During the course of the Reverse Diaspora project research into the lives and works of the following list of authors will enable information within AustLit to be enhanced. This list will inevitably change and grow as work proceeds.

To offer information or assistance, please contact Professor Bruce Bennett at info-austlit@austlit.edu.au

• Aldridge, James (1918 - )
  James Aldridge was born in White Hills, Victoria. He worked briefly for several Melbourne newspapers before moving to England where he pursued a career in journalism. Aldridge worked as a war correspondent during the Second World War, but later left journalism to write novels full-time. Since moving to England, he has rarely visited Australia. Aldridge published three novels during the 1940s and became well-known, and was often criticised, for the Marxist tone of his fiction. He has written...
• Attiwill, Ken (1906 - 1960)
  Ken Attiwill was a journalist on the Adelaide Register, the Sun and Herald (both Melbourne) and the Daily Sketch (London). During the Second World War, he was a Prisoner of War of the Japanese. His novels draw on his experiences in journalism, at war and at sea. Attiwill was resident in England for most of the latter part of his life. Husband of Evadne Price (q.v.).
• Baylebridge, William (1883 - 1942)
  William Baylebridge was born in Brisbane, Queensland, and was educated at home, at a state school and at Brisbane Grammar School. Baylebridge aspired to be a writer and in 1908 went to England. In England he lived with his mother's half-sister, Grace Leven, and was supported by his maternal grandmother for a short period. He published many limited editions of his poetry and constantly revised and republished many of his poems. After reportedly serving in World War I, he returned to Australia...
• Baynton, Barbara (1857 - 1929)
  Barbara Baynton was the seventh child of Elizabeth (nee Ewart) and John Lawrence. Her claim that she was illegitimate had its origins in the long de facto relationship her mother had with Robert Kilpatrick, whom Elizabeth married in 1862. In Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds (1989), Penne Hackforth-Jones speculates that Baynton and her siblings were all illegitimate. Discrepancies appear in statements made by Baynton and some editions of her work refer to her simply...
• Beynon, Richard (1925 - 1999)
  Beynon moved to England in 1947and worked as an actor, script writer, editor and television producer for the BBC on shows such as 'Z Cars' and 'The Duchess of Duke Street'. Although reference sources give his year of birth as 1927, the obituary in the "Australian" (18.3.1999) states that Beynon was born on 28 March 1925.
• Blakemore, Michael (1928 - )
  
• Boothby, Guy (1867 - 1905)
  Born in Adelaide, Boothby was the son of pastoralist Thomas Wilde Boothby M.P.and his wife Mary Agnes, nee Hodding. Boothby's grandfather, Judge Benjamin Boothby, was removed from the South Australian Supreme Court Bench in 1867. Boothby's mother took her three sons to England in 1875 and he was educated at the Priory School, Salisbury, and at Lord Weymouth School, Warminster in Wiltshire. Boothby returned to Adelaide when he was sixteen and worked in the office of the Town Clerk of Adelaide...
• Bowen, Stella (1893 - 1947)
  
• Boyd, Martin (1893 - 1972)
  Martin à Beckett Boyd was born at Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1893, when his family were on their way home to Australia after one of their periodic trips to England and Europe. His parents, Arthur Merric Boyd (1862-1940) and Emma Minnie Boyd (q.v.) (1858-1936) were both artists of note, while his brothers Merric (1888-1959) and Penleigh (1890-1923) excelled at pottery and painting respectively. On his mother's side Boyd was descended from Gilbert à Beckett, the founder of Punch, while his...
• Braddon, Russell (1921 - 1995)
  Russell Braddon served as a gunner in the 2/15 Field Regiment during World War II and was a prisoner of war at Changi, Singapore. Braddon wrote a number of biographies, books of history and travel works. He also wrote film and television scripts, including, as co-author, The Cowra Breakout, winner of the NSW State Literary Awards Television Writing Award in 1985.
• Brickhill, Paul (1916 - 1991)
  Brickhill has also written other books on World War II. His novels The Dam Busters, The Great Escape and Reach for the Sky have all been filmed.
• Bruce, Mary Grant (1878 - 1958)
  Mary Grant Bruce was born near Sale, Victoria, the fourth child of Irish and Welsh parents. Educated at Miss Estelle Beausir's Ladies High School, she matriculated in 1895 with honours in English, history and botany. After winning the Shakespeare Society's annual prize several times, she began work as a journalist, writing for the Age and the Leader and contributing articles and stories to a variety of magazines. Bruce wrote many books, but she is best remembered for the Billabong...
• Chambers, C. Haddon (1860 - 1921)
  Arguably Australia's most successful playwright on the international stage during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, C. Haddon Chambers wrote at least eight society plays (generally referred to at that time as 'well-made' plays). A number of his works were also staged in America, Europe and Australia. One of five children, Chambers was educated at Sydney's Fort Street School in Marrickville and Petersham. His father was civil servant who spent some twenty-five years with the...
