’, Overland 91, 1983, p. 23.
4 Miles Franklin to B.D., 30 December 1943.
5 Miles Franklin to B.D., 6 May 1953.
6 Miles Franklin to Dymphna Cusack, 1 May 1951.
7 B.D. to Miles Franklin, 26 August 1949.
8 B.D. to Miles Franklin, 10 August 1952.
9 Vance Palmer, ABC Weekly, 11 December 1954.
10 Miles Franklin to B.D., 9 January 1953.
11 Miles Franklin to Florence James, 16 September 1950.
12 Ruth Park, Fishing in the Styx, Viking, Melbourne, 1993, pp. 150–1.
13 Henrietta Drake-Brockman to B.D., 26 June 1956.
14 B.D., Overland, op. cit.
15 Miles Franklin to Dymphna Cusack, 14 November 1950.
16 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 31 July 1950.
17 B.D. to Miles Franklin, 14 November 1953.
18 B.D., Overland, op. cit.
19 Ibid.
20 As she makes clear in her Overland article, op.cit.
21 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 11 July 1950.
22 B.D., Overland, op. cit.
23 Ibid.
24 ‘Gun’, meaning champion, usually applied to a shearer: another example of Miles Franklin’s rural vocabulary.
25 Miles Franklin to Dymphna Cusack, 2 November 1950.
26 B.D. to Rex Ingamells, 12 October 1954.
27 Katharine Susannah Prichard to B.D., 24June 1956.
28 Henrietta Drake-Brockman to B.D., 13 July 1960.
29 Dymphna Cusack to B.D., 12 October 1954.
30 B.D. to Rex Ingamells, 12 October 1954.
31 Ibid.
Sydney or the Bush: Ruth Park and D’Arcy Niland
1 Ruth Park to J.K., 25 May 1997.
2 At the time Beatrice was consumed with worry about the health of Frederick Bridges. Like most of Beatrice’s authors, Park knew nothing about this.
3 Third prizewinner was Queensland writer Esther Roland for her bush novel I Camp Here.
4 Warwick Fairfax, ‘Why We Print This Story’, Sydney. Morning Herald, 11 January 1947.
5 B.D. to Ruth Park, 6 March 1950.
6 Ruth Park to J.K., 25 May 1997.
7 Ruth Park, Fishing in the Styx, p. 151; Ruth Park to J.K., 25 May 1997.
8 Ruth Park to Bob Sessions, 13 January 2001.
9 Ruth Park, Fishing in the Styx, pp. 180–1.
10 Ruth Park to J.K., 25 May 1997.
11 Ibid.
12 B.D. to Ruth Park, 7 March 1950.
13 Ruth Park and D’ Arcy Niland, The Drums Go Bang!, Angus and Robertson, 1956, p. 192.
14 B.D. editorial report, February 1950.
15 B.D. to Ruth Park, 18 April 1950.
16 D’Arcy Niland to B.D., 30 August 1950.
17 Ruth Park to B.D., 10 October 1950.
18 B.D. to D’Arcy Niland, 14 January 1952.
19 Ruth Park, Fishing in the Styx, p. 181.
20 D’Arcy Niland to B.D., 14 January 1952.
21 D’Arcy Niland to B.D., 15 June
1954.
22 According to G.A. Wilkes’ Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms, the word ‘shiralee’, in the sense in which Niland used it, meaning ‘swag’ and by extension’ burden’, was rare until D’Arcy Niland’s novel was published.
23 Ruth Park to Bob Sessions, 13 January 2001.
24 A&R opened a distribution office in London in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade their British publishing had grown from five titles in 1954 to seventeen by 1959, with average edition sizes of 4000.
25 B.D. to D’Arcy Niland, 17 September 1954.
26 D’Arcy Niland to B.D., 6 October 1954.
27 MacQuarrie was also a sometime A&R author, having written several travel books, one dealing with a trip around the world in his Baby Austin in the 1930s. When he and the Baby Austin reached Hollywood, the film star Douglas Fairbanks demonstrated his swashbuckling credentials by leaping over the car.
28 D’Arcy Niland to Judy Fisher, 9 February 1965.
29 The biography, entitled Home Before Dark, was completed after Niland’s death by Ruth Park and Rafe Champion, and published by Viking in 1995.
