Collections Seeking a Researcher! @ Fryer
Looking for a research topic? Collections seeking a researcher! promotes research on topics suggested by collection strengths in UQ and Brisbane libraries and museums.
The Papers of Max & Thelma Afford
Sadie and Xavier Herbert Manuscript Collection
Janette Turner Hospital Papers
Thea Astley Collection
Elwyn Flint Papers and Recordings Collection
Herb Wharton Collection
Daphne Mayo Papers
Australian Romance Fiction Collection
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The Papers of Max & Thelma Afford (Photo Courtesy of Fryer Library)
The Papers of Max & Thelma Afford (UQFL184) give an insight into the lives of a two very creative individuals. Max Afford, born in Adelaide in 1906, worked various jobs before before having his first story published in 1928. Eventually writing more than 60 radio and stage plays, as well as 8 crime novels, Max gained international repute. Some of his plays were produced internationally, including one which had a short run on Broadway, but it was his radio serials that were most popular, with the ABC continuing to serialize his It Walks by Night after his death in 1954. Thelma Afford, nee Thomas, born in 1908, started her career as a costume designer with Adelaide's avant-garde Ab-Intra Studio Theatre. After moving to Sydney and marrying Max, she designed costumes for the Independent and Minerva Theatres. Thelma also designed costumes for historical pageants, such as those held to celebrate the centenaries of Melbourne and Adelaide and the sesqui-centenary of Sydney, and also for early ABC television productions. In later years, she taught art.
The papers held by Fryer contain a wealth of material, including correspondence, personal photos and newspaper clippings about their work. Most notable, however, are drafts and recordings of some of Max's plays, and albums of designs by Thelma, some of which include samples of fabric. More of Max's plays are held in the Hanger Collection of Australian Playscripts, also held by Fryer Library.
Possible supervisors in the School of EMSAH for a project on these papers include Carter (Cultural History); Veronica Kelly (Drama); Prue Ahrens (Pageant Design and Aesthetics); Jason Jacobs (early TV drama materials); Frances Bonner (Crime fiction).
Sadie and Xavier Herbert Manuscript Collection (#UQFL83) - Sadie & Xavier Herbert posing with Aboriginal children at Kahlin Compound, [N.T.] - (Photo Courtesy of University of Queensland Press)
Xavier Herbert (1901-84), novelist and short story writer, was born in Geraldton, WA and grew up there. Later he lived in Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney, spending most of his life in the NT and in Cairns. His works include: Capricornia (1938), which won the Sesquicentenary Literature Prize and the Australian literature Society Gold medal, and aroused controversy at the time and later for its frank depiction of Aborigines in the NT, including stolen children and sexual exploitation; the experimental Seven Emus (1959) about the stealing of Aboriginal cultural artefacts; another experimental work, Soldiers' Women (1961), which focussed on corruption and exploitation, especially sexual, of women by Australians and visiting US military forces in Sydney during World War II; and the epic novel Poor Fellow My Country (PFMC,1975), extending and up-dating the themes of Capricornia. New concerns in PFMC include land degradation and exploitation. This political novel, PFMC, is a passionate condemnation of the lack of national independence and of social justice from the years preceding World War II to the 1960s.
The Herbert collection at Fryer is called the Sadie and Xavier Herbert manuscript collection, in memory of his wife Sadie. It is extraordinarily various and extensive – indeed probably the largest collection of a single author in any Australian library, after those of Miles Franklin and the Palmers. It includes: mss and drafts of fictional works; log-books and notebooks containing Herbert's literary intentions and plans; other material such as personal experiences he drew upon; further sources such as his dreams, activities, political and philosophical reflections and beliefs.
This material, along with the correspondence, provides a researcher with information about Herbert’s themes and literary methods. For instance, from early letters to Sadie it is possible to trace the genesis of PFMC from Herbert’s first tentative ideas and intuitions to a unifying plan. Numerous letters to Laurie Hergenhan 1971-75, complement this material in that they contain many comments on his intentions, methods, and sources, thus demonstrating a “work in progress” – the novelist at his drawing board. This kind of extended information about the development of a novel, along with the mss and drafts of the work itself, is a most unusual component for a ms collection, all the more important in this case for being concentrated in the one repository at Fryer, allowing for comparisons and cross-referencing on the spot. The correspondence also includes Herbert’s dealings with editors, publishers and details of publication, all important to studies of Australian publishing history.
The collection also invites comparative studies by researchers. Herbert and Katharine Susannah Prichard (in Coonardoo, 1929), were the earliest novelists to devote detailed attention to Aborigines and race relations. Their frankness, for example in relation to miscegenation, made their work controversial in the 1930s and also, for different reasons, in later times when there has been some reaction against it, with some readers finding racism as well as anti-racism in their novels. It would be illuminating to compare the reception of Herbert’s earlier and later fiction, and in turn to compare his depiction of Aborigines with that in the work of other novelists, white and black, past and contemporary.