• Cleary, Jon (1917 - )
  Jon Cleary is one of Australia's most prolific and commercially successful authors, having produced a novel almost every year for the last two decades and sold more than 8 million copies of his novels internationally. The Sundowners (1951) alone has sold more than 3 million copies. Cleary enjoys the rare distinction that all of his novels have been first published in hardback and many of his novels have been made into films. He has also written many scripts for radio and television....
• Clift, Charmian (1923 - 1969)
  Charmian Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales, and educated at local schools, but inherited her love for books from her parents. After leaving school, she worked locally, but moved to Sydney when she won the New South Wales title in Pix magazine's Beach Girl Quest. Clift joined the army during World War II and, while editing an army magazine she began to write short stories. After the war she worked for the Argus. Here she met the writer George Johnston and the couple married...
• Close, Robert S. (1903 - 1995)
  In a series of three sensational trials in the Victorian courts from 1946 to 1948 - one aborted, one to convict, one to appeal - Robert Close was found guilty of the common law offence of obscene libel for his first novel Love Me Sailor and sentenced to a gaol term. His publisher Georgian House was fined 100 pounds. Both the fine and the term were reduced on appeal, but the case was a nation-wide scandal and saw literary, journalist and civil rights organisations in many states...
• Clutsam, George Howard (1866 - 1951)
  George Clutsam was a composer, songwriter, librettist, and pianist. Described by one London music critic as one 'of the moderns' and 'a close student of Strauss and Debussy [whose] work reveals great mastery of orchestral possibilities and many clever touches of instrumental humour', George Clutsam's early life saw him exposed to and involved in many different styles of music. He is believed to have moved around with his parents quite often during his early years, with periods of time being...
• Cobb, Chester Francis (1899 - 1943)
  Chester Cobb was the son of Joseph Septimus Cobb, a chemist from Sheffield, England and his Geelong-born wife Rosalie Thomasina Kate Cockburn, nee Smith. Cobb left school early to become a cadet, and later a reporter, for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. After his mother's death in 1921, he received a small inheritance which he used to move to England, possibly intending to pursue a literary career. Allen and Unwin rejected several manuscripts before they accepted Mr Moffatt. That...
• Collins, Dale (1897 - 1956)
  Dale Collins began his writing career as a journalist for the Melbourne Herald newspaper and the magazine Table Talk. He also contributed stories to the weekly Bulletin magazine. His best selling novel Ordeal (1924) was the result of a world cruise on the yacht 'Speejacks' skippered by American millionaire A. Y. Gowen. Many of his books for children have nautical or island settings, even Bush Voyage describes an imaginary journey down the Murray River.
• Collinson, Laurence (1925 - 1986)
  Laurence Collinson migrated to Australia in 1930 with his family. He was educated at primary and secondary schools in Melbourne, Sydney, Dalby and Brisbane. After completing a secondary teaching diploma at Merrer House, Melbourne, and teaching mathematics and English at Melbourne secondary schools between 1955 and 1961, he worked as the editor of a teachers' journal, The Educational Magazine, until 1964. In 1964 he returned to London to pursue a career in freelance writing, regarding...
• Conrad, Peter (1948 - )
  Peter Conrad has also written a number of works on the arts and literature. He gave the 2004 Boyer Lectures and in 2008 he published Creation: Artists, Gods and Origins, a book that celebrates art and critiques religion.
• Coombs, Margaret (1945 - 2004)
  Margaret Coombs was born of Jewish, Prussian, German and English descent on her father's side and has written of the importance for her writing of her 'problematical Jewish background'. Her father was a country doctor, and she spent her early years in Mudgee, a town later fictionalised as Narramundi in Regards to the Czar. When the family moved to Sydney she attended Kambala Church of England Girls' School, and later Sydney University, where she was awarded a Master of Arts degree in...
• Couvreur, Jessie Catherine (1848 - 1897)
  Jessie Couvreur (nee Huybers) was born at Southwood Lodge in Highgate, north London. Her mother Charlotte (nee Ogleby), the child of an English father and a French mother, was a teacher who undertook the education of her children. Couvreur's father, Jacques (James) Alfred Huybers was born at Anvers (Antwerp), then part of Holland, later Belgium. The Huybers immigrated to Hobart Town when Couvreur was four years old. Alfred established a successful business trading wine and in 1859 the family...
• Dawe, Carlton (1865 - 1935)
  Carlton Dawe was born in Adelaide and moved to Melbourne with his parents in about 1880. He settled permanently in England in 1892 but travelled extensively, apparently both before and after that date. He published three volumes of verse and two works of fiction before moving to England, his poetry and his first novel being published under the name William Dawe. His poetry had not won him much acclaim but he went on to become a prolific and successful writer of popular romance, adventure and...