30 B.D. to D’Arcy Niland, 17 August 1964.
Mixing Their Drinks: Women Friends, Women Writers
1 Much of this information comes from The Queen’s Club: Some Memories and Records of the First Fifty-Eight Years by E.M. Tildesley, privately printed by Halstead Press in 1970. The Queen’s Club has a footnote in literary history. As recounted by Robin Dalton in her very funny memoir Aunts Up the Cross, her father, a doctor, was visiting a patient on one of the club’s residential upper floors early one morning. Men were strictly forbidden to go beyond the first floor, and as he came down the stairs he was met by an outraged staff member in dressing gown and curlers who demanded to know what he was doing there. ‘Ssh!’ whispered the doctor. ‘I overslept.’ (Robin Dalton, Aunts Up the Cross, Viking, Melbourne, 1998 p. 107).
2 Ruth Park to J.K., 25 May 1997.
3 Quoted in Nancy Keesing, Riding the Elephant, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, p. 89.
4 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 17 February 1948.
5 Henrietta Drake-Brockman to B.D., 26 July 1967.
6 Henrietta Drake-Brockman to B.D. c.1955, letter undated.
7 The Times, August 1958 (undated, sent to Beatrice by Anderson’s daughter Bethia Foote).
8 From an article by John Hetherington in the Vance Palmer papers, quoted by Drusilla Modjeska in Exiles at Home, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1982, p. 230.
9 Tribute volume on Beatrice’s retirement from A&R, 1974; B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 24 November 1966.
10 Henrietta Drake-Brockman to B.D., March 1952 (she often didn’t bother with exact dates).
11 Ric Throssell, Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1975, p. 221.
12 Ibid., p. 77.
13 Katharine Susannah Prichard to B.D., 28 June 1955.
14 Katharine Susannah Prichard to B.D., early in 1960, letter undated.
15 Katharine Susannah Prichard to B.D., 1 November 1955.
16 B.D. to Dymphna Cusack, 4 October 1949.
17 B.D. to Dymphna Cusack, 19 September 1950.
18 Caddie was made into a successful Australian film, directed by Donald Crombie and starring Helen Morse, in 1976.
19 B.D. to Dymphna Cusack, 12 March 1957.
20 Dymphna Cusack to B.D., 9 January 1950.
21 Hazel Rowley, Christina Stead: A Biography, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1993, p. 351.
22 B.D. to Dymphna Cusack, 19 September 1950.
23 B.D. to Dymphna Cusack, 4 November 1959.
24 Extract from Frank Thompson’s speech for the memorial gathering for B.D. on 5 June 1992, State Library of New South Wales.
25 This is why there is comparatively little fine detail about B.D.’s working methods with Astley. Those details are much easier to trace, of course, when Beatrice was working with an author who lived interstate.
26 Conversation Thea Astley with J.K., 5 August 1998.
27 B.D. tribute volume, 1974.
The League of Gentlemen
1 Interview Elizabeth Riddell with J.K., 14 August 1996.
2 Anthony Barker, One of the First and One of the Finest: Beatrice Davis, Book Editor, The Society of Editors, (Vic.), Melbourne, 1991, p. 23.
3 B.D. to Rohan Rivett, 2 April 1952.
4 Ronald McKie, Daily Telegraph, 7 May 1949.
5 Douglas Stewart, Norman Lindsay, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1975, p. 61.
6 B.D. to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 15 March 1949.
7 Hugh McCrae to B.D., 27 July 1950.
8 B.D. to Guy Howarth, 19 February 1957.
9 B.D. to Guy Howarth, 24 February 1958.
10 Guy Howarth to B.D., 10 June 1960.
11 He expressed his pride in Beatrice to another farmer, who happened to be a writer: Eric Rolls.
12 So Beatrice told her colleague Anthony Barker years later: interview Anthony Barker with J.K., 12 July 1998.
13 Douglas Stewart, Norman Lindsay, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1975, p. 65.
14 Kenneth Mackenzie to BD, 15 March 1953.
15 B.D. to Kenneth Mackenzie, 14 August 1953.
16 Kenneth Mackenzie to B.D., 17 November 1954.
17 Kenneth Mackenzie to B.D., 20 November 1954.
18 Quoted in Modern Australian Verse, selected by Douglas Stewart, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1964. ‘Heat’ was first published in the Bulletin, 1 February 1939.
19 B.D. to Cremation Society, Northern Suburbs Crematorium, 31 May 1955. She added: ‘No plague or casket is required either by the author’s widow or by this firm.’
