The Australian Academy of the Humanities

A History in Text

The Academy Editions of Australian Literature provide, for the first time, a library of our national literary heritage. Each volume has a meticulously prepared reading text, an accurate record of textual variants in existing unpublished versions and in all editions published in the author's lifetime, a comprehensive essay on the publishing and reception history of the work, and extensive explanatory notes to place it, for today's readers and scholars, in the context of its times. Initiated by the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992, with a grant from the Australian Research Council, the project is headquartered at the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre at University College, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. The series General Editor, Paul Eggert, is Professor in the Department of English and Director of the Centre. This ongoing project is a national co-operative venture, with membership of its Editorial and Advisory Boards and editors of individual volumes drawn from many universities around Australia.

Volumes now available in the series include:

The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: Volume 2, 1930-1962, edited by Jennifer Strauss, 2007
Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage: 1834-1899, edited by Richard Fotheringham, 2006
Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms, edited by Paul Eggert and Elizabeth Webby, 2006
The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: Volume 1, 1887-1929, edited by Jennifer Strauss, 2004
Catherine Martin, An Australian Girl, edited by Rosemary Campbell, 2002
Henry Handel Richardson, The Getting of Wisdom, edited by Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele, 2001
Marcus Clarke, His Natural Life, edited by Lurline Stewart, 2001
Henry Handel Richardson, Maurice Guest, edited by Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele, 1998
The Journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin: 1858-1868, edited by Lucy Frost, 1996
Henry Kingsly, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, edited by Stanton Mellick, Patrick Morgan and Paul Eggert, 1996

All volumes are available in soft and hardback from University of Queensland Press.

The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: Volume 2, 1930-1962

Volume Two begins with a remarkable display of creative energy: Gilmore's three collections published during 1930-32. The poems are largely dominated by new preoccupations that were to remain important until 1954. The Depression ignites Gilmore's interest in the urban poor, and her continuing speculative sympathy for those outcast from society by psychological or physical defects found ts most extensive expression. This volume contains all of Gilmore's verse from 1930 until her death in 1962, published in collections, magazines and newsletters. The poems are placed in chronological sequence, and there is a rich historical context provided by the Preface and extensive annotations, as well as Gilmore's own notes.

Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage: 1834-1899

From the mid-1830s until the end of the nineteenth century, hundreds of plays were written and staged in the Australian colonies. The first known of these, Henry Melville's The Bushrangers, was performed in 1834. By the century's end, six professional companies were giving hundreds of performances across the continent. This volume, edited by Richard Fotheringham, presents the scripts of nine of these plays. Each script has been carefully edited or reconstructed from original manuscripts or rare prints, giving full respect to historical forms and usages. Generous historical and textual introductions are given along with supplementary information. There is also an extensively illustrated introduction to the Australian colonial theatre industry. An appendix edited by Angela Turner presents the music for the songs contained in the plays.

Robbery Under Arms

Acclaimed as an Australian classic almost as soon as it appeared in book form in the late 1880s, Robbery Under Arms is praised for its excitement, romance, and authentic picture of 1850s colonial life. As the first writer to attempt a long narrative in the voice of an uneducated Australian bushman, Boldrewood created a story with enduring cultural resonance. This popularity has continued with frequent adaptations for stage, radio, film and television. During all of this time, the text was not well served by publishers or reprints, and this Academy Edition is the first full-scale critical edition of the novel and is particularly vital given the instability of the text.

The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore, Volume 1, 1887-1929

On 27 October 2005 the Academy was proud to launch the seventh title in the Academy editions of Australian Literature series. The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: Volume 1, 1887-1929 was edited by Jennifer Strauss and published in conjunction with University of Queensland Press. Novelist and poet, Rodney Hall, launched the successful event at Wagga Wagga City Library. Mary Gilmore was Australia's foremost woman poet during the first half of the twentieth century as well as an activist concerned with indigenous and environmental issues. Volume 1 unites 388 poems previously uncollected poems with those published. In this variorum edition her poetry has benefited from scholarly scrutiny, reliable texts, alternate readings and annotation.

Catherine Martin, An Australian Girl

This powerful narrative of a woman's love and betrayal was published in 1890 by the London firm of Bentley and Son, despite the novel's often radical political, philosophical and religious content. The second edition's text was cut by one fifth to remove the more 'controversial' aspects. This critical edition by Rosemary Campbell restores the text of the original and contains an account of the writing, publishing and critical reception of the novel in England and Australia, and of its author's attmepts to get the book published.

Henry Handel Richardson , The Getting of Wisdom

This story of the author's coming of age in Colonial Melbourne in the 1880s and of the dawning recognition in her fictional representative Laura that writing was to be her destiny. One reader has described it as Australia's Huckleberry Finn and others of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Aimed, unusually for a tale of school life, at mature audiences, it is a stirring critique of colonial educational goals. This edition, by Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele, contains a wealth of material including essays concerning the book's writing, reception and evolution and much more.

Marcus Clarke, His Natural Life

Since its first publication as a serial in the Australian Journal, Marcus Clarke's grim yet profoundly moving account of the convict era has been almost continuously in print. The novel is the most significant Australian classic of the nineteenth century. Based on the original 1874 Robertson edition, this new edition, edited by Lurline Stewart, eliminates the hundreds of unauthorised changes made by a publisher's editor for the 1875 UK edition - from which most later printings have derived.

Henry Handel Richardson, Maurice Guest

Richardson's publisher Heinemann insisted she cut 20,000 words from her controversial first novel, set in the musical world of turn-of-the-century Leipzig. The Academy Edition, edited by Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele, for the first time restores the intended text of this important autobiographical work, incorporating previously unpublished material from the complete manuscript held in the National Library of Australia.

The Journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin: 1858-1868

The remarkable, largely unpublished journals of Annie Dawbin (1816 - 1905) show nineteenth-century Australia as never before. A flamboyant and talented woman of decided opinions, she vividly chronicled her own dramatic life and that of the colonial world around her. This edition, edited by Lucy Frost, presents the journal's most vital period - the 1850s and 1860s - together with full annotation, biographical notes and historical introduction.

Henry Kingsley, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn

This first volume in the Academy Editions series, edited by Stanton Mellick, Patrick Morgan and Paul Eggert, offers an accurate, scholarly text of the novel which was so popular throughout the English-speaking world. Now regarded as a literary classic, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn was the precursor of a line of novels of adventure and romance set in the outback. This edition corrects a myriad of textual errors.