The many photographs, taken over a long period and depicting Aborigines and white people in varying contexts, in Darwin and remote NT settings, are important to studies of visual representation. Along with the mss they would contribute to research on regionalism in Australian fiction. Herbert is regarded as the outstanding novelist of the NT. His novels depict injustice against a backdrop of a celebration of the tropical beauty, and the violence and unpredictability of the setting. His preoccupation with ‘the land’ and indigenes is also important to studies of nationalism and political fiction of the left especially as Herbert is regarded as both a popular and a literary novelist.
A revaluation of Herbert is bound to happen following some inevitable decline of reputation following his death in 1984 over 20 years ago; because of the controversial status of PFMC – regarded by some reviewers as ‘a botch’, by others as an Australian classic; and the need to re-define the classic qualities of Capricornia. The Fryer collection is essential to reassessment.
Emeritus Professor Laurie Hergenhan, AO, co-edited the selected letters of Herbert, and provided the material for the commentary above. He would be happy to be consulted by or give advice to intending researchers. l.hergenhan@uq.edu.au . People in the School of EMSAH who could supervise thesis work on Herbert include Carole Ferrier, David Carter, Melissa Harper, Fiona Nicoll and Bronwen Levy.
Janette Turner Hospital Papers (Photo Courtesy of University of Queensland Press)
Born in Melbourne in 1942, Janette Turner Hospital’s family moved to Brisbane in 1950, where she was educated at state schools and completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Queensland. She spent some time working in North Queensland as a teacher before marrying Methodist minister Clifford Hospital, moving with him to Boston, USA where he completed a PhD at Harvard University while she worked in the university library and raised their children. In 1971 they moved to Ontario, Canada, and Janette completed an MA in Medieval Literature at Queen’s University, where she also taught. In 1978 Janette’s first short story was published in the Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, The Ivory Swing was published in 1982, winning the Canadian Seal Award in the same year. She has since won many awards for both her novels and her short stories, in Australia and in Canada. Her novels are particularly interesting in relation to their being set in several different countries, and their variety, offering some opportunities for (among other things) examination of the (partly) expatriate transnational writer. The 42 boxes of material in the Janette Turner Hospital Papers in Fryer Library (UQFL255) include drafts and proofs of her work, personal and professional correspondence, reviews of her work and other articles. A small portion of the correspondence is restricted, but the rest of the collection is open to researchers. Janette Turner Hospital is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, but is also an Adjunct Professor at The University of Queensland and visits the University periodically. Topics on Turner Hospital could be supervised by Carole Ferrier and Bronwen Levy.
Thea Astley Collection (#UQFL97) (Photo Courtesy of University of Queensland Press)
Australian author Thea Astley, AO, was born in Brisbane in 1925. After her schooling at All Hallows, she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Queensland before training as a teacher. She married Jack Gregson in 1948, moving to Sydney where she continued working as a school teacher while writing part time. Thea’s first novel, Girl with a Monkey, was published in 1958 after the birth of her son Ed. Thea had entered the novel in a competition, and decided to submit it to Angus & Robertson after it was highly commended. She went on to win her first Miles Franklin Award in 1962 with her novel The Well Dressed Explorer. Thea won the Miles Franklin three more times – in 1965 for The Slow Natives, in 1972 for The Acolyte and in 2000 for Drylands: a book for the world’s last reader – and was nominated in 1997 for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow. She moved from being a school teacher to teaching at Macquarie University in 1968, finally retiring in 1980 to write full time, at which time she moved with her husband to Kuranda in north Queensland. Thea spent the last years of her life in Byron Bay, where she died in 2004. The Thea Astley Papers in Fryer Library (UQFL97) have been collected over several years, the final addition coming to the library last year. The papers consist of drafts of her books, short stories, correspondence (both personal and professional), and some family history material. The most recent addition of material has been listed and will soon be available to researchers.
Several Staff and Associates in the School of EMSAH could supervise topics on Astley. Tony Hassall has published recently on Thea Astley's work and Bronwen Levy and Carole Ferrier are also interested in her work.
Elwyn Flint Papers and Recordings Collection
Elwyn Flint, who taught in the Department of English at the University of Queensland from 1946 to 1975, carried out the Queensland Speech Survey in the 1960s. Flint travelled all over Queensland and Norfolk Island recording the speech of people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. He recorded many varieties of English, in addition to other languages spoken by immigrants and their descendants. Significantly, he also recorded many of the traditional indigenous languages spoken in Queensland and identified many individuals who had knowledge of their ancestral languages. Flint was also interested in the varieties of English spoken in the indigenous communities he visited, whether they were missions or government settlements. When surveying the traditional Aboriginal languages, Flint saw his role as one of identifying people who spoke the languages and who would be willing to have their language recorded and documented as fully as possible. This was his contribution to the then very active research program of the relatively newly established Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra which was sending trained linguists out into the field to record Aboriginal languages.
