Launch of New Search Strategies Imminent
AustLit's Development Team has been finalising the testing on new search screens and strategies. Three re-developed search forms will soon be implemented - Simple, Basic and Advanced - ensuring ease of use, more search options and simplified navigation for AustLit subscribers.

Developments will be most noticeable in the Basic Search and Advanced Search forms. In Basic mode, subscribers can choose Summary or Full Display formats and are able to limit searches to Full Text records. (In the last six months AustLit has added a substantial number of records linked to full text resources, and now provides access to nearly 1 000 short stories and well over 4 000 poems.)

In the new Advanced mode, search capabilities are significantly extended. A greater range of search functions is available through the Publication Details search, including a search for serialised works and the option of finding publications available in Full Text. Another new feature is the ability to search via Text Note Contains, enabling subscribers to search freely across AustLit's informative Note fields. Advanced Searches are easily built by clicking the '+' symbol adjacent to the desired field to reveal a drop down list and/or by clicking directly onto the relevant field. Hover text is included in the design to provide further instant information on the options available.

The new search screens are already available in experimental form. They will be finalised shortly and launched for the beginning of Semester II. A range of new Help pages to assist current users and new subscribers in their research will accompany the re-developed screens. Feedback on the new functions will be most welcome.

New Work and Agent Records
In the two months May-June 2003, the AustLit Content Team has added:

• 7 384 new works
• 1 491 new agents (individuals and organisations)

An important contribution to this tally was made by Chris Wood, a member of the Monash team. Chris has added nearly 600 new work records. The majority of these records are for novels written by the largely overlooked, pseudonymous Marshall Grover - pulp fiction author extraordinaire.

In addition to the news records, thousands of other exisiting work and agent records have been significantly upgraded and enhanced.

Several previous newsletters have introduced members of the AustLit Content Team, grouping them geographically by institution. In this newsletter we introduce four team members working on special projects during 2003.

• Roger Osborne, University of Queensland
  Roger Osborne is working on enhancing periodical records as part of the Magazines Project directed by Associate Professor David Carter, Professor Bruce Bennett and Professor Elizabeth Webby. Born in Boonah, Queensland, Roger completed his undergraduate studies at the University of New Orleans before returning to Australia to begin a PhD on Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes. After completing the PhD in 2000, he taught part-time at the University of New South Wales at ADFA in the School of Language, Literature and Communication, and worked for AustLit, compiling biographies and selecting critical articles for full-text encoding. Roger's articles on Conrad have been published in the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin and Studies in Bibliography. He is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge edition of Under Western Eyes and was commissioned to write a chapter for the volume, Joseph Conrad and Magazine Culture. Roger hopes to continue his work on Australian magazines in Queensland where it is much warmer than Canberra.
  
  
• Lyn Roman, Monash University
  Lyn Roman is working as research assistant to Terry O'Neill on the Bibliography of Australian Literature (BAL) project. Her professional background is in health and social welfare, but she brings a long-term interest in books, as well as research skills developed through an interest in family and local history, to her AustLit role. Lyn is responsible for maintaining the currency of the index of titles for BAL and for sighting books in the Monash University Library and the State Library of Victoria. She also makes contact with authors to verify information on both their works and their biographical details. Lyn comments that 'this puts a human face on our work and reminds me that real people create books'. The second volume of BAL will be complete by the end of 2003 and will be published in hard cover. The volume will cover all Australian authors of monograph length works of fiction, poetry and drama and include writers whose names begin with the letters F to K. Two further volumes will appear in forthcoming years.



• Philippa Wicks, University of New South Wales at ADFA
  Philippa Wicks is retrospectively indexing a range of poetry and short story anthologies, focussing on poetry from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Philippa has a BA (Hons.) from the Australian National University (ANU), majoring in English and French literature. She also holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. Philippa has been a research assistant with the (then) English Department at ADFA, and a part-time tutor at the ANU in Romantic and Victorian literature. She has worked as a lay minister in the Anglican Church, and has devised and presented short courses on issues of 'spirit' in Australian literature. In 2001-2002, Philippa worked for AustLit on children's literature and periodicals. She happily finds that 'the themes of AustLit materials reflect many of my interests!'



