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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'To the Islands concerns the ordeal of Stephen Heriot, an elderly, careworn, and disillusioned Anglican missionary who abandons his mission when he mistakenly believes he has accidentally killed one of his Aboriginal charges in a not entirely unprovoked confrontation. Heriot flees into the desert not to escape justice but to embrace its desolate beauty and its elemental purity as the one objective reality and the one certainty left available to him.
Heriot's flight and his embrace of the desert may be seen as his attempt, as a European Australian, to immerse himself in the landscape, to make himself one with the land. At this realistic level, the novel enacts the ontological and existential dilemma that confronts most — if not all — European Australians, the dilemma that Professor Hassall [in his introduction to the 2002 UQP Australian Authors version] defines as the continuing quest for psychic integration, for reconciliation with indigenous Australians, and with the land itself.'
Wells-Green, James. [Untitled Review.] JAS Review of Books 15 (May 2003)
Adaptations
- form y To the Islands : A Play for Broadcasting (Manuscript version)x401241 Z980707 single work radio play
Notes
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Dedication: To Sally Gare and Bill Jamison with admiration
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Epigraph: My cell 'tis, lady, where instead of masks, Music, tilts, tourneys and such courtlike shows, The hollow murmur of the checkless winds Shall groan again; while the uinquiet sea Shakes the whole rock with foamy battery. There usherless the air comes in and out: The rheumy vault will force your eyes to weep, Whilst you behold true desolation. A rocky barrenness shall pierce your eyes, Where all at once one reaches where he stands, With brows the roof, both walls with both his hands. Marston: The Malcontent
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Author's note: This is not, by intention, a realistic novel; no white character, therefore, and no major incident in the plot, is drawn from life. ... R. S.
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Study guides available.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Autobiography of a Sickness
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 68 no. 1 2023; (p. 128-139) 'A disclosure: before being asked to do this lecture, I had never read a word of Stow. When I was nineteen, I left Western Australia to study in Singapore. When I graduated, I stayed. If leaving was an intentional turning away from a cultural lineage, or canon, then staying was a decisive choice towards another. Reading, after all, is political—more political, perhaps, than writing itself. Later, when I did return, and began to write, it was the Queer Singaporean and Singapore-based writers and artists I had encountered who formed my creative ancestry and who I felt I might exist in conversation with, if I were to exist in this space at all. But any residence forms lineages, and in returning to live on this land—where I hold legal citizenship, enforced by the world's dependence on borders and the nation-state, and where I was born—authorial ancestries are free to entangle, be speculated over and perhaps even transformed.' (Introduction)
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Forest River Mission as Raw Material in to the Islands
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021; -
Appropriation And/or Collaboration? Australian Literary Publishing and the Case of Daniel Evans and Randolph Stow
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 45 no. 2 2021; (p. 181-196)'Collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners in Australian writing has a long and fraught history, and appropriation remains a serious issue in the Australian publishing industry today. At the same time, however, positive instances of collaboration, particularly in contemporary writing, have shown its capacity to produce rich and nuanced cultural outcomes. This article is part of a developing project aiming to investigate collaborations like these and their related industry outcomes. It looks to feel out some of the complexities around Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, considering as a starting point Randolph Stow’s work with Daniel Evans, which led to the publication of “The Umbali Massacre […] As told to him by Daniel Evans” in the Bulletin in 1961. As a case study, it has several interesting features: the context of Stow’s work with Indigenous peoples and his friendship with Evans; Evans’s direct contribution to Stow’s Miles Franklin Award–winning To the Islands (1958); Stow’s failure to properly acknowledge Evans in the novel’s frontmatter; and his subsequent appropriation of Evans’s voice in the Bulletin piece, even while advocating for Indigenous sovereignty. As such, it illustrates both the dangers and the potential of Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration as a dual inheritance in the industry today.' (Publication abstract)
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Truth Telling and the Art of Listening : To the Islands
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021; (p. 77-94) -
The Randolph Stow Memorial Lecture
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 64 no. 1 2019; (p. 142-150) 'It’s a great honour for me to be asked to give this memorial lecture for Randolph Stow. Thanks to the Westerly Centre and the Festival for inviting me. Stow’s writing has been a part of my life since my early twenties, when I was given the Penguin To the Islands (1962) as a birthday present. I didn’t know then that when Stow wrote it he was the same age as me reading it, or that it was his third published novel. After that, I read The Merry-go-Round in the Sea (1965) and Tourmaline (1963). Then in my early years here at the University of Western Australia (UWA) I first read two more: Visitants (1979) and The Girl Green as Elderflower (1980). Quite a few years later, after many re-readings, I think of Stow as a great artist, a poet amongst the English-language novelists of his time.' (Introduction)
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Remembering Stow
2002-2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January no. 247 2002-2003; (p. 64)
— Review of To the Islands 1958 single work novel ; Tourmaline 1963 single work novel -
[Review] To the Islands
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , May no. 15 2003;
— Review of To the Islands 1958 single work novel -
Allusive but Timely
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , Spring vol. 21 no. 4 2002; (p. 57-58)
— Review of Tourmaline 1963 single work novel ; To the Islands 1958 single work novel -
[Review] To the Islands
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 17 no. 3 2003; (p. 67-68)
— Review of To the Islands 1958 single work novel -
Spiritual Journeys Hold Plenty of Intrigue
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 January 1992; (p. 19)
— Review of Corroboree 1984 single work novel ; Tourmaline 1963 single work novel ; To the Islands 1958 single work novel ; The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980 single work novel -
Messiahs and Millennia in Randolph Stow's Novels
1981
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 3 no. 2 1981; (p. 56-72)'The novels I shall concentrate on in discussing messiahs and millennia in Stow's work are To the Islands, Tourmaline, Visitants, and The Girl Green as Elderflower. Tourmaline and Visitants are the two which most clearly relate to millenarian themes. Tourmaline records the growth, and collapse, of a millenarian cult centred on the messianic or would-be messianic figure of the diviner Michael Random. Visitants is a structurally more complex exploration of three millenarian visions and their communal and personal repercussions, although the connotations of the title are not restricted to cargo or flying saucer cults.' (Publication abstract)
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Australian 'Everymans' : Post-Medieval Spiritual Adventurers
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture 2006; (p. 81-97) Margaret Rogerson demonstrates types of medievalism in Australian literature, through a discussion of the deployment of the 'everyman' figure. -
Remembering Victims and Perpetrators
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: UTS Review , May vol. 4 no. 1 1998; (p. 1-17) -
Randolph Stow's Tourmaline and To the Islands
1987
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The International Fiction Review , vol. 14 no. 2 1987; (p. 68-74) -
Vanishing Wunderkind
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 314 2009; (p. 29-31)
Awards
- 1959 winner ASAL Awards — ALS Gold Medal
- 1958 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
- Western Australia,
- 1950s