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Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 3, 2020
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Description
The articles in this issue of the Australian Journal of Biography and History consider subjects who have lived across and between national and internal Australian boundaries, and the authors have thus been compelled to address the methodological and theoretical problems of mobility. Kate Bagnall addresses the seemingly insurmountable problem of writing about Chinese women who settled in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. Contrasting with the dearth of information on Chinese women immigrants to colonial New South Wales, Jackie Dickenson’s chapter on Hong Kong–based merchant and trader Melbourne-born Elma Kelly (1895–1974) benefits from an abundance of documentation, both in the realm of the personal and official. In her article on the Corney family in the aftermath of World War I, Alexandra McKinnon considers the record of loss and sorrow preserved in the archives of the Australian War Memorial. Very different methodological questions are explored by Suzanne Robinson in her reflections on writing a biography of the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–90). As a feminist biographer, Robinson had to face a most ‘troublesome question’ of whether her subject’s considerable imperfections, which became evident during research, risked undermining her status as a composer, particularly one whose reputation was yet to be fully established.
A different form of methodological question is posed by Pat Buckridge in his article on three generations of Macdougall men, each of whom became journalists—Dugald (1833–79), who also excelled in business and politics, Dugald the younger (1872–1947), and James (1903–95). The question Buckridge considers is whether his subjects can ‘usefully be considered as a grouped biographical entity signifying more than the sum of its parts, which is to say more than the three separate lives’. By contrast, Peter Crabb’s article on the colonial goldfields reporter John Augustus Hux (1826–64) relates the story of a single figure who, having made connections in his English homeland that would serve him well in Australia, provided eyewitness accounts of a number of significant goldfields in New South Wales, which were widely read in the colony and thus helped to form popular images of the industry. Finally, in a departure from the theme of mobility characterising the other contributions, Nichola Garvey documents her experiences of working with the Western Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest to research and write his biography. In what was conceived by both the author and the subject as an ‘authorised biography’, Garvey’s article raises some fundamental questions about biographical writing of living persons, including the utility and pitfalls of what she calls ‘expressivist anthropology’, as well as the scope of authorisation in biographical writing.
Details
- ISSN (print):
- 2209-9522
- ISSN (online):
- 2209-9573
- Publication date:
- Apr 2020
- Imprint:
- ANU Press
- DOI:
- http://doi.org/10.22459/AJBH.2020
- Journal:
- Australian Journal of Biography and History
- Disciplines:
- Arts & Humanities: Biography & Autobiography, History
- Countries:
- Australia
PDF Chapters
Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 3, 2020 »
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- Preliminary pages (PDF, 0.3MB)
- Preface (PDF, 0.1MB) – Malcolm Allbrook
Articles
- Chinese women in colonial New South Wales: From absence to presence (PDF, 0.9MB) – Kate Bagnall doi
- Heroines and their ‘moments of folly’: Reflections on writing the biography of a woman composer (PDF, 0.6MB) – Suzanne Robinson doi
- Building, celebrating, participating: A Macdougall mini-dynasty in Australia, with some thoughts on multigenerational biography (PDF, 0.3MB) – Pat Buckridge doi
- ‘Splendid opportunities’: Women traders in postwar Hong Kong and Australia, 1946–1949 (PDF, 0.2MB) – Jackie Dickenson doi
- John Augustus Hux (1826–1864): A colonial goldfields reporter (PDF, 2.5MB) – Peter Crabb doi
- ‘I am proud of them all & we all have suffered’: World War I, the Australian War Memorial and a family in war and peace (PDF, 0.2MB) – Alexandra McKinnon doi
- By their words and their deeds, you shall know them: Writing live biographical subjects—A memoir (PDF, 0.6MB) – Nichola Garvey doi
Review Articles
- Margy Burn, ‘Overwhelmed by the archive? Considering the biographies of Germaine Greer’ (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Josh Black, ‘(Re)making history: Kevin Rudd’s approach to political autobiography and memoir’ (PDF, 0.2MB)
Book Reviews
- Kim Sterelny review of Billy Griffiths, Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Anne Pender review of Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell, Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964 (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Susan Priestley review of Eleanor Robin, Swanston: Merchant Statesman (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Alexandra McKinnon review of Heather Sheard and Ruth Lee, Women to the Front: The Extraordinary Australian Women Doctors of the Great War (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Christine Wallace review of Tom D. C. Roberts, Before Rupert: Keith Murdoch and the Birth of a Dynasty and Paul Strangio, Paul ‘t Hart and James Walter, The Pivot of Power: Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership, 1949–2016 (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Sophie Scott-Brown review of Georgina Arnott, The Unknown Judith Wright (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Wilbert W. W. Wong review of Philippe Paquet, Simon Leys: Navigator between Worlds (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Jennifer Bird review of Kirsten McKenzie, Imperial Underworld: An Escaped Convict and the Transformation of the British Colonial Order (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Darryn Ansted review of Rex Butler and Sheridan Palmer (eds), Antipodean Perspective: Selected Writings of Bernard Smith (PDF, 0.2MB)
- Notes on contributors (PDF, 0.1MB)
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