• Delahunt, Meaghan (1961 - )
  Meaghan Delahunt was born and educated in Melbourne. She was influenced by feminist thought at an early age and was actively involved in the Socialist Workers' Party while attending Melbourne University. Soon after breaking with the party in the 1980s she visited an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's paintings and began to think about Leon Trotsky's assassination in Mexico and his relationship to Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She expressed these thoughts in poetry, short fiction and eventually a novel,...
• Ercole, Velia (1903 - 1978)
  Velia Ercole was the daughter of an Australian born mother of Irish and Breton heritage and an Italian father. Ercole grew up in Grenfell where her father was a doctor. She was educated at the Dominican Convent, Moss Vale, and worked as a journalist for the Sunday Sun. She treasured her Breton background and spoke French fluently. After travelling in France she settled in England and began writing, using her husband's last name as a pseudonym.
• Fairfax, J. Griffyth (1886 - 1976)
  After moving from Sydney to England, Fairfax became involved in politics and was a Conservative MP from 1924 to 1929. He was also active in literary circles and had an influence on and was influenced by his friend Ezra Pound.
• Fisher, Lala (1872 - 1929)
  Lala Fisher worked as a journalist and lived in London from 1897 to 1901. On her return to Australia she lived in Charters Towers and worked for Steele Rudd's Magazine. Later, in Sydney, she became the owner/editor of Theatre Magazine from 1909 to 1918. Fisher published several volumes of poetry and also wrote Queensland Gems, a work on semi-precious stones, and the music and lyrics of the song A White Rosebud (Lond: Novello, 1898). She was a founding member of the Society of Women Writers.
• Franklin, Miles (1879 - 1954)
  Miles Franklin was born in 1879 near Tumut, New South Wales. A fifth-generation Australian, Franklin grew up on grazing properties run by her family in the Monaro region. A decline in profits and the increasingly poorer properties taken up by the Franklin family were a major influence on the young Miles, an influence that is reflected in her fiction. At nineteen she wrote My Brilliant Career, the novel for which she is most admired. But the novel remained unpublished until 1901 when...
• Fullerton, Mary E. (1868 - 1946)
  Mary Elizabeth Fullerton's parents, Robert from Belfast and Eliza (nee Leathers) from Suffolk, met on the Ballarat goldfields. Fullerton and her siblings - 'the whole, wild, shy, little seven of us' described in her autobiographical Bark House Days (1921) - grew up in the bark house built by their father on his small holding at Glenmaggie, in Gippsland, Victoria. Fullerton had a strict Presbyterian upbringing but she turned away from orthodox religion later, claiming to 'hate the...
• Gallagher, Katherine (1935 - )
  Born in Victoria, Katherine Gallagher has lived for many years in Europe and England. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1963 and taught in Melbourne high schools before moving first to London and then spending the years 1971-79 in Paris. She has lived in London since 1979. However, she maintains strong links with Australia and has contributed widely to poetry anthologies and journals both in Australia and overseas. Her published volumes of poetry include The Eye's Circle...
• Gaunt, Mary (1861 - 1942)
  Mary Gaunt was born and grew up in Chiltern, Victoria. She was one of the first two women admitted to the University of Melbourne, but did not complete her degree. From the late 1880s on she had short stories and articles published in such journals as Argus, the Sydney Mail and the Australasian, which earned her enough money to pay the passage of her first trip to Europe in 1890. In 1894 she married a widower, Dr Hubert Miller, and settled in Warrnambool. Her husband's...
• Greer, Germaine (1939 - )
  Germaine Greer was born in Melbourne and schooled at the Star of the Sea Convent. She matriculated to the University of Melbourne in 1956, then, after the award of her BA in 1959, she went to the University of Sydney to work on an MA. Her thesis on Byron earned her a Commonwealth scholarship in 1964 which she used to finance further study at Cambridge University. In 1968 she was awarded a PhD for her thesis on Shakespeare. By this time she had accepted a lectureship at the University of...
• Gemmell, Nikki (1967 - )
  
• Greig, Maysie (1901 - 1971)
  Maysie Greig was a journalist with the Sydney Sun newspaper from 1919 to 1920. There is some evidence that Greig published the same works, often under different titles, under different names in England and the United States; it has not been possible to verify this. She was the wife of Max Murray (q.v.).
• Hales, A. G. (1860 - 1936)
  After a primary school education in South Australia Hales worked in the outback in a number of occupations, and began to contribute stories of his experiences to provincial newspapers. For some years he was a reporter at Broken Hill. Many of his stories were published in the collection Wanderings of a Simple Child (1890). The success of this publication enabled him to travel to America and England. Returning to Australia he began the newspaper Australian Standard, later going to...