• Miri Jassy, The University of Sydney
  Miri Jassy graduated in May 2003 from The University of Sydney with an honours degree, majoring in Australian literature. Her honours thesis examined contemporary writings (fiction, opera, poetry, short stories, print media) about the Sydney Opera House. Miri has a scholarly background in 19th century Australian fiction and publication, and 'a dilettante's penchant for contemporary writings'. Her focus for AustLit in 2003 is the 3 600+ 'palm cards' inscribed by Patricia Barton when Barton was working as Professor Elizabeth Webby's research assistant. These cards represent every work of fiction ever published in The Australian Journal (1865 - 1962). In addition to data re-entry, Miri is engaged in 'the professional nosey-parkering known as "research" in the pursuit of obscure nineteenth century mass fiction authors'. She is attempting to reveal the identities of an overwhelming number of 'anonymous, acronymed and pseudonymed authors'. Miri is also subject indexing each work of fiction. She has noticed that certain settings and themes form a repeating motif in the stories. The most popular settings are:
  1. England - country houses and London salons
  2. America - the prairies, the Mississippi, the sprawling cities of New York and San Francisco
  
  and
  
  3. Australia - the bush, Melbourne, the gold fields
  Dominant themes include:
  1. Love across the class divide
  2. Inheritances lost and regained
  3. Young women on the precarious brink of marriage
  
  and
  
  4. The gold rushes
  
  Miri notes that 'the two big themes of Love and Crime, so inescapably controlled by contemporary religious, legal and social conventions, are what make the stories predictable, pliant material for the writer and perversely enjoyable for today's reader'.

Information on contributors from the University of Canberra, the University of New South Wales at ADFA, the University of Queensland, Monash University, the University of Western Australia, Deakin University and Flinders University can be found in previous newsletters in the AustLit News Archive.

Australia's Favourite Book?
500 members of The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) took the opportunity to vote in their Society's 40th anniversary poll to select Australia's favourite book. In keeping with the numeric theme, the ASA published a 'top 40' list of nominated books. Tim Winton's Cloudstreet headed the poll followed by The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson. Winton, along with David Malouf and Peter Carey, was represented on the list with three titles, but the author with the highest number of nominated works was Patrick White with five titles. David Marr's biography of White, Patrick White : A Life was one of two non-fiction books on the list, the other being Manning Clark's A History of Australia.

Only two books of poetry were nominated - Collected Poems 1942-1985 by Judith Wright and One Hundred Poems by Kenneth Slessor. Four children's books were included on the list and there was one inclusion by an indigenous writer, Sally Morgan's My Place.

Constitutional Preamble Re-Visited
The form of words for a preamble to the Australian Constitution has been raised again, on this occasion by James Bradley. In 1999 a preamble written by Les Murray was offered to, and rejected by, the Australian community as part of the referendum on a republic. Bradley has now initiated the Preamble Project with the support of the Australian Republican Movement. The Project was launched at the Museum of Sydney on 8 June 2003. Six writers have offered individual statements reflecting their vision for Australia, its land and people. The writers involved with the Project are Bradley, Peter Carey, Delia Falconer, Richard Flanagan, Dorothy Porter and Leah Purcell. Bradley begins his statement with a pledge of allegiance to 'the land, the sea [and] the sky'. Carey declares that Australia is a nation 'engendered by a foreign king, by foreign wars, by happenstance [and] by a once great empire which also bequeathed us our first rich cultural inheritance'. Leah Purcell's contribution opens in the language of the Kamilaroi and Gungarri people and continues in English, calling for respect for pioneers, immigrants, the land and its first peoples. The full text of the six preambles can be read on the website of the Australian Republican Movement at The Preambles Project.

Queen's Birthday Honours
Vera Newsom was the only writer to be recognised in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours. Newsom received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for 'service to literature as a poet and through support for the emerging talent of other writers'. Newsom has published four collections of poetry in the last 15 years. Her 1995 collection, Emily Bronte Re-Collects and Other Poems, won the Society of Women Writers, NSW, Book Award for Poetry.

