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This first-ever collection of Australian poet Judith Wright's nonfiction is a compelling portrait of a prescient voice on modern Australia.
'Judith Wright (1915-2000) is one of the best-known Australian poets of her generation. Born into a pioneering bush family, her commitments to environmental protection, history writing and obtaining recognition for First Nations people drew her in new directions and assumed a major role in her life. She was the first president of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, a founder of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a member of the Aboriginal Treaty Commission.
'This selection of her nonfiction, the first of its kind, brings together essays, speeches, family history, correspondence, memoir and criticism to reveal the personal and philosophical threads that bind together her work and life. It makes plain the shifts and transformations in her thinking, and the female friendships - in particular, with writer and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal - that opened her to new perspectives and connections.
'This addition to the Australian Thinkers series shows what happens when a poet talks about a nation. It reveals a way of thinking about Australia - its land, history and culture - that draws on the best of human possibility.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Pioneering Legacy : A Poet’s Love–fear Relationship with the Past
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 442 2022; (p. 23-24)
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose 'Georgina Arnott’s 2016 biography The Unknown Judith Wright was an absorbing exercise in discovering the facets of Judith Wright’s early life and formative experience that were unknown, hidden, or forgotten, by biographers as well as by Wright herself. It was a revealing study of a writer who had a love-fear relationship with the projects of biography and autobiography. In the 1950s, Wright wrote loving, admiring histories of her pioneering family, but in her autobiography, Half a Lifetime, published in 1999, the year before her death, she began: ‘Autobiography is not what I want to write.’ There were good reasons for this. There were the formal challenges of life writing – the person writing is not the person written about – but also what Wright had discovered, in her archival research for her rewriting of her family history, about her Wyndham colonial ancestors’ role in Aboriginal dispossession, and violence.'(Introduction)
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Judith Wright, an Activist Poet Who Was Ahead of Her Time
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 2 May 2022;
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose'Judith Wright is a giant of Australian letters. Though most famous as a poet, she was also a very fine writer in prose, and it is this dimension of her writing that is brought to life in a new selection of her non-fiction.'
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Georgina Arnott (ed) Judith Wright: Selected Writings
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 April 2022;
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose'This is an essential gathering and representative selection from the vast body of Judith Wright’s nonfiction. It is well organised into thematic sections, with each essay, article and extract from longer work introduced precisely and briefly. Georgina Arnott is proving to be one of Australia’s most astute and sensitive non-Indigenous critics of colonial historicising. She is a Wright expert and a judicious and attuned editor of this collection. The introduction is keen, empathetic and contextualising.' (Introduction)
-
Georgina Arnott (ed) Judith Wright: Selected Writings
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 9-15 April 2022;
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose'This is an essential gathering and representative selection from the vast body of Judith Wright’s nonfiction. It is well organised into thematic sections, with each essay, article and extract from longer work introduced precisely and briefly. Georgina Arnott is proving to be one of Australia’s most astute and sensitive non-Indigenous critics of colonial historicising. She is a Wright expert and a judicious and attuned editor of this collection. The introduction is keen, empathetic and contextualising.' (Introduction)
-
Judith Wright, an Activist Poet Who Was Ahead of Her Time
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 2 May 2022;
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose'Judith Wright is a giant of Australian letters. Though most famous as a poet, she was also a very fine writer in prose, and it is this dimension of her writing that is brought to life in a new selection of her non-fiction.'
-
Pioneering Legacy : A Poet’s Love–fear Relationship with the Past
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 442 2022; (p. 23-24)
— Review of Judith Wright : Selected Writings 2022 selected work essay prose 'Georgina Arnott’s 2016 biography The Unknown Judith Wright was an absorbing exercise in discovering the facets of Judith Wright’s early life and formative experience that were unknown, hidden, or forgotten, by biographers as well as by Wright herself. It was a revealing study of a writer who had a love-fear relationship with the projects of biography and autobiography. In the 1950s, Wright wrote loving, admiring histories of her pioneering family, but in her autobiography, Half a Lifetime, published in 1999, the year before her death, she began: ‘Autobiography is not what I want to write.’ There were good reasons for this. There were the formal challenges of life writing – the person writing is not the person written about – but also what Wright had discovered, in her archival research for her rewriting of her family history, about her Wyndham colonial ancestors’ role in Aboriginal dispossession, and violence.'(Introduction)