• Hanrahan, Barbara (1939 - 1991)
  Barbara Hanrahan was the only daughter of William Maurice ('Bob' ) Hanrahan and his wife Ronda (Goodridge). Her father died of tuberculosis the day after her first birthday. She grew up in her grandmother's house in Rose St, Thebarton with her mother (a commercial artist), her grandmother and her grandmother's sister Reece, who had Down Syndrome, and this background features strongly in her writing. She was educated at Thebarton infant, primary and technical schools. In 1955 she moved to...
• Harrison, Keith (1932 - )
  Poet, editor, Emeritus Professor and critic Keith Harrison was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in English and French from the University of Melbourne in 1954, and a Master of Arts from the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a freelance poet, journalist and broadcaster, and has held several international academic posts, including Professor of English at Carleton College, Minnesota. His reviews and critical work have been published in Australian and international literary journals and he has...
• Harrower, Elizabeth (1928 - )
  Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney and grew up at Newcastle. Harrower spent most of the 1950s living in London where she wrote her first novels. Returning to Australia, she worked for the ABC, as a reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald and for a publishing firm. Harrower's novels are admired for their focus on the psychological oppression and liberation of female protagonists, a focus missing from Australian novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Harrower's best-known novel is The Watch...
• Higgins, Bertram (1901 - 1974)
  Bertram Higgins left Melbourne for Oxford in 1919, at the age of 18. He worked in England until 1930, becoming a literary journalist and book reviewer for several publications, including the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and the New Statesman. He co-edited the London literary magazine Calendar of Modern Letters (1925-1927) and also several poetry anthologies with Clifford O'Brien.After living in Australia from 1930 to 1933, Higgins went to England to serve...
• Holt, Gavin ( - )
  
• Hughes, Robert (1938 - )
  Robert Hughes was educated at St. Ignatius College, Sydney, and studied arts and architecture at Sydney University, during which time he made a name for himself within the Sydney 'Push' - a progressive group of artists, writers, intellectuals and drinkers that included Clive James and Germaine Greer. After working in the field of art criticism with the Sydney Observer and the Nation, he went to Britain in the 1960s and as a freelance writer continued his journalistic career...
• Humphries, Barry (1934 - )
  Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne and attended Melbourne Grammar with some distinction, attracting a scholarship to attend the University of Melbourne. His experience of growing up in suburban Melbourne significantly influenced the eclectic creativity he exhibited during his education. At university he studied law and arts, but discontinued his studies to tour with Ray Lawler's theatrical group. This experience consolidated his flamboyant theatrical and artistic nature and spawned 'Edna...
• James, Clive (1939 - )
  Clive James was born and schooled in Sydney. He completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney, where he was literary editor of Honi Soit and an active participant in student life, and then worked as an assistant editor at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1961. In 1962, James moved to England and pursued a second degree at Cambridge University. Here he edited several magazines and, in 1966, won election to the presidency of Cambridge's illustrious revue company, Footlights. ...
• James, Winifred (1876 - 1941)
  Winifred James worked as a journalist and at the age of 29 left Australia for London. She married American Henry De Jan in London on 30 April 1913. James lived in Jamaica, Panama, the United States and England, managing an antique shop in London for a time. After her divorce in 1927, James was considered an alien under English law. She subsequently became a vocal opponent of the Married Women's Property Act, which refused to permit women to retain their own nationality after marriage. There was...
• Johnson, Susan (1956 - )
  Susan Johnson grew up on Sydney's north shore, finishing school in Brisbane and starting work as a cadet journalist with the Courier Mail. After three years, she joined the Australian Women's Weekly in Sydney, and worked there for a year, from 1977 to 1978, before spending a year travelling in Europe. On her return to Australia, Johnson worked for Sydney's Sun-Herald, the National Times and the Sydney Morning Herald. From 1999 to 2001 she was editor of...
• Johnston, George (1912 - 1970)
  George Johnston was born in Melbourne and educated at state schools before becoming an apprentice lithographer. Several articles on sailing ships secured him a job as a journalist for the Argus, but it was his syndicated dispatches during World War II that attracted attention. During the 1940s he published several books and diaries on his experience of war in New Guinea, China, Burma and Italy. After the war he joined the Sydney Sun and was sent to London in 1951 as a European...
• Kelly, Frances (1943 - )
  Frances Kelly has been a journalist, critic, columnist, poet and children's writer, and has worked for the Canberra Times and the magazine Art and Artists. As well as the works recorded here, she has written several books on gardens and gardening.
• Kinsella, John (1963 - )
  John Kinsella is the founding editor of the international poetry magazine Salt. He is co-editor of Stand (UK) and international editor of The Kenyon Review (USA). He is also a consultant editor to Westerly (CSAL, University of Western Australia) and the Cambridge correspondent for Overland (Melbourne, Australia). Kinsella has been a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge since 1998. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia....