Honorary Degree to Janette Turner Hospital
On 29 May Professor Janette Turner Hospital received an Honorary Doctor of Letters at the University of Queensland in recognition of her distinguished career and outstanding contribution to literature. UQ News Online reports that Professor Hospital will deposit her literary papers with the University Library as part of an agreement reached in 1995. The library has purchased the manuscripts of Charades, The Last Magician and The Ivory Swing under the arrangement.

Hospital's two most recent works are the novel Due Preparations for the Plague and a collection of short stories North of Nowhere South of Loss.

Italian Residency for Anthony Lawrence
In 2004 Anthony Lawrence will spend three months in Leece, Italy undertaking research and beginning the writing for his next novel. The Claudio Alcorso Award, presented through a partnership between Arts Tasmania and the Claudio Alcorso Foundation, enables Lawrence to take up this residency.

Inaugural Queensland Creative Fellowships
Jill Shearer and Sam Watson are two of the three recipients of the newly established Queensland Creative Fellowships. Shearer and Watson, along with dancer and choreographer Dale Johnston, will each receive $40 000. Shearer plans to write a full-length play based on political and sexual relationships between an Indonesian couple and an Australian couple in the tourist destination of Bali. The play will include elements of dance and mysticism. Wagan will concentrate on writing a book about the Brisbane Aboriginal and Islander community and the civil rights struggle from the 1950s through to the 1970s.

Australian Poets Translated at Poesiefestival Berlin
Ten Australian poets, including German-born Peter Skrzynecki, have been in Germany for Poesiefestival 2003. Each poet was paired with a German poet for three days of translation and collaboration. At the end of this period the poetry of the Australians was presented, in German, at a public reading.

Miller Takes Second Miles Franklin
Alex Miller won his second Miles Franklin Literary Award with his 2002 novel, Journey to the Stone Country. (Miller first won the Miles Franklin in 1993 for The Ancestor Game.) The judges described the central journey of Miller's latest novel as 'one of both time and space, through a confrontation with the brutalities of the past to the possibilities for a happier future'. The judges also touched on Miller's skilful handling of the 'difficult territory' of issues relating to 'reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians'. Five other works were shortlisted for the 2003 award:

• An Angel in Australia by Tom Keneally
• Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings
• Of a Boy by Sonja Hartnett
• The Prosperous Thief by Andrea Goldsmith

and

• Wild Surmise by Dorothy Porter

Alex Miller will receive $28 000 as the recipient of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award. The award is administered by Trust (previously Trust Company and Permanent). Under the terms of Miles Franklin's will, income from the bequest is used to 'award prizes annually to authors for the advancement, improvement and betterment of Australian Literature and to provide these winners with additional monetary amounts to enable them to improve their literary efforts and work'.

Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) Awards
The recent ASAL Conference in Brisbane announced the winners of this year's Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal and the A. A. Phillips Award. The ALS Gold Medal for 'an outstanding literary work' was received by Kate Jennings for Moral Hazard. The A. A. Phillips Award for 'an outstanding contribution to Australian literary scholarship' was presented to Professor Elizabeth Webby, a member of AustLit's Editorial Board.

2002 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards
Richard Bosworth has won the Premier's Prize for his extensive biography Mussolini. The judges commented that 'Bosworth's book is a triumph of scholarly research, human endeavour, extraordinary commitment and passionate belief in the power of historical narratives'. Bosworth was also joint winner of the Non-Fiction prize which he shared with Out of the Desert: Stories from the Walmajarri Exodus. The full list of award winners, together with the judges' comments, can be viewed at the State Library of Western Australia's website.

NSW Premier's Literary Awards
The NSW Premier's Literary Awards were presented by the Premier of NSW, the Hon. Bob Carr MP, on 19 May at the NSW Parliament House, Sydney. Mark McKenna's Looking for Blackfellas' Point : An Australian History of Place won both the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and the overall Book of the Year. McKenna documents his experience of buying a bush block in the hinterland of southern New South Wales and his subsequent immersion in discovering the European and indigenous history of the area. The citation for the overall award stated, in part, that the judges were impressed by 'McKenna's ability to combine empathy and historical rigour, his skilful control and use of many varied sources, the fairness and balance of the treatment, his ability to relate individuals to larger events - and the sheer readability of the narrative.'

