AustLit

'Australian theatre was already undergoing momentous change when war broke out in 1914. Corporations were replacing actor–managers, theatre interests were contracting from multiple groups to just a few, and Australian audiences were increasingly open to American plays and players. The years immediately before the war saw the passing of two of the country’s leading entrepreneurs – music hall singer and founder of the Tivoli circuit Harry Rickards, and actor–manager JC Williamson, founder of JC Williamson Ltd – while other 19th-century show-business luminaries – George Coppin, George Rignold and Bland Holt – had died or retired.1 What did not change was the role of the audience as the arbiter of taste, which saw the public demanding the best, the brightest and the latest.' (6)

'Academic historians, being human, are inclined to be jealous of popular authors and journalists who turn their hand to history and achieve sales and celebrity. The animosity – sometimes deserved, sometimes not – is most often expressed not by direct attack but, rather, by the cold shoulder: by exclusion of the gilded authors and their books from mainstream academic discussion. Undergraduate students quickly learn of the gaucherie of footnoting the works of such writers in history essays (Patsy Adam-Smith’s groundbreaking The Anzacs (1978) is a notable example). Yet, the amateur historian, the journalist and the populist have more often than not been leaders of public discussion in matters historical. Ernest Scott, appointed professor of history at the University of Melbourne in 1913 and pioneer of the academic study of Australian history, held no university degree and was previously a journalist and parliamentary Hansard reporter. It just happened that he was an original researcher, a fine mind and a good storyteller.' (24)