• Knightley, Phillip George (1929 - )
  
• Knowles, Vernon (1899 - 1968)
  Vernon Knowles, son of Frank and Annie Knowles, attended Pulteney Street School and an unidentified secondary school in Adelaide. Eternity in an Hour (1932), his partly autobiographical novel, contains memories of his Australian childhood. Songs and Preludes (1917), a collection of poems, is dedicated to his father who died when Knowles was eleven. Knowles went to the University of Western Australia, where he did not complete a degree but where he met Walter Murdoch (q.v.), an...
• Lang, John (1816 - 1864)
  John George Lang was born at Parramatta, New South Wales, in 1816, the grandson of emancipists. He was educated at Sydney College and matriculated to Trinity College, Cambridge, but was sent down for writing a blasphemous litany. Lang proceeded to read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1841. That year Lang returned to Sydney with his wife, Lucy Peterson, whom he had married in 1839, and was admitted as a barrister to the Supreme Court. But Lang's convict ancestry made it...
• Lette, Kathy (1958 - )
  Kathy Lette has worked as an interviewer and writer for television and radio. Her first book, Puberty Blues, co-written with Gabrielle Carey (q.v.), was published when she was 21. Its depiction of teen culture in Australia's surfing world atttracted considerable attention at the time and it was filmed by Bruce Beresford in 1981. Lette spent some years as a singer in the cabaret duet, the Salami Sisters. She also worked as a newspaper columnist in Sydney and New York and as a television...
• Lindsay, Jack (1900 - 1990)
  Jack Lindsay was born in Melbourne, the son of Norman Lindsay (q.v.). The family moved to Sydney in 1901 when Norman was appointed as a cartoonist on the Bulletin. He later moved to Brisbane with his mother in 1909 when his parents separated. After an irregular schooling before the age of twelve, he attended the Brisbane Grammar School and graduated with first class honours from the University of Queensland in 1921. He moved back to Sydney in June 1921 and participated actively in the...
• Lindsay, Philip (1906 - 1958)
  Philip Lindsay, the son of Norman Lindsay (q.v.) and brother of Jack Lindsay (q.v.), was a prolific writer of historical fiction. After trying a career in journalism, he left Australia for England in 1929. As a writer for film and a specialist on medieval England, he wrote over forty historical novels and numerous works of non-fiction, mainly historical biographies. His autobiography, I'd Live the Same Life Over (1941), includes reminisciences of other family members and of several...
• Lynch, Arthur (1861 - 1934)
  Arthur Lynch was the fourth of fourteen children of Irish born civil engineer and goldminer John Lynch, who was briefly imprisoned for his role in the famous Eureka Stockade rebellion, and his Scottish wife, Isabella. Educated in Ballarat, he graduated from the University of Melbourne with certificates in civil engineering in 1882, a BA in 1885 and an MA in 1887. After practising for a short period in Melbourne as a civil engineer, he left to study physics, physiology, and psychology at the...
• McKinley, Tamara ( - )
  Tamara McKinley was born and raised in Australia. She was adopted by her grandmother and taken to England to finish her education. Though England became her permanent home, she has returned to Australia each year to conduct research for her novels, all of which are set in Australia.
• Mack, Louise (1870 - 1935)
  Louise Mack was born in Hobart, the seventh child in a family of thirteen born to Jemima and Hans Hamilton Mack. As her father was a Wesleyan minister, the family moved from state to state and were living in Sydney when Louise was ready for secondary education. She attended Sydney High School. Here she met Ethel Turner (q.v.) and worked with her on the girls' magazine, the Parthenon. Sydney High School provided the background to her best known books: Teens (1897), Girls...
• Maquarie, Arthur (1874 - 1955)
  Arthur Maquarie, described by Morris Miller as 'a son of the parsonage' (70), was taken to England at an early age, returned to Sydney where he was educated at Sydney Grammar School and the University of Sydney, and returned to London in about 1895-96. He then changed his birth name Mullens by deed poll and worked as a freelance writer. He also taught English in Italy and travelled widely. Miller claims that Maquarie wrote his first play when wrecked on a Pacific island. Maquarie provided...
• Manning, Frederic (1882 - 1935)
  Frederic Manning, son of Sir William Patrick Manning (1845-1915) and Nora Manning, was born in Sydney and educated partly at Sydney Grammar School, but mainly at home by private tutors because of poor health caused by asthma. With his tutor, Arthur Galton, he visited England for eighteen months at the age of sixteen. Manning returned briefly to Australia, but went back to England where he lived with Galton and began to establish himself as a 'man of letters'. Manning published three volumes of...
• Martin, Arthur Patchett (1851 - 1902)
  Arthur Patchett Martin (usually referred to as Patchett Martin) was a member of the Eclectic Society and co-editor the Melbourne Review from 1876 until 1882, when he left for England. There, in 1886, he married the widowed Harriet Anne Bullen, who, as Mrs H. Patchett Martin (q.v.), later edited two Australian anthologies. Martin was a notable Nineteenth Century advocate of Australian literature, and his work The Beginnings of an Australian Literature (originally delivered as a...
