|
Holden's Performance
''Holden's Performance'' (1987) is a novel by Australian writer Murray Bail. It was originally published by Viking in Australia in 1987. Synopsis Covering the period from World War II through to the mid-1960s this novel follows the life of Holden Shadbolt. After the war Shadbolt moves from his native Adelaide to Sydney where he becomes a driver for Senator (and then government Minister) Sid Hoadley, and later a bodyguard for visiting foreign heads of state. Critical reception Writing in ''The Canberra Times'' reviewer Marion Halligan noted: "Murray Bail's latest novel is about language. He proudly claims that it is not realistic, and this is the way it isn't. It turns words into the things they describe, it makes metaphors literal, it puts sound before sense, thus giving sense an extra dimension...I find it the kind of book which amazes and delights while I am reading it, but does not inspire a desire to pick it up once I've put it down. Whereas lesser novels have made me care ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Murray Bail
Murray Bail (born 22 September 1941) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. In 1980 he shared the Age Book of the Year award for his novel ''Homesickness.'' He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He has lived most of his life in Australia except for sojourns in India (1968–70) and England and Europe (1970–74). He lives in Sydney. He was trustee of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1981 and wrote a book on Australian artist Ian Fairweather. A portrait of Bail by the artist Fred Williams is hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. The portrait was done while both Williams and Bail were Council members of the National Gallery of Australia. Career He is most well known for ''Eucalyptus'', which won the Miles Franklin Award in 1999. His other work includes the novels ''Homesickness'', which was a joint winner of The Age Book of the Year in 1980, and ''Holden's Performance'', another award-winner. Reviewers recently compa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975. History Guinzburg, a Harvard graduate and former employee of Simon and Schuster and Oppenheimer, a graduate of Williams College and Alfred A. Knopf, founded Viking in 1925 with the goal of publishing nonfiction and "distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest." B. W. Huebsch joined the firm shortly afterward. Harold Guinzburg's son Thomas became president in 1961. The firm's name and logo—a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent—were meant to evoke the ideas of adventure, exploration, and enterprise implied by the word "Viking." In August 1961, they acquired H.B. Huesbsch, which maintained a list of backlist titles from authors such as James Joyce an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homesickness (novel)
''Homesickness'' (1980) is a novel by Australian writer Murray Bail. It was originally published by Macmillan in Australia in 1980. It won both The Age Book of the Year Award and The Age Book of the Year Fiction Awards in 1980. It shared both awards with David Ireland's novel ''A Woman of the Future''. Synopsis The novel follows a group of thirteen Australian travelling together on a package tour that takes in Africa, England, Ecuador, New York and Moscow. Awards * co-winner The Age Book of the Year Awards — Fiction 1980 * co-winner The Age Book of the Year 1980 Critical reception Suzanne Edgar, writing in ''The Canberra Times'' noted: "The group of Australians abroad, their attitudes and tastes are satirised and sent up from the superior viewpoint of the artist-observer: blind Kaddok is always taking photographs, while socially withdrawn Shiela sends hundreds of post-cards. Each tourist is tabbed by one or two stereotyped attributes that do no more than narrowly differe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eucalyptus (novel)
''Eucalyptus'' is a 1998 novel by Australian novelist Murray Bail. The book won the 1999 Miles Franklin Award and the 1999 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Plot introduction ''Eucalyptus'' tells the story of ''Ellen Holland'', a young woman whose "speckled beauty" and unattainability become legend far beyond the rural western New South Wales town near the property where she grows up. Her protective father's obsession with collecting rare species of Eucalyptus trees leads him to propose a contest - the man who can correctly name all the species on his property shall win her hand in marriage. Thematic concerns The novel contrasts a detailed, scientific classifying of Eucalyptus trees, with the story of Ellen told from a parodied fairy tale perspective. This fits well with Bail’s status as a writer of fiction and non-fiction. The novel begins with a discussion of Australian culture “the poetic virtues which have their origins in the bush of being belted about by droughts, bushfires ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic ''My Brilliant Career'' (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued A$60,000. __TOC__ Winners Controversies Author Frank Moorhouse was disqualified from consideration for his novel Grand Days because the story was set in Europe during the 1920s and was not sufficiently Australian. 1995 winner Helen Darville, also known as Helen Demidenko and Helen Dale, won for The Hand that signed the Paper and sparked a debate about authenticity in Australian literature. Darville claimed to be of Ukrainian descent and said it was fiction based on family history. Writer David Marr, who presented the award to her said that revelations about her true ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victorian Premier's Prize For Fiction
The Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction, is a prize category in the annual Victorian Premier's Literary Award. As of 2011 it has an remuneration of 25,000. The winner of this category prize vies with 4 other category winners for overall Victorian Prize for Literature valued at an additional 100,000. The prize was formerly known as the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction from inception until 2010, when the awards were re-established under the stewardship of the Wheeler Centre and restarted with new prize amounts and a new name. The Palmer Prize was valued at 30,000 in 2010. The award was named after Vance Palmer, a leading literary critic. Palmer wrote reviews and presented a program called ''Current Books Worth Reading'' on ABC Radio. He also wrote books about Australian cultural life, including ''National Portraits'' (1940) ''A.G. Stephens: His Life and Work'', (1941) ''Frank Wilmot'' (1942), ''Old Australian bush ballads'' (co-au ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faber & Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Founded in 1929, in 2006 the company was named the KPMG Publisher of the Year. Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Faber and Faber ended the partnership with FSG in 2015 and began distributing its books directly in the United States. History Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originates in the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine ''The Nursing Mirror.'' The Gwyers' desire to expand into trade publishing led them to Geoffrey Fab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history" , Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), Woolworths and other stores for Sixpence (British coin), sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science. Penguin Books is now an imprint (trade name), imprint of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Text Publishing
Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng Ho and others, with a small book publishing division known as Text Publishing. Michael Heyward joined in 1992, and the small publishing house became independent in 1994. When Text Media was taken over by Fairfax Media in 2004, Michael Heyward and his wife Penny Hueston entered into a joint venture with Scottish publisher Canongate. Maureen and Tony Wheeler, founders of Lonely Planet, bought Canongate's share in Text in 2011, making it a wholly Australian-owned company. In 2012, Text launched a series of Australian classics, republishing out of print works that had been, for the most part, lost to literary history. People As of August 2022, Heyward was the publisher. Awards Text awards The Text Prize for Young A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvill Press
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse. The firm became renowned for its political stance, being both anti-fascist and anti-communist, a position that put them at loggerheads with the ethos of many intellectuals of the time. When George Orwell parted company with Communist Party sympathizer Victor Gollancz over his editing of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), he took his next book ''Homage to Catalonia'' to Secker & Warburg, who published it in 1938. They also published, after 18 months of rejections and setbacks, ''Animal Farm'' (1945), and Orwell's subsequent books.Orwell, Sonia, and Ian Angus (eds), ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945–1950)''. Penguin, 1970. Orwell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1987 In Australian Literature
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1987. Events * Glenda Adams won the 1987 Miles Franklin Award for ''Dancing on Coral'' Major publications Novels * Glenda Adams — ''Dancing on Coral'' * Murray Bail — ''Holden's Performance'' * Sumner Locke Elliott — ''Waiting for Childhood'' * Barbara Hanrahan — ''Kewpie Doll'' * Nicholas Jose — ''Paper Nautilus'' * Thomas Keneally — ''The Playmaker'' * Olga Masters — ''Amy's Children'' * Colleen McCullough — ''The Ladies of Missalonghi'' * Boyd Oxlade — ''Death in Brunswick'' * Eric Willmot — ''Pemulwuy, the Rainbow Warrior'' Short stories * Jessica Anderson — '' Stories from the Warm Zone'' * Thea Astley — ''It's Raining in Mango'' * Julie Lewis — ''The Walls of Jericho: Stories'' * Patrick White — '' Three Uneasy Pieces'' Children's and young adult fiction * John Marsden — ''So Much to Tell You'' Science fiction and fantasy * Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
