Peter Mathers (1931 in England – 8 November 2004 in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

) was an English-born

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Au ...

author and playwright. Mathers' family emigrated to Australia while he was a child. He attended state school in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, and later

Sydney Technical College The Sydney Technical College, now known as the TAFE New South Wales Sydney Institute, is a technical school established in 1878, that superseded the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts. The college is one of Australia's oldest technical education i ...

, where he studied

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

. He "farmed, clerked, woolled, gardened, landscaped, chemicalled", and did other things before settling into his writing career. In 1961 he married and went to France to live in a

cork oak ''Quercus suber'', commonly called the cork oak, is a medium-sized, evergreen oak tree in the section ''Quercus'' sect. ''Cerris''. It is the primary source of cork for wine bottle stoppers and other uses, such as cork flooring and as the cores ...

forest. His two daughters were born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. From 1964 he worked in Britain and Europe as a researcher. His first writing appeared in the early 1960s, and in 1967 he took up a writing fellowship in the United States. He returned to Australia in 1968. In 1966 Mathers completed his first novel, ''Trap'', an inventive and often

comic novel A comic novel is a novel-length work of humorous fiction. Many well-known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's literary ...

concerning the escapades and family history of Jack Trap, an urban mixed-blood Aboriginal person in what was then a society racially divided by the

White Australia Policy The White Australia policy is a term encapsulating a set of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders, from immigrating to Australia, starting i ...

. It won the

Miles Franklin Literary 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 (1879–195 ...

, His second novel, ''The Wort Papers'' (1972), ranged across the country in rural settings from the Kimberley to dairy country in northern

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, and further established his reputation as a stylistic innovator and satirist. Mathers wrote

radio play Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine t ...

s, articles and published many stories in magazines, journals and newspapers before beginning a substantial playwriting career, which included ''Pelaco Hill'', ''Bats'', ''The Mountain King'' and ''The Real McCoy''. Some short stories were collected as ''A Change For the Better''. He lived in

for many years prior to his death in 2004 from pancreatic cancer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mathers, Peter 1931 births 2004 deaths English emigrants to Australia Australian dramatists and playwrights Miles Franklin Award winners Writers from Melbourne 20th-century Australian novelists 20th-century English novelists British male dramatists and playwrights English male novelists 20th-century English dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Australian male writers Australian male novelists Deaths from pancreatic cancer Deaths from cancer in Victoria (Australia) 20th-century English male writers Date of birth missing