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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; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, ''mateship'', egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and " the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush. Overview Australian writers who have obtained international renown include the Nobel-winning author Patrick White, as well as authors Christina Stead, David Malouf, Peter Carey, Bradley Trevor Greive, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, Nevil Shute an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a particular subject.''OED'' Etymologically, the term derives from Latin ''literatura/litteratura'' "learning, a writing, grammar," originally "writing formed with letters," from ''litera/littera'' "letter". In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and actor. He is best known for his non-fiction novel ''Schindler's Ark'', the story of Oskar Schindler's rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, which won the Booker Prize in 1982. The book would later be adapted into Steven Spielberg's 1993 film ''Schindler's List'', which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Early life Both Keneally's parents (Edmund Thomas Keneally and Elsie Margaret Coyle) were born to Irish fathers in the timber and dairy town of Kempsey, New South Wales, and, though born in Sydney, his early years were also spent in Kempsey. His father, Edmund Thomas Keneally, flew for the Royal Australian Air Force in World War II, then returned to work in a small business in Sydney. By 1942, the family had moved to 7 Loftus Crescent, Homebush, a suburb in the inner west of Sydney and Keneally was enrolled at Christian Brothers St Patrick's College, Strathfield. Shortly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Slessor
Kenneth Adolphe Slessor (27 March 190130 June 1971) was an Australian poet, journalist and official war correspondent in World War II. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him. Early life Slessor was born Kenneth Adolphe Schloesser in Orange, New South Wales. As a boy, he lived in England for a time with his parents and in Australia visited the mines of rural New South Wales with his father, a Jewish mining engineer whose father and grandfather had been distinguished musicians in Germany. His family moved to Sydney in 1903. Slessor attended Mowbray House School (1910–1914) and the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (1915–1918), where he began to write poetry. His first published poem, "Goin'", about a wounded digger in Europe, remembering Sydney and its icons, appeared in '' The Bulletin'' in 1917. Slessor passed the 1918 N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Gilmore
Dame Mary Jean Gilmore (née Cameron; 16 August 18653 December 1962) was an Australian writer and journalist known for her prolific contributions to Australian literature and the broader national discourse. She wrote both prose and poetry. Gilmore was born in rural New South Wales, and spent her childhood in and around the Riverina, living both in small bush settlements and in larger country towns like Wagga Wagga. Gilmore qualified as a schoolteacher at the age of 16, and after a period in the country was posted to Sydney. She involved herself with the burgeoning labour movement, and she also became a devotee of the utopian socialism views of William Lane. In 1893, Gilmore and 200 others followed Lane to Paraguay, where they formed the New Australia Colony. She started a family there, but the colony did not live up to expectations and they returned to Australia in 1902. Drawing on her connections in Sydney, Gilmore found work with ''The Australian Worker'' as the editor of i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bulletin Debate
The "''Bulletin'' Debate" was a well-publicised dispute in '' The Bulletin'' magazine between two of Australia's best known writers and poets, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. The debate took place via a series of poems about the merits of living in the Australian "bush", published from 1892 to 1893. Origin At the time, '' The Bulletin'' was a popular and influential publication, and often supported the typical national self-image held by many Australians, sometimes termed the "bush legend."Lawson and ''The Bulletin'' Henry Lawson: Australian Writer, Australian Government Culture and Recreation Portal, Accessed on 7 November 2006 Many Australian writers and poets, such as |
Dorothea Mackellar
Isobel Marion Dorothea Mackellar, (1 July 1885 – 14 January 1968) was an Australian poet and fiction writer. Her poem ''My Country'' is widely known in Australia, especially its second stanza, which begins: "''I love a sunburnt country/A land of sweeping plains,/Of ragged mountain ranges,/Of droughts and flooding rains."'' Life The third child and only daughter of physician and parliamentarian Sir Charles Mackellar and his wife Marion Mackellar (née Buckland), the daughter of Thomas Buckland, she was born in the family home ''Dunara'' at Point Piper, Sydney, Australia in 1885. Her later home was ''Cintra'' at Darling Point (built in 1882 by John Mackintosh for his son James), and in 1925, she commissioned a summer cottage (in reality a substantial home with colonnaded verandah overlooking Pittwater), "Tarrangaua" at Lovett Bay, an isolated location on Pittwater reachable only by boat (this home is currently the residence of the novelist and author Susan Duncan and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, (17 February 18645 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include " Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem. Early life Andrew Barton Paterson was born at the property "Narrambla", near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton. Paterson's family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station near Yeoval NSW until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to sell up. When P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Lawson
Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest short story writer". A vocal nationalist and republican, Lawson regularly contributed to '' The Bulletin'', and many of his works helped popularise the Australian vernacular in fiction. He wrote prolifically into the 1890s, after which his output declined, in part due to struggles with alcoholism and mental illness. At times destitute, he spent periods in Darlinghurst Gaol and psychiatric institutions. After he died in 1922 following a cerebral haemorrhage, Lawson became the first Australian writer to be granted a state funeral. He was the son of the poet, publisher and feminist Louisa Lawson. Family and early life Henry Lawson was born 17 June 1867 in a town on the Grenfell goldfields of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clive James
Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Clive James — writer, TV broadcaster and critic — dies aged 80 ''ABC News'', 28 November 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2019. He began his career specialising in literary criticism before becoming television critic for ''The Observer'' in 1972, where he made his name for his wry, deadpan humour. During this period, he earned an independent reputation as a poet and satire, satirist. He achieved mainstream success in the UK first as a writer for television, and eventually as the lead in his own programmes, including ''...on Television ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barry Humphries
John Barry Humphries (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, a writer, and a landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only "the most significant theatrical figure of our time … utthe most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin". Humphries' characters have brought him international renown, and he also appeared in numerous stage productions, films, and television shows. Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Dame Edna Everage has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom – a gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Hughes (critic)
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes AO (28 July 19386 August 2012) was an Australian-born art critic, writer, and producer of television documentaries. He was described in 1997 by Robert Boynton of ''The New York Times'' as "the most famous art critic in the world." Hughes earned widespread recognition for his book and television series on modern art, '' The Shock of the New'', and for his longstanding position as art critic with ''TIME'' magazine. He is also known for his best seller ''The Fatal Shore'' (1986), a study of the British convict system in early Australian history. Known for his contentious critiques of art and artists, Hughes was generally conservative in his tastes, although he did not belong to a particular philosophical camp. His writing was noted for its power and elegance. Early life Hughes was born in Sydney, in 1938. His father and paternal grandfather were lawyers. Hughes's father, Geoffrey Forrest Hughes, was a pilot in the First World War, with later caree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literature, she has held academic positions in England at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge, and in the United States at the University of Tulsa. Based in the United Kingdom since 1964, she has divided her time since the 1990s between Queensland, Australia, and her home in Essex, England. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, ''The Female Eunuch'' (1970), made her a household name. An international bestseller and a watershed text in the feminist movement, it offered a systematic deconstruction of ideas such as womanhood and femininity, arguing that women were forced to assume submissive roles in society to fulfil male fantasies of what being a woman entailed. Greer's subsequent work has focused o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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