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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Arriving in Capricornia (a fictional name for the Northern Territory) in 1904 with his brother Oscar, Mark Shillingworth soon becomes part of the flotsam and jetsam of Port Zodiac (Darwin) society. Dismissed from the public service for drunkenness, Mark forms a brief relationship with an Aboriginal woman and fathers a son, whom he deserts and who acquires the name of Naw-Nim (no-name). After killing a Chinese shopkeeper, Norman disappears from view until the second half of the novel.
'Oscar, the respectable contrast to Mark, marries and tries to establish himself on a Capricornian cattle station, Red Ochre, but is deserted by his wife and eventually returns for a time to Batman (Melbourne), accompanied by his daughter Marigold and foster son Norman, who has been sent to him after Mark's desertion.
'Oscar rejects the plea of a former employee, Peter Differ, to see to the welfare of his daughter Constance; Constance Differ is placed under the 'protection' of Humboldt Lace, a Protector of Aborigines, who seduces her and then marries her off to another man of Aboriginal descent. Forced into prostitution, Constance is dying of consumption when discovered by a railway fitter, Tim O'Cannon, who will take care of Constance's daughter, Tocky, until his own death in a train accident.
Hearing news in 1928 of an economic boom in Capricornia, Oscar returns to his station, where he is joined by Marigold and Norman, who has grown to manhood believing himself to be the son of a Javanese princess and a solider killed in the First World War. Soon after, he discovers his mother was an Aboriginal woman, and meets his father, with whom he will not reconcile until later in the novel. Norman then goes on a series of journeys to discover his true, Aboriginal self. On the second of these journeys, he meets and wanders in the wilderness with Tocky, who has escaped from the mission station to which she was sent after the death of O'Cannon. During this passage, she kills a man in self-defense, which leads to Norman's being accused of murder, at the same time his father is prosecuted for the death of the Chinese shopkeeper. At the end of the novel they are both acquitted, Heather and Mark are married, and Norman returns to Red Ochre, where he finds the body of Tocky and their child in a water tank in which she had taken refuge from the authorities.' (Source: Oxford Companion to Australian Literature)
Notes
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From ca. 1956 many editions have the dedication: To sweet Sadie Norden out of whose love it grew
Contents
- Capricornia : Introduction, single work criticism (p. vii-xiv)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
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Australien
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Verdenslitteraturer : Introduktion til litteraturen uden for Europa 2019; (p. 253-284) -
What I’m Reading
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018; -
Protesting 1938 & 1988 – from Capricornia to Oscar & Lucinda
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2018;'I first read Xavier Herbert’s remarkable novel Capricornia in 1972 – the year I was married – and it led to several heated discussions with my newly acquired father-in-law. Later I discovered that his grazier forebears had been – for their time – enlightened squatters. Around 1900, they commissioned Steele Rudd’s father, the ex-convict Thomas Davis, to write a memoir of his early days on the Darling Downs. As well as a frank account of frontier violence, it included an extensive glossary of Aboriginal words.' (Introduction)
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y
Northern Dreams : The Politics of Northern Development in Australia
North Melbourne
:
Australian Scholarly Publishing
,
2018
14049080
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'Northern Australia is rediscovered by each new generation of Australian politicians. Dams, mines, large transport projects, a food bowl for Asia and many other projects are promised and sometimes delivered, but then the political momentum fades away and the focus of attention turns to other issues. What is often missing in discussion is the region’s long history of nation-building initiatives and proposals, stretching back to 1901. Without this knowledge we are likely to repeat the mistakes of the past.
'Northern Dreams brings to life the passionate arguments about Northern Australia’s national significance and analyses the political debates that have periodically drawn the public’s attention northwards. It also highlights the role that Australian politicians such as Gough Whitlam, Ben Chifley, Robert Menzies and Bob Hawke played in shaping northern development policies to suit their times. Northern Dreams is the definitive history of the politics of northern development in Australia.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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Remapping Capricornia : Xavier Herbert’s Cosmopolitan Imagination
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Studies Review , vol. 23 no. 2 2017; (p. 126-140)'Since its publication in 1938 critics have generally read Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia as a nationalist novel, even when its nationalism is seen to be structured by contradiction. But little attention has been given to the ways in which Herbert’s complex, multifarious and heteroglossic novel exceeds and challenges the very possibility of coherent national space and a coherent national story. This essay considers moments and spaces in Herbert’s novel where the national is displaced and unravelled. Drawing on Rebecca Walkowitz’s idea of cosmopolitan style and Suvendrini Perera’s work on Australia’s insular imagination I identify a critical cosmopolitanism that inheres in the novel’s geographical imagination and its literary form, particularly the narrative voice which retains a critical distance from the nationalist sensibility of various characters and plot lines, performing a detached and restless homelessness that I identify with the cosmopolitan. Ultimately I ask how the novel’s spatial and environmental imagination displaces its nationalist agenda, making space for a different kind of social imagination—one that does not confine itself to the terms of the nation or organise itself around a central figure for the nation.' (Publication abstract)
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New Australian Books
1938
single work
review
— Appears in: All About Books , 16 March vol. 10 no. 3 1938; (p. 34-36)
— Review of Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel ; 'Whence Shall We Buy?' 1937 selected work poetry ; Antipodean Journey 1937 single work autobiography -
Raw Life in North Australia
1938
single work
review
— Appears in: The Central Queensland Herald , 17 February 1938; (p. 12)
— Review of Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel -
Untitled
1938
single work
review
— Appears in: The North Queensland Register , 19 February 1938; (p. 46)
— Review of Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel -
A Worthy Award
1938
single work
review
— Appears in: The Central Queensland Herald , 21 April 1938; (p. 12)
— Review of Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel -
Untitled
1956
single work
review
— Appears in: The Cairns Post , 1 December 1956; (p. 6)
— Review of Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel - y A Long and Winding Road : Xavier Herbert's Literary Journey Nedlands : UWA Publishing , 2003 Z1041133 2003 single work criticism
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Politics and Xavier Herbert's Women
1983
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 5 no. 1 1983; (p. 51-62) -
An Evening with Xavier Herbert
1976
single work
autobiography
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 5 no. 1 1976; (p. 1-6) -
The Psychoanalytic Approach to Literature
1986
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 14 no. 1 1986; (p. 36-46) -
'Their Ultimate Absorption' : Assimilation in 1930s Australia
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 81 2004; (p. 48-58, notes 205-208) Discusses the issue of Aboriginal assimilation with reference to Herbert's novel.
Awards
- 1939 winner ASAL Awards — ALS Gold Medal
- 1938 winner Sesquicentenary Literature Prize
- Northern Territory,