The late Nick Enright won the Special Award for his long career as 'a fine writer, his encouragement of young artists, and his work in telling the stories of marginalised communities to a wider audience'. Although the award was announced posthumously, the Premier noted that Enright was made aware of the honour prior to his death.

A complete list of winners and citations, along with Judith Rodriguez's address at the awards ceremony, is available from the NSW Ministry for the Arts website.

2003 Phoenix Award
Ivan Southall has become the first Australian to win the Phoenix Award. Southall's 1983 novel The Long Night Watch was awarded the prize by The Children's Literature Association (ChLA), USA. The annual award recognises 'the most outstanding book for children published twenty years earlier which did not receive a major award at the time of publication'. (Interestingly, The Long Night Watch did win a significant Australian award three years after publication - the Festival Awards for Literature (SA), National Children's Literature Award in 1986.)

The citation for Southall's novel can be viewed at the ChLA's 2003 Phoenix Award website.

Important New Scholarly Editions
The Australian Scholarly Editions Centre has recently released two important new editions.

Hot off the electronic press is John Shaw Neilson : The Collected Verse, edited by Margaret Roberts. Many years of work went into the preparation of this variorum edition, working from the original manuscript sources. A full apparatus lists textual differences in all versions. Its overall purpose is twofold: 'firstly, to enable readers to see Neilson's work as a whole; and secondly, to enable readers to make informed judgements about the process of composition and transmission'. Roberts' introduction surveys Neilson's life and writing, his dealings with his editors, and explains the function and use of his manuscript notebooks.

The collection is available for download (free for private use) via the Centre's website at John Shaw Neilson : The Collected Verse.

Also published recently is the sixth title in The Academy Editions of Australian Literature series. Catherine Martin's novel of 1890 An Australian Girl, is edited by Rosemary Campbell and published by the University of Queensland Press. It restores the previously unavailable three-volume text of the first edition. (The abridgement of the novel for the second edition deleted much of the contentious material in the first - eugenics, euthanasia and German socialism.) The Academy Edition lists all textual differences and contains an account of the writing, publishing and critical reception of the novel in England and Australia, a chronology, explanatory notes, bibliography, and index.

Professor Paul Eggert is Director of the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre and a member of AustLit's Editorial Board. To stay in touch with the Centre's activities, subscribe to the annual Newsletter by contacting Professor Eggert via email at: p.eggert@adfa.edu.au

Australian Screen Classics from Currency Press
Currency Press has recently launched a new venture with ScreenSound Australia. Together they will publish the series of critical studies Australian Screen Classics written by 'prominent writers from disciplines ranging across art, culture and politics on Australian films they feel passionate about.' Currency Press says the series will combine 'careful research with high quality writing' thereby making 'a stimulating contribution to screen culture and [offering] readers lively, intelligent, creative and provocative writing on some of our most prized films.'

The first three books in the series are:

• The Mad Max Movies by Adrian Martin
• Walkabout by Louis Nowra
• The Devil's Playground by Christos Tsiolkas

Further details are available on Currency's website.

New Poetry Journal Launched
Salt-Lick Quarterly, a Melbourne-based journal, has commenced publication. Salt-Lick has 'a bias towards Australian free verse', although overseas submissions are also accepted. The journal takes its name from a line written by American Jungian analyst, James Hillman: 'The soul is like an animal that returns to its salt-licks' ('Alchemical Solutions').

A selection of poetry from the first two issues, along with details for submissions and subscriptions, can be viewed at Salt-Lick's website.

Clem Christesen
Founding editor of Meanjin and passionate advocate for Australian literature and the arts, Clem Christesen has died at the age of 92. Christesen was born in Townsville and spent his early childhood there (an era remembered in many of the poems and short stories in The Hand of Memory : Selected Stories and Verse). His family moved to Brisbane where Christesen completed his schooling, excelling at athletics, before training as a wool-classer and later turning his hand to journalism. He worked briefly for The Courier-Mail and The Daily Telegraph prior to employment as a writer for the Queensland government.

In December 1940 Christesen published 250 copies of an 8-page literary magazine titled Meanjin Papers. ('Meanjin' is a composite word formed from the Aboriginal words migan (spike) and chagun (land). Together, they refer to the site where Brisbane was established.)The first issue contained two of Christesen's own poems, another sixteen of which were to appear under his editorship, along with 9 of his short stories. (The literary content of Meanjin for the period 1940-1987 was indexed retrospectively by AustLit during 1999-2000.)