Trying Out a Lover’s Voice: Hal Porter
1 Retitled ‘Waterfront’, the story was included in Porter’s short-story collection A Bachelor’s Children in 1962.
2 Hal Porter to B.D., 6 October 1953.
3 Hal Porter to B.D., 7 February 1955.
4 Ibid.
5 As indeed they were, in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and many other places, all carefully noted and annotated by the author.
6 Conversation Harry Heseltine with J.K., 16 February 2000.
7 Hal Porter to Ann Jennings, 12 August 1955, quoted in Mary Lord, Hal Porter, Random House, Sydney, 1993, p. 111.
8 B.D. to Hal Porter, 8 August 1955.
9 James McAuley, Observer, 8 March 1958.
10 Hal Porter to B.D., 28 April 1956.
11 Nan McDonald to Hal Porter, 22 February 1958.
12 J.K. conversation with Anthony Barker, II September 1996.
13 Mary Lord, op. cit., p. 129; David Marr, Patrick White, Random House, Sydney, 1991, pp. 523–4. Other versions of this story, which has done the literary rounds over the years, state that it was Porter who made the remark about Thompson’s son, not White, who was offended that Porter had implied he, White, was homosexual.
14 Hal Porter to B.D., 15 January 1960.
15 B.D. to Hal Porter, 7 January 1960.
16 B.D. to Hal Porter, 18 March 1959.
Beating the Bibliopolic Babbitts: Xavier Herbert
1 Xavier Herbert to Walter Cousins, 19 January 1940.
2 Walter Cousins to Xavier Herbert, 19 May 1948.
3 George Ferguson to Archibald Ogden, 18 January 1951.
4 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 22 January 1951.
5 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 10 July 1951.
6 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 14 October 1951.
7 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 22 March 1953.
8 Nan McDonald to George Ferguson, 2 July 1953.
9 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 21 December 1955.
10 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 17 March 1956.
11 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 1 May 1956.
12 Interview B.D. with Craig Munro as part of his research for Inky Stephensen: Wild Man of Letters.
13 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 31 May 1956.
14 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 1 July 1956.
15 Communication Frances de Groen with J.K., 2 December 1999.
16 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 11 March 1958.
17 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 14 April 1959.
18 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 9 March 1959.
19 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 13 March 1959.
20 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 15 February 1961.
21 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 20 June 1961.
22 Frances de Groen, Xavier Herbert, University of Queensland Press, 1999, p. 188 et seq.
23 Ruth Starke, Writers, Readers and Rebels, Wakefield Press, 1998, p. 90.
24 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 5 August 1962.
25 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 22 November 1964.
26 Xavier Herbert to Hal Porter, 24 June 1974.
27 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 24 November 1966.
28 Ibid.
29 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 16 November 1966.
30 B.D. to Xavier Herbert, 24 November 1966.
31 Xavier Herbert to B.D., 9 October 1971.
32 Xavier Herbert to Richard Walsh, 16 August 1976.
33 Frances de Groen, op. cit., pp. 226–7.
No Elves, Dragons or Unicorns: Children’s Literature
1 Patricia Wrightson to J.K., 4 May 1999.
2 Ibid.
3 Patricia Wrightson in ‘A Tribute to Beatrice Davis’, 1973.
4 Patricia Wrightson, letter to J.K., 4 May 1999.
5 Ibid.
6 A sign of the times: in the 1960s to 1980s, referencing Aboriginal culture and beliefs in this way was seen as a radical and positive move.
7 Patricia Wrightson in ‘A Tribute to Beatrice Davis’, 1973.
8 Ivan Southall to Alec Bolton, 26 June 1953.
9 Ibid.
10 Ivan Southall to J.K., 18 April 1999.
11 Ivan Southall to B.D., 11 April 1956.
12 Ivan Southall to J.K., 18 April 1999.
13 Ivan Southall to B.D., 22 July 1964.
14 Joyce Saxby died of cancer a few months after she started at A&R. She was replaced for a while by John Abernethy, then by Barbara Ker Wilson.
15 B.D. to Ivan Southall, 3 September 1964.
16 Ivan Southall to B.D., 16 September 1964.
17 B.D. to Ivan Southall, 28 September 1964.
18 Nan McDonald, reader’s report, 29 January 1965.
19 Kath Commins to B.D., 8 February 1965.
20 Ivan Southall to John Abernethy, 9 February 1965.
21 Ivan Southall’s hobby was growing fuchsias, and in 1997 he registered with the American Fuchsia Society an elegant blue and white flower known as the Beatrice Davis.
Plain Sailing: Angus and Robertson During the 1950s