• Mathew, Ray (1929 - 2002)
  Ray Mathew was born in Sydney, the son of Frank Leslie James, a labourer, and Lily Mathew. They lived first in Leichhardt and then Bondi. Mathew was educated at Sydney Boys High School and Sydney Teachers College. From 1949 to 1951 he taught in New South Wales country schools where he was often the only teacher. During the 1950s he also worked in shops, moved furniture, gave school broadcasts and adult education lectures, wrote literary reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald as a...
• Miller, Harry Tatlock (1913 - 1989)
  Harry Tatlock Miller was born and educated in Geelong, graduating from the Geelong Grammar School. As an eighteen-year-old he opened the Book Nook Bookshop in 1931 with stock from Elsie Belle Champion's Melbourne Booklovers' Library. He ran the bookshop from various locations in Geelong for four years, founding and publishing the significant literary and arts magazine, Manuscripts. With the magazine and the bookshop, Miller actively participated in the avant garde movements growing in...
• Moorehead, Alan (1910 - 1983)
  Alan Moorehead was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and at Melbourne University. He joined the (Melbourne) Herald in 1933 as a staff reporter and left for England in 1936, working his passage as a crewman. He began reporting from Gibraltar for the (London) Daily Express and in June 1940 was accredited war correspondent, reporting throughout the war in Africa and Europe. In 1946 Moorehead retired from journalism to write full time and lived mainly in Italy. He wrote a series...
• Murray, Gilbert (1866 - 1957)
  Murray was the son of pastoralist and politician Sir Terence Aubrey Murray and his second wife Agnes Edwards. He was educated in Australia at Moss Vale and Mittagong before studying at Oxford where he was later appointed Regius Professor of Greek. Murray was well known for his verse translation of Greek plays including some by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. He was foundation chairman of the League of Nations Union 1923-38 and President of the United Nations. Though he left...
• Neville, Jill (1932 - 1997)
  Jill Neville left Australia for Britain in 1951, and worked as a teacher, copywriter, social worker and journalist. She contributed literary criticism and poetry to several London newspapers and periodicals, including the Times Literary Supplement, the Observer, the London Magazine and the Sunday Times. Neville was the sister of Richard Neville (q.v.). Her partly autobiographical novel Fall-Girl (1966) includes a fictionalised depiction of her love affair...
• Neville, Richard (1941 - )
  Educated during the 1950s at the private boys school Knox Grammar, Richard Neville enrolled in arts at the University of NSW after a short period as a copy-editor and student of commerce. Neville quickly established himself as a prominent campus figure by working on the student newspaper Tharunka, and participating in a number of high-profile pranks and protests. As editor of Tharunka, Neville often tested the editorial tolerance of the Sydney Morning Herald, the campus...
• Osborne, Charles (1927 - )
  Charles Osborne studied music in Brisbane and Melbourne and worked as a music and literary journalist as well as an actor. After moving to England in 1953, he became the assistant editor of London Magazine from 1958 to 1966, and was the literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1971 to 1986. He has published many books and biographies in the fields of literature and music, including a biography of W. H. Auden, whom he met during the 1960s, and many critical guides to...
• O'Shaughnessy, Peter (1924 - )
  Peter O'Shaughnessy is an actor, director and writer from Melbourne who lived in England from 1950 to 1953. O'Shaughnessy returned to Australia at the end of 1953 and joined Melbourne's newly formed Union Repertory Company for a season before leaving to work independently. From 1954 to 1961 he produced, directed or acted in more than 35 plays. He worked in England and Ireland 1961-1964, in Australia 1965-1970, and in Ireland, Canada and England 1971-1985. Apart from a visit to Australia in 1986, he has lived in England ever since.
• Pilger, John (1939 - )
  
• Poignant, Roslyn (1927 - )
  Roslyn Poignant holds a BA Hons from Sydney University. A freelance writer, she has worked in film, TV and photography with her husband Axel Poignant (q.v.), and has lived abroad for long periods. She has a particular interest in the history and culture of Indigenous Australians, and has written books on the subject, including Professional Savages : Captive Lives and Western Spectacle (2004). This book discusses the lives of the Aborigines who were shipped to the United States by R.A....
• Porter, Peter (1929 - )
  Peter Porter, one of the best-known Australian poets and indeed 'now widely considered as one of the finest poets writing in English of the late twentieth century' (Oxford Companion to Australian Literature), grew up in Australia but has spent the largest part of his life in England. He was therefore classified as an expatriate writer, a category about which Australian commentators had mixed feelings before the advent of a more internationalised cultural exchange: on the one hand that of...