In the month following the launch of the new journal, Christesen began living with Nina Maximov who was to become his marriage companion for almost 60 years - their joint story is told in Judith Armstrong's The Christesen Romance (1996). Maximov offered Christesen critical support during the early years of Meanjin's publication and the couple moved to Melbourne in 1945 following an offer from Melbourne University to take up Meanjin's publishing and management. Although this arrangement stabilised Meanjin's production, circulation dropped and, in addition to this stress, the Christesen's were under regular surveillance during the Cold War years and were implicated in the 1955 Petrov Affair. Despite these setbacks, Christesen continued as editor of Meanjin until 1974, attracting many of Australia's best writers.

In addition to his work as editor, Christesen sustained his own writing of poetry and short stories. His selected works span a period of over 50 years, beginning with North Coast : Selected Verse (1943) and South Coast : Selected Verse (1944) and ending in 1997 with the publication of Ebb Tide : Selected Verse.

Recognising his significant contribution to Australian society, Christesen was the recipient of three Commonwealth honours - an OBE (1962), an OAM (2000) and, most recently, a Centenary Medal (announced in 2003). He was also awarded two of the Australian literary community's highest awards - the Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal (1966) and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) A. A. Phillips Award (1998).

Family and friends of Christesen gathered in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham to celebrate his life on 3 July.

Oriel Gray
Oriel Gray's funeral was also held in Melbourne on 3 July following Gray's death from a heart attack. Gray's major output as a playwright was in the decades from the 1940s to the 1960s. Her pre-eminent work, The Torrents, was joint winner of the 1955 Playwrights' Advisory Board Competition with Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Unlike the Doll, The Torrents did not receive ongoing acclaim. After its production in 1956 by the Adelaide New Theatre, it was not staged again for 40 years until it was revived at the 1996 Adelaide Festival.

Gray's plays are now regarded as being ahead of their time due to the complex manner in which they dealt with social issues. Gray addressed Aboriginal rights, life in the bush, migrant experience and women's employment. In her last published work (and her only novel), The Animal Shop, Gray returned to familiar themes - working women and class friction.

Gray's work received most attention within the New Theatre movement. These radical theatre groups were generally founded by Communist Party members and sympathisers and women's writing was more freely accepted there than in the mainstream Australian theatre of the time.

In addition to her writing for stage, Gray wrote extensively for radio and television. During the 1950s, Gray worked on the development of children's education programmes for the ABC and she later produced scripts for episodes of Rush, Bellbird and The Sullivans.

Gray's experiences up to the late 1940s are detailed in her 1985 autobiography Exit Left : Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman and considerable attention is given to her in Michelle Arrow's 2002 critical work Upstaged : Australian Women Dramatists in the Limelight at Last.

Bill Wannan
Bill Wannan, erstwhile collector of Australian stories, ballads and popular verse and a recognised authority on Australian folklore, has died in Melbourne at the age of 87. The son of W. F. Wannan (a highly regarded adult education lecturer and literary critic), Wannan was raised in an environment that fostered a love for language and literature. During World War II he served with the AIF and was stationed in the Northern Territory, Dutch New Guinea and various parts of Indonesia. Following the war, Wannan took up employment with the Department of Postwar Reconstruction.

In 1952, Wannan was one of the founders of the Australasian Book Society and, in the same year, began to write regular newspaper columns for The Argus and, later, the Australasian Post. A selection of these columns formed the basis for one of Wannan's most popular books, The Australian : Yarns, Ballads, Legends and Traditions of the Australian People, a work first published by the Australasian Book Society in 1954 and subsequently picked up by both Rigby and Viking for repeated publications.

During his career, Wannan collected over 10 000 samples of Australian folk literature. This mass of material, and Wannan's commentaries and insights, translated into over 50 books on folklore, humour, colonial figures, Australian fauna, and the Scots and Irish in Australia. A number of these books continue to be re-printed.

Other Recent Deaths
Other recent deaths among the Australian literary community have been:

• Glen Tomasetti - novelist and poet

and

• Corinne Kerby - poet

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