The Flint Papers (UQFL173) also include data on Tok Pisin (PNG) and on a range of other Australian and PNG languages. A catalogue can be accessed online here. There is particularly detailed coverage of the traditional Aboriginal language content. All of the Aboriginal language recordings, and those which document the variety of English spoken on Norfolk Island, have been digitised from the original reel to reel tapes. Other recordings in the collection have yet to be digitised.
The Flint collection offers the opportunity to a range of scholars to undertake primary research. Most of the recordings are of excellent quality. In many cases one can match Flint’s (or his students’) fieldnotes with the recordings. Flint kept meticulous speaker logs and records of the people he interviewed and recorded, which makes the material even more valuable.
Supervision available from the Linguistics staff in the School of EMSAH includes the areas of: topics in Morphology and/or Syntax of Aboriginal Language Data (Mary Laughren and Rob Pensalfini); Comparative Study of Aboriginal Language Data (Mary Laughren); Language Variation (Ilana Mushin); Phonetic and/or Phonological Analysis (John Ingram).
Herb Wharton Collection (Photo Courtesy of Fryer Library)
Indigenous author Herb Wharton didn't begin writing until he was in his 50s. Born at Yumba, an Aboriginal camp near the Queensland town of Cunnamulla, Herb left school at 15 to become a drover, later working also as a stockman and labourer. In the mid 1980s, Herb sat down to write a letter to songwriter Stan Coster, who had asked Herb about Aboriginal history. The letter was never posted, but six months later Herb found the letter and sat down and wrote a poem based on it, sending that to Coster instead. That poem, 'A Wasted Life', was the first of many. Herb Wharton has since published several collections of poetry and short stories, and 2 novels, including one for young adults. His collection of papers in the Fryer Library (UQFL212) includes drafts of his writing, unpublished poems, diaries, speeches, notebooks, and photos. Herb has toured overseas to literary festivals, and has also worked with schoolchildren in the United Kingdom. Materials relating to these activities are also in the collection.
Topics on Herb Wharton could be supervised by Carole Ferrier, Bronwen Levy or Melissa Harper (all in EMSAH), and by staff from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit at The University of Queensland, including Sam Watson
Daphne Mayo Papers (Photo Courtesy of Fryer Library)
The Fryer Library holds the papers of Queensland sculptor Daphne Mayo, who is probably best known for her many public commissions, including the carved tympanum over the main entrance to Brisbane City Hall, the Queensland Women’s War Memorial in Anzac Square, the iconic Jolly Swagman statue in Winton, and the bronze doors of the Mitchell Public Library in Sydney. Mayo won Queensland's first publicly subscribed travelling art scholarship in 1914, though World War I delayed her departure until 1919. This scholarship gave her the opportunity to study sculpture in England and Europe, and to widen her horizons by observing finer examples of sculpture than were generally then available in Brisbane. Brisbane's lacklustre collection of art led Mayo to later became actively involved in raising the profile of art in Queensland. In 1927, Mayo and her friend, fellow artist Vida Lahey, began the Queensland Art Fund, which raised money to help the Queensland Art Gallery acquire works. The Daphne Mayo Papers (UQFL119) include many letters to and from family, friends and business acquaintances throughout her career, as well as art works, art exhibition catalogues, newspaper cuttings and photographs. The Records of the Queensland Art Fund (UQFL139) are also held by Fryer Library.
The Fryer Library is planning an online exhibition on Mayo for later in 2008.
Possible topics (and supervisors): Women in Art Movements, 1918-1960 (Dr Bronwen Levy and Prof Carole Ferrier); A Woman making art in the first half of the 20th century (Dr Bronwen Levy and Dr Prue Ahrens); International influences on Australian artists work to mid 20th century (Dr Rex Butler); Representing “Australian Civilization” and war in 1930s and 1940s public art (Dr Prue Ahrens, Dr Melissa Harper, Professor David Carter); Integrating Art and architecture (Dr Rex Butler, Dr John Macarthur, Architecture); Making and Evaluating the Public Culture of Public Art; Cultural policy and arts advocacy 1927-1960 (both Prof Tom O’Regan, Prof David Carter); The development of Qld art collections and collecting; Aborigines and public art (Dr Sally Butler, Dr Prue Ahrens, Dr Rex Butler).
Australian Romance Fiction Collection
Our Fryer Library in the UQ Library has recently acquired a collection of 1500 popular Australian romance novels published between 1950 and 2005. Many were published by Mills and Boon. The collection also includes a small number of books by English and North American authors with Australian settings or Australian heroes/heroines. A list of all items in the collection can be obtained by searching on the title “Australian Romance Fiction Collection.” This complements other collections in detective and speculative fiction in the Fryer library.
Possible topics (and supervisors): Writing popular fiction (Dr Kim Wilkins); Romance fiction as popular fiction (Dr Bronwen Levy, Dr Frances Bonner); Gendering the Romance (Dr Leigh Dale; Bronwen Levy); Australian romance publishing (Prof. David Carter); the Contemporary romance novel and its literary predecessors (Dr Lisa O’Connell).