• Praed, Rosa (1851 - 1935)
  The daughter of Thomas Murray-Prior and grandaughter of Thomas Harpur (q.v), Rosa Praed was raised on her father's stations. She also experienced the political and social life of Brisbane when her father entered politics. After her marriage to Arthur Campbell Praed in 1872, the couple lived at the Praed station near Gladstone for three years before moving to England in 1876. Rosa Praed revisited Australia only once, in 1894-1895, but frequently drew on her life in Australia for much of her...
• Price, Evadne (1896 - 1985)
  The year of Evadne Price's birth is uncertain, but it is probable that she was born at sea off the NSW coast to English parents. She was educated at private and convent schools in NSW, Belgium and England. An actress from an early age, she played the lead in a Sydney production of Peter Pan in 1906. By the time she was fifteen, she was working as an actor in London, but ill health forced her to give up the stage for a career in writing. Her column, 'As a Woman Sees It', appeared for...
• Rees, Arthur J. (1872 - 1942)
  Arthur J. Rees settled in England in 1911. In addition to the works listed on AustLit he also compiled Old Sussex and Her Diarists (1929).
• Richardson, Henry Handel (1870 - 1946)
  'Henry Handel Richardson' was the pseudonym for Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson. She was born in Melbourne in 1870, the daughter of Walter and Mary Richardson who had migrated from England in the early 1850s. Her father's career as a doctor on the goldfields and her parents' interest in mining and the share market exposed her to the major social and economic developments of nineteenth century Australia, an experience that would inform her writing in later life. Richardson attended the...
• Ritchie, Paul (1923 - )
  Visual artist and author Paul Ritchie studied art at East Sydney Technical College from 1946 to 1949. He lived in England, Germany and Spain in the years from 1952 to 1960, during which time he painted part-time. Ritchie began writing in 1960, and settled permanently in Spain from that time. As well as works of fiction and drama, he wrote the children's travel and description book Australia (1968). He was awarded a British Arts Council prose bursary for 1968-1969.
• Robertson, Geoffrey (1946 - )
  
• Roland, Betty (1903 - 1996)
  Betty Roland left school at sixteen to pursue a career in journalism, working for Table Talk and Sun News-Pictorial. Roland married Ellis Harvey Davies in 1923, but ten years later she eloped with Guido Baracchi, a prominent member of the Australian Communist Party, and lived in Russia for several years. Roland saw her first play, The Touch of Silk, produced by the Melbourne Repertory Theatre in 1928. The play was performed by several repertory companies and was published...
• Rosman, Alice Grant (1882 - 1961)
  Daughter of Trevenen Rosman, accountant, and his wife Alice Mary Bowyer Rosman (q.v), Alice Grant Rosman was born at 'Dreamthorpe', Kapunda, the home of her pioneer grandfather, John Varley, SM. From the age of eight she wrote poetry for competitions. She was educated at the Dominican Convent Cabra. Her first short story was published in the Adelaide Southern Cross, and she contributed numerous sketches, stories and poems to Australian anthologies, newspapers and magazines, including...
• Salter, Elizabeth (1918 - 1981)
  Elizabeth Salter was born into a Barossa Valley pioneering family which opened one of South Australia's first wineries. She was educated at Miss Tucker's School for Girls at Angaston, the Wilderness School, the University of Adelaide (Arts) and the Elder Conservatorium. Salter wrote her first poem at the age of eleven, and had her first poem published at the age of seventeen. She joined the ABC as a record librarian and script writer. During World War II she was WAAF officer in charge of...
• Sayle, Murray (1926 - )
  Murray Sayle studied at the University of Sydney and was editor of the student newspaper Honi Soit from 1944 to 1945. He left university in order to take up a cadetship with the Daily Telegraph before moving to the Daily Mirror. Sayle moved to the UK in 1952 to work for the Sunday tabloid People. In 1960 he joined the staff of the Sunday Times. Sayle worked extensively as a foreign correspondent including reporting on the Vietnam War, the Cuban revolution and...
• Seymour, Alan (1927 - )
  Alan Seymour is best known in Australia for his play The One Day of the Year that explored the way ANZAC Day is commemorated. First produced in 1961, the play ignited passionate debate. The play was also produced in London, England, in 1961 and Seymour attended the production. He was away from Australia for the next three decades writing plays, screenplays, television scripts and adaptating novels for film and television. Seymour was educated in Perth, Western Australia, at Perth Modern...
• Shaw, Winifred Maitland (1905 - )
  Winifred Maitland Shaw was the daughter of Arthur and Winifred Shaw of Singleton, New South Wales. She published her first volume of poetry at the age of fourteen. Shaw married Richard M. Taplin in 1935. She was interned in Singapore's Changi prison camp during the Second World War and subsequently lived in England.
