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Brenda Niall Brenda Niall i(A14626 works by) (birth name: Brenda Mary Niall)
Also writes as: Elinor Doyle
Born: Established: 1930 St Kilda, Caulfield - St Kilda area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Brenda Niall's schooling was at Genezzano in Kew, Victoria. After obtaining her B.A. at the University of Melbourne, Niall transferred to the ANU, where she gained her M.A. In 1964 she was appointed as a teaching fellow in the English Department at Monash University and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1975 and Reader in 1994. At Monash she also completed her PhD. Dr Niall has held visiting fellowships at Michigan and Yale Universities. She was American Council of Learned Societies Visiting Research Fellow in 1975 and Visiting Scholar, Humanities Research Centre at the ANU in 1983 and 1987.

Dr Niall retired from her position as Reader in English Literature at Monash University in 1995. Her research interests are in the fields of Australian Literature (in particular Martin Boyd, Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce (qq.v.) and children's literature), Australian History (Georgiana McCrae (q.v.) and the Boyd family) and American Literature (in particular Edith Wharton).

In 2004 Dr Niall was made an Officer of the Order of Australia to acknowledge her services to Australian Literature. In October 2005 Monash University awarded her the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters.

Dr Niall is the sister of Frances O'Neill and aunt of Kate Ryan and Jake Niall.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Friends and Rivals : Four Great Australian Writers Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2020 17948541 2020 selected work biography

'FOUR Australian women writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a time when stories of bush heroism and mateship abounded, a time when a writing career might be an elusive thing for a woman.

'Friends and Rivals is a vivid and engaging account of the intersecting and entwined lives of Ethel Turner, author of the much loved Seven Little Australians; Barbara Baynton, who wrote of the harshness of bush life; Nettie Palmer, essayist and critic; and Henry Handel Richardson, of The Getting of Wisdom and The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney fame.

'Brenda Niall illuminates a fascinating time in Australia’s literary history and brings to life the remarkable women who made it so.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2020 winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book Award
2020 shortlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
y separately published work icon Mannix Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2015 8355069 2015 single work biography

'Daniel Mannix, Archbishop of Melbourne from 1917 until his death, aged ninety-nine, in 1963, was a towering figure in Melbourne's Catholic community. But his political interventions had a profound effect on the wider Australian nation too.

'Award-winning biographer Brenda Niall has made some unexpected discoveries in Irish and Australian archives which overturn some widely held views. She also draws on her own memories of meeting and interviewing Mannix to get to the essence of this man of contradictions, controversies and mystery.

'Mannix is not only an astonishing new look at a remarkable life, but a fascinating depiction of Melbourne in the first half last century.' (Publication summary)

2016 longlisted CHASS Australia Prizes Australia Book Prize
2016 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Non-Fiction
2016 winner National Biography Award
2016 winner ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
2016 shortlisted ASAL Awards The Australian Historical Association Awards Magarey Medal for Biography
2016 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
2015 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards Non-Fiction Book Award
2015 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
y separately published work icon True North : The Story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012 Z1851582 2012 single work biography 'Growing up in suburban Perth in the 1920s, the two Durack girls were fascinated by tales of the pioneering past of their father and grandfather overlanding from Queensland in the 1880s and setting up four vast cattle stations in the remote north. A year spent together on the stations in their early twenties ignited in the sisters a lifelong love of the Kimberley, along with a growing unease about the situation of the Aboriginal people employed there. Through war, love affairs, children and eventual old age, the Duracks continued to write and paint - their closely intertwined creative lives always shaped by the enduring power of the Kimberley region. With unprecedented access to hundreds of private family letters, unpublished memoirs, diaries and family papers, Brenda Niall gets to the heart of a uniquely Australian story that spans the twentieth century.' Source: http://textpublishing.com.au/ (Sighted 28/03/2012).
2012 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Western Australian History
2012 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Award for Non-Fiction
2013 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Biography of the Year
2012 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's History Prize New South Wales History Prize Australian History Prize
Last amended 27 Jul 2018 07:47:05
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