Dorothy Auchterlonie (also known as Dorothy Green) (28 May 1915 – 21 February 1991) was an English-born Australian academic, literary critic and poet.
Life
Auchterlonie was born in
Sunderland, County Durham in England. In 1927 when she was 12 years old, her family moved to Australia.
Educated in both England and Australia, Auchterlonie went on to study at the
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...
, where she completed a first-class honours and then an M.A. in English. During her time there Auchterlonie became a member of an elite group that included the brilliant and flamboyant
poet
James McAuley
James Phillip McAuley (12 October 1917 – 15 October 1976) was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax.
Life and career
McAuley wa ...
,
Joan Fraser (who wrote under the pseudonym Amy Witting),
Harold Stewart
Harold Frederick Stewart (14 December 19167 August 1995) was an Australian poet and oriental scholar. He is chiefly remembered alongside fellow poet James McAuley as a co-creator of the Ern Malley literary hoax.
Stewart's work has been asso ...
, Oliver Somerville, Alan Crawford and Ronald Dunlop. James McAuley and Harold Stewart were later to become notorious for perpetrating the
Ern Malley
The Ern Malley hoax, also called the Ern Malley affair, is Australia's most famous literary hoax. Its name derives from Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley, a fictitious poet whose biography and body of work were created in one day in 1943 by conservat ...
hoax. The group was described by
Peter Coleman
William Peter Coleman (15 December 1928 – 31 March 2019) was an Australian writer and politician. A widely published journalist for over 60 years, he was editor of '' The Bulletin'' (1964–1967) and of '' Quadrant'' for 20 years, and publi ...
in his book on James McAuley, as the 'sourly brilliant literary circle',
an oblique reference to
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson De Quincey (; 15 August 17858 December 1859) was an English writer, essayist, and literary critic, best known for his '' Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'' (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quinc ...
.
In 1944, Auchterlonie married literary historian and critic,
H. M. Green (1881–1962), who was then the Librarian at the
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...
.
Auchterlonie worked as an ABC broadcaster and journalist in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra from 1942 to 1949, and in 1955 became co-principal of a Queensland school. In 1961 she became the first female lecturer at
Monash University
Monash University () is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Named for prominent World War I general Sir John Monash, it was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. The university h ...
, lecturing in literature. Her teaching career included positions at both the
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...
and the
Australian Defence Force Academy
The Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) is a tri-service military Academy that provides military and academic education for junior officers of the Australian Defence Force in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Australian Army and Royal Aus ...
.
During her academic career (1961–1987) she threw herself into championing Australian literature and publishing literary criticism to re establish authors she felt were undervalued, notably
Martin Boyd
Martin à Beckett Boyd (10 June 1893 – 3 June 1972) was an Australian writer born into the à Beckett– Boyd family, a family synonymous with the establishment, the judiciary, publishing and literature, and the visual arts since the early 19t ...
,
E. L. Grant Watson,
Patrick White, '
Henry Handel Richardson
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (3 January 187020 March 1946), known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author.
Life
Born in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, into a prosperous family that later fell on hard ti ...
',
Christopher Brennan
Christopher John Brennan (1 November 1870 – 5 October 1932) was an Australian poet, scholar and literary critic.
Biography
Brennan was born in Haymarket, an inner suburb of Sydney, to Christopher Brennan (d. 1919), a brewer, and his wife ...
,
Christina Stead
Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a me ...
and
Kylie Tennant
Kathleen Kylie Tennant AO (; 12 March 1912 – 28 February 1988) was an Australian novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer, and historian.
Early life and career
Tennant was born in Manly, New South Wales; she was educat ...
. In 1963, after publisher Angus & Robertson had approached her for an abridgement suitable for students, she began to revise her husband H. M. Green's massive ''History of Australian Literature'', republished in two volumes in 1985. Her major study of Henry Handel Richardson, ''Ulysses Bound'' was published in 1973 and revised in 1986. From 1970 she had begun researching a major biography of writer and biologist E. L. Grant Watson, which led to the publication of ''Descent of Spirit'' in 1990, but at her death in 1991 the project remained uncompleted.
Along with supporting environmental causes and volunteer work for the Australian Council of Churches, she was also prominent in campaigning with an ADFA colleague, David Headon, in speeches and writing
against nuclear arms. She visited Moscow in 1987 as one of nine Australian delegates invited to a peace forum by the USSR Government.
In 1991 a collection of Auchterlonie's writings and papers was purchased by the
National Library of Australia
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...
.
Additional papers and documents are held in the Australian Defence Force Academy Library, Canberra.
Recognition
Auchterlonie was awarded a
Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 1984 and was made an
Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1988 for her services to literature, teaching and writing.
Bibliography
As Dorothy Green
* ''Fourteen Minutes'' (1950; with H. M. Green)
* ''H. M. Green's History of Australian Literature Vols 1 & 2'' (revised by D.G.) Angus & Robertson, Australia 1984
* ''The Music of Love: critical essays on literature and life'' Penguin Books, Melbourne 1984
* ''Ulysses Bound: a study of Henry Handel Richardson and her fiction'' Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1986
* ''Imagining the Real: Australian Writing in the Nuclear Age'' (ed. with David Headon) ABC Enterprises, Sydney 1987
* ''Descent of Spirit: Writings of E.L. Grant Watson'' (ed.) Primavera Press, Sydney 1990
* ''The Writer, the Reader and the Critic in a Monoculture'', Foundation for Australian Literary Studies 1986; Primavera Press, Sydney 1991
As Dorothy Auchterlounie:
* ''Kaleidoscope'' Viking Press, Sydney 1940
As Dorothy Auchterlonie
* ''The Dolphin'' ANU Press, Canberra 1967
* ''Something to Someone: Poems'' Brindabella Press, Canberra 1983
Notes
References
*
MS 5678 Papers of Dorothy Green (1915–1991)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Dorothy Auchterlonie
1915 births
1991 deaths
Australian literary critics
University of Sydney alumni
Monash University faculty
Australian National University faculty
Officers of the Order of Australia
Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia
Australian women poets
Australian women literary critics
Australian anti–nuclear weapons activists
20th-century Australian women writers
20th-century Australian poets
British emigrants to Australia