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Brenda Niall

Autor von The Boyds : a family biography

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Brenda Niall is an Australian author, literary critic and journalist, born in 1930. She has degrees from the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University and Monash University. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for 'services to Australian literature, as an academic, mehr anzeigen biographer and literary critic'. Her first book was the biography, Martin Boyd (1974). Her later work includes Life Class, The Riddle of Father Hackett: a life in Ireland and Australia, True North: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack and Mannix, for which she won the 2016 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and the 2016 National Biography Award, presented by the State Library of New South Wales. (Bowker Author Biography) weniger anzeigen

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A thoughtful study of the history of Australian children's fiction. Of course inevitably dated 35 years after publication, both in terms of the content that is missing and in some cases the content that is found within.

This is not a complete overview of children's fiction; more famous titles such as Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and The Magic Pudding are not the focus. This is an examination of how authors wrote for children, especially in the 1800s and pre-War years of the 20th century, especially in light of the strange circumstances of being a colonial outpost. Niall finds many dozens of examples of now forgotten novels written for young people, tying a long thread between them to explore how Australians saw themselves, and how adults attempted to convey their understanding of the nation to Australian children. Unsurprisingly, many of the books deal with the conflict between city and country, the preservation of British identity, and gender norms. Perhaps equally unsurprisingly, Niall finds that the best books are those that shirk these expectations.

There are a few genuine surprises here, a few books I will want to seek out. But for the most part, these are popular works of their time, and I'm glad that Niall read them so I don't have to! A fascinating window into our history.
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therebelprince | Oct 24, 2023 |
Brenda Niall is one of my favourite biographers, and when she chooses an artist as her subject, it's a match made in heaven.

Judy Cassab was born in Vienna in 1920 to Hungarian parents but grew up in Beregszász on the border of Hungary and Czechoslovakia (but now part of Ukraine). Almost half the biography covers the extraordinary story of her years in Europe—a comfortable and secure childhood until the emergence of Nazism; falling in love with Jancsi Kampfner, an older man who promised that he would always support her desire to be an artist; her art studies in Prague truncated by the German Occupation; her survival through the generosity of her maid who allowed her to use her identity; and Janczi's return from the slave labour camp in Poland.

Their families almost all perished in the Holocaust, and when Judy's father died in 1947, she struggled with her identity. Neither she nor Janczi were observant Jews, and she did not want her sons born in 1945 and 1947 to be Jewish. For the time being in Hungary, however, it was time to rebuild their lives and with Janczi's solid support Judy began painting, realising that her strength lay in portraiture. Although abstract reigned supreme, she felt that for her it needed to happen without prompting. But just as she was determined to forge her own style against the prevailing abstractionism, she was equally indignant when politics invaded the art world and the new orthodoxy demanded socialist realism.

Politics was also affecting Janczi's return to the business of brewing beer. He was an unabashed critic of Communist expropriation of property when in 1948 all businesses with more than 100 workers were nationalised. His 'indiscretions' were noted, and before long there were restrictions on his movements and the couple began to plan living in exile.

It was fortunate that when, stateless after the war, they were given a choice of citizenships and had chosen to be Czechoslovak. Had they chosen to be Hungarian, the Soviets would have refused them passports. Instead Janczi and Judy had official permission to leave and they emigrated to Sydney in 1951. With a degree in chemical engineering from Prague, Janczi was a skilled engineer and presumed that he could soon establish himself making craft beers, but language difficulties and the parochial preference for well-known Australian brands meant that was not to be. A first attempt at running his own clothing shop was a failure, and he ended up as owner-manager of a factory making surgical stockings. It was never satisfying work, and Judy's diaries record her enduring dismay that she was highly successful in her career as an artist which he was stuck in soul-destroying work that allowed no outlet for his creativity.

But she was determined to persist. Niall's biography records an extraordinary catalogue of achievements, including portraits of the rich and famous, winning the Archibald twice, when no woman had won it before.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/01/25/judy-cassab-a-portrait-by-brenda-niall/
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anzlitlovers | Jan 25, 2021 |
If you love Australian literature, this book is a must-read. Friends and Rivals, Four Great Australian Writers by preeminent biographer Brenda Niall consists of four biographies of women who put Australian writing 'on the map.' Of the four — Barbara Baynton, Ethel Turner, Nettie Palmer, Henry Handel Richardson — the only one I haven't read is Ethel Turner: I didn't have an Australian childhood so I never read rel="nofollow" target="_top">Seven Little Australians (1894) which written so casually, has an extraordinary place in Australian literary history. It redefined Australia's relationship with English publishers who had not until then taken Australian writing seriously.

