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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Randolph Stow (1935–2010) was a writer who resisted critical containment. His complete oeuvre of eight novels, a children’s novella, a libretto, translation work and several collections of poetry presents an accomplished and impressive literary legacy.
Kate Rendell said:
'“Commencing this project with the simple ambition to present a critical collection responding to the full breadth of Randolph Stow’s work, I extended an invitation to literary scholars and critics whose work I knew addressed his writing. The responses were encouraging and generous, confirming the wide reach of interest in Stow’s life and literature. It reminded me that while not as comprehensively studied as some of his contemporaries, Stow continues to enjoy the support of broad public and academic readership.”
'The collection republishes a number of significant essays but also presents new readings acknowledging the remarkable skill as well as the limitations of Stow’s literary imagining. All are a testimony to the resonance of Stow’s writing while acknowledging the critical complexities of his work.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Content indexing in process.
Contents
- Truth Telling and the Art of Listening : To the Islands, single work essay (p. 77-94)
- Forest River Mission as Raw Material in to the Islands, single work criticism
- Introduction : Randolph Stow and His Literary Critics, single work criticism
- Shade to Camp in : The Land's Meaning : New and Selected Poems, single work criticism
- Colonial Adventure and Citation in Midnite, single work criticism
- The Story of a (Post) Colonial Boy, single work biography
- Tourmaline as Anti-Anabase, single work criticism
- 'O People of Little Weight in the Memory of These Places!' : Desert Narration in Tourmaline, single work criticism
- Randolph Stow : A Double Nostalgia, single work criticism biography
- Randolph Stow's Malta, single work criticism
- Machine in the Water : Oceanic Pastoral in The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea, single work criticism
- An 'Uncomfortable Form of Therapy' : Catharsis and the Colonial Subject in Stow's Expatriate Writing, single work criticism
- Visitants: Randolph Stow’s End Time Novel, single work criticism
- Randolph Stow's Medielalism : Responses to Chaucer's 'Pardoner's Tale', single work criticism
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Kate Leah Rendell, Ed. Randolph Stow: Critical Essays.
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 22 no. 1 2022;
— Review of Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021 anthology criticism 'Kate Leah Rendell has capitalised on the revitalised enthusiasm for Randolph Stow with Randolph Stow: Critical Essays, an edited collection of thirteen pieces exploring the writer of fiction and the man. It was Suzanne Falkiner’s hefty tome, Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow (2015), that sparked renewed interest in a once-major writer who had descended into oblivion by the time of his death in 2010. Stow had ranked among Australia’s major writers for most of the late twentieth century. At age 22, he won the Miles Franklin Prize for his third novel, To the Islands (1958). His subsequent novels, Tourmaline (1962) and The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1965) achieved classic status almost immediately. Stow’s history followed a pattern common enough among creative Australians in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He left the country in his twenties, in the early 1960s, leading a life as wanderer and then as a permanent exile. After an extended visit to Australia in 1974, Stow left for England—Suffolk—never to return. His writing silences moved from prolonged to permanent; after the 1984 publication of The Suburbs of Hell, Stow did not publish another work.' (Introduction) -
Beyond Platitudes : Contemporary Resonances in Randolph Stow’s Oeuvre
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 431 2021; (p. 46-47)
— Review of Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021 anthology criticism'‘Land isn’t always meant to be grasped any more than art is, or dust,’ writes Michael Farrell in the arresting opening sentence of the first essay of Kate Leah Rendell’s Randolph Stow: Critical essays. Stow’s writing shows just how provisional meaning and territoriality can be, and the statement is a fitting beginning to a new book about his work.' (Introduction)
-
Beyond Platitudes : Contemporary Resonances in Randolph Stow’s Oeuvre
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 431 2021; (p. 46-47)
— Review of Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021 anthology criticism'‘Land isn’t always meant to be grasped any more than art is, or dust,’ writes Michael Farrell in the arresting opening sentence of the first essay of Kate Leah Rendell’s Randolph Stow: Critical essays. Stow’s writing shows just how provisional meaning and territoriality can be, and the statement is a fitting beginning to a new book about his work.' (Introduction)
-
Kate Leah Rendell, Ed. Randolph Stow: Critical Essays.
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 22 no. 1 2022;
— Review of Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021 anthology criticism 'Kate Leah Rendell has capitalised on the revitalised enthusiasm for Randolph Stow with Randolph Stow: Critical Essays, an edited collection of thirteen pieces exploring the writer of fiction and the man. It was Suzanne Falkiner’s hefty tome, Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow (2015), that sparked renewed interest in a once-major writer who had descended into oblivion by the time of his death in 2010. Stow had ranked among Australia’s major writers for most of the late twentieth century. At age 22, he won the Miles Franklin Prize for his third novel, To the Islands (1958). His subsequent novels, Tourmaline (1962) and The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1965) achieved classic status almost immediately. Stow’s history followed a pattern common enough among creative Australians in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He left the country in his twenties, in the early 1960s, leading a life as wanderer and then as a permanent exile. After an extended visit to Australia in 1974, Stow left for England—Suffolk—never to return. His writing silences moved from prolonged to permanent; after the 1984 publication of The Suburbs of Hell, Stow did not publish another work.' (Introduction)