• Simpson, Helen (1897 - 1940)
  Helen Simpson's father was a Sydney solicitor and her mother was the daughter of a French Marquis. At thirteen she was sent as a boarder to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Rose Bay, Sydney, and she completed her high school education at Abbotsleigh in 1912. Her parents separated during this time and her mother moved to London. Simpson joined her mother in 1914 and entered Oxford the following year to study French. In 1918 she joined the Women's Royal Naval Service as a decoder, but she...
• Stephensen, P. R. (1901 - 1965)
  P. R. 'Inky' Stephensen grew up in Maryborough and graduated from the University of Queensland in 1922. In 1921 he edited the university magazine Galmahra, causing controversy by including the erotic lyrics of his friend Jack Lindsay (q.v.).He also joined the Communist Party in that year. From 1922 to 1923 Stephensen taught at Ipswich Grammar School before being awarded the Rhodes Scholarship in 1924. In England Stephensen read philosophy, politics and economics at the Queen's College,...
• St John, Madeleine (1941 - 2006)
  Madeleine St John is the daughter of Liberal Party politician Edward St John and a French mother, Sylvette Cargher. St John grew up in Castlecrag in Sydney's northern suburbs and was educated at Queenwood School for Girls, Mosman. She studied arts at the University of Sydney before marrying filmmaker Christopher Tillam and moving to the USA. After the marriage ended St John settled in England in 1968. St John's short writing career produced four novels, all published during the 1990s. Her...
• Stow, Randolph (1935 - )
  Randolph Stow is the son of Cedric Ernest Stow, a country lawyer, and Mary Stow nee Sewell. Both sides of the family were fifth generation Australians. The Stows came from Hadleigh in Suffolk, England. The Reverend Thomas Quinton Stow (1801-1862) arrived in South Australia in 1837 and helped settle Adelaide. A number of distinguished lawyers and judges were descendants. The Sewells from Essex in England arrived in 1836 and were pastoralists in the Geraldton district of Western Australia. This...
• Tighe, Harry (1877 - 1946)
  Harry Tighe, the son of state politician Atkinson Tighe, grew up in Petersham. Sent to England at seventeen due to his poor health, he enrolled at Cambridge University and his health significantly improved. Despite becoming healthy in the English climate, Tighe continued to identify himself as Australian, struggling with the conflict between his physical comfort and his affection for his homeland. At twenty-one he became a full-time writer. By the early 1930s he had written sixteen novels and...
• Travers, P. L. (1899 - 1996)
  'P.L. Travers' was the daughter of Travers Robert Goff, an English bank manager with Irish connections, and his Scots-Irish wife, Margaret Agnes, nee Morehead. The eldest of three children, Travers grew up in a Celtic atmosphere with a succession of Irish nannies. Travers had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father and periodic separations. In 1907 Travers's life changed forever with the death of her lyrical, melancholy father whose first name she adopted as her pseudonym for a lifetime...
• Turner, W. J. (1884 - 1946)
  Walter James Turner was the eldest son of Walter James Turner (1857-1900), warehouseman, and his wife Alice May, nee Watson. He was educated at Scotch College and the School of Mines, before working as a clerk. In 1907 he went to London to become a writer. He spent some time in Germany and Austria in 1913-14 writing satirical sketches for the New Age and concert reviews for the Musical Standard. He served in the First World War during which he published The Hunter and Other...
• Walsh, J. M. (1897 - 1952)
  J. M. Walsh had written twenty-two novels and dozens of stories for newspapers and magazines by the time he moved to London in 1929. Known particularly for his mystery, thriller and crime writing, Walsh was also a prominent contributor to the Australian science fiction genre in the 1930s.
• Walters, Margaret ( - )
  
• West, Morris (1916 - 1999)
  Morris West was born at St Kilda, Victoria, the son of a commercial salesman. Due to the financial difficulties of his large Catholic family, he was sent to live with his grandparents. He attended the local Christian Brothers' College where, in 1929, he was awarded the prize of Dux by Archbishop Mannix. He duly joined the Christian Brothers Order and completed his secondary education in New South Wales at St Patrick's College, Strathfield. In 1934 he began life as a teacher at St Thomas's...
• White, Patrick (1912 - 1990)
  Patrick White is the first Australian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1973). He was born into a wealthy Australian grazing family with strong ties to England, and received his school education partly in Australia, partly at Cheltenham College, England. He then lived a few years in Australia, working as a jackaroo and preparing for university. At King's College, Cambridge, he studied French and German languages and literatures (1932-1935) and spent considerable time in France...
• Whiting, B. R. (1923 - 1989)
  B. R. Whiting was raised in Melbourne and joined the Australian Army in 1940. He saw active service in Burma during the Second World War and served as Aide-de-camp to Lord Mountbatten and then the Governor of Bengal. After the war, Whiting pursued a brief career as a beekeeper in Victoria and South Australia. He married the sculptor and painter Lorraine Fraser (sister of Malcolm Fraser) in 1948. They left Australia in 1952, living first in England and then, from 1955, in Italy. In addition to...