Conventional, conservative Ethel Turner crossed paths with flamboyant, ebullient Barbara Baynton in 1896 when they were both writing for The Bulletin, but Niall begins Ethel Turner's chapter with their meeting in 1911 when Barbara helped Ethel to choose an emerald ring. Herbert Curlewis couldn't afford more than an unspectacular engagement ring when he courted Ethel, but by 1911 he wanted her to have something finer, and it was Barbara to whom Ethel turned to help her find the prettiest ring in Sydney. The friendship was surprising, because the women had very different temperaments, but they had bonded over their charitable work as patrons and fundraisers for the Ashfield Infants' Home which provided shelter and support for unmarried mothers. Although they were both now affluent and confident about their place in Sydney society, they had both experienced the plight of the single mother or the deserted wife:
Baynton's struggle to keep three young children without a father's support matched the heroic efforts of Turner's mother, left with three small daughters. (p.15)


It is small, intimate insights like this episode with the ring that make reading this book such a pleasure. It's fascinating to read the story of Turner's turbulent childhood and the way she remade herself as a society lady. She was ambitious, but Niall says that her success with Seven Little Australians constrained her development as a writer. She became known as a children's author, partly on the advice of Louise Mack who told her that drafts of the children's book 'wasn't half-bad' and she should finish it instead of working on her 'serious novel'. Sales of Seven Little Australians made her publisher want more, and she surrendered to the tyranny of the sequel.
...Ethel Turner's success was immense; her output prodigious; her life generously lived.

There was a cost. Although Turner wrote fluently, met deadlines with strict professionalism and could devise a new plot outline before breakfast, she was a victim of her own efficiency. She revelled in her popular and commercial success but fretted at the constraints of the genre in which she did best. (p.56)

Alas, whatever gratitude she may have owed to Louise evaporated when Mack published a gossipy novel with a central character of limited talent who seemed a lot like Ethel Turner. The friendship couldn't survive the failure of trust. Yet when Louise died of a stroke at 67, Ethel gathered flowers from her own garden to take to the funeral and sent kind thoughts to Louise's family. (I hope I remember this when I finally get round to reading Mack's An Australian Girl in London, on the TBR.)

You can read what I gleaned from the introduction to the Sydney University Press edition of Bush Studies here but what I didn't realise then was that as late as the 1970s the true story was unknown. Prior to that, readers were baffled by a rich and arrogant socialite being able to write so vivdly about the poverty of bush life.
Thea Astley, who found the dominant theme in the six stories published as Bush Studies to be 'an expression of revolt against the feudal conditions of women in the bush' was perplexed by their coming from an author who was 'comfortably off.' Astley could see no connection between the privileged Baynton of the public record and the brutishness and horror that pervades her fictional world. (p.91)


Indeed. And it transpires that we owe Bush Studies to the writer and critic Edward Garnett, who, as a reader at Duckworth's saved it from the slush pile to which other publishers had consigned it. This vignette about the (not quite) unsung hero Garnett is fascinating too:
Like his wife, [the prolific translator] Constance Garnett, he had a passion for Russian literature. His work enriched English literature in unexpected ways. He was the discoverer and patron of Joseph Conrad, the Polish master mariner, and D H Lawrence, the brash young man from the Midlands who wrote about sex with shocking frankness. Garnett was always hoping for 'the delighted flash of recognition', when, 'amid the mass of trivial, indifferent, or heavily conscientious efforts a beginner's work [showed] that instinctive creative originality which we call genius.' He believed he had found that quality in Baynton's strange, disturbing stories. (p.97)


Yes, let's have a shout-out for all the publishers' readers ploughing through the MSS to find the wonderful books we love to read!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/06/22/friends-and-rivals-four-great-australian-wri...… (mehr)
 
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anzlitlovers | Jun 22, 2020 |
Completely changed my perceptions of this controversial Catholic figure who played such a role in Australian and Irish nationalism.
 
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Kakania | May 26, 2020 |

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