Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe - guest reviewer Yvonne Perkins

Today's guest post is by historian Yvonne Perkins. Yvonne is a dedicated reviewer for the AWW challenge, mainly in the areas of history, memoir and biography.  She has just published a review of Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe. Here she introduces the work to AWW readers, lists reviews of Franklin's work that have been written for the challenge so far, and suggests other titles which could be reviewed. Yvonne's own review can be found on her website, Stumbling Through the Past.

Yvonne Perkins writes:
Jill Roe's biography of Miles Franklin is an important book for Australian Women Writers Challenge. Miles Franklin is one of the most influential Australian female writers in our history, both through her own writing and her encouragement of Australian writers. Who was this person who is such an important part of our literary heritage? Roe's life of Miles Franklin is an entree into the world of Australian literature of the first half of the twentieth century. My reading notes are dotted with "I must read xxx".

Jill Roe has produced an excellent biography. She has skilfully managed the large volume of sources available to her and written a book which is enjoyable to read. Few would dare to undertake such a comprehensive biography; others would be swamped by the sources. Roe recognised that Miles Franklin was the kind of person who could sustain a lengthy biography. She was a complex person who sought out what life could offer.

I hope that my review of Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography will prompt others to read and review this book. In a little under 1500 words there was so much that my review didn't address. Perhaps other reviewers could discuss Jill Roe's treatment of Miles Franklin's literary legacy or how gender issues affected Miles Franklin's life. Diversity of opinion is an important part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. I thought that this biography was well constructed - did you?

Some reviewers for the Challenge this year have already reviewed Miles Franklin's novels (see below). I have mentioned some of her more well known published work in my review and there are others that may interest you.

The anniversary of the birth of Miles Franklin is on 14th October. Perhaps reviewers could mark this date by publishing a review of her biography or her published work? Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography was published in 2008, so some of the Australian Women Writers Challenge reviewers may have already reviewed this book prior to 2012. If so, could you please add a link to your review in the comments below.

AWW2012 Reviews of Miles Franklin's Writing

• My Brilliant Career: Reviewed by Jessie, Lucy Graham.  
• My Career Goes Bung: Reviewed by David Goldman. 

Some Other Miles Franklin Books
In addition to the books above you may wish to review:

• Franklin's books published under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin - Up the Country: A Tale of the Early Australian Squattocracy; Ten Creeks Run: A Tale of the Horse and Cattle Stations of the Upper Murrumbidgee; Back to Bool Bool: A Ramiparous Novel with Several Prominent Characters and a Hantle of Others Disposed as the Atolls of Oceania's Archipelagoes; Prelude to Waking: A Novel in the First Person and Parentheses; Cockatoos: A Story of Youth and Exodists; Gentlemen at Gyang Gyang: A Tale of the Jumbuck Pads on the Summer Runs 
• All that Swagger. 
• Written with Kate Baker - Joseph Furphy: The Legend of a Man and his Book. 
• Laughter, Not for a Cage: Notes on Australian Writing, with Biographical Emphasis on the Struggles, Function, and Achievements of the Novel in Three Half-centuries. 
• Childhood at Brindabella: My First Ten Years 
• On Dearborn Street 

[End post]

Read Yvonne's review of Jill Roe's biography of Stella Miles Franklin here.


About: Since completing her degree in history at the University of Sydney Yvonne Perkins has worked on a number of historical research projects, most recently an investigation of the history of teaching reading in Australia. Currently she is researching the beliefs, religious or otherwise, of soldiers who served in World War I.

In her spare time Yvonne explores issues in history on her blog, Stumbling Through the Past.  She is passionate about promoting the excellent work produced by Australian historians which is influencing people around the world.

Memoir, Biography, History: 2012 Tally

Memoir/Biography/History: 2012 releases

The other day when the tally of literary books was posted, Text publishing tweeted that their biography of Elizabeth and Mary Durack by Brenda Niall should have been included.

Should more nonfiction titles be regarded as "literary"?

The follow is a list of books reviewed for the AWW challenge during January-June.

Disclaimer: If there are errors with release dates, please let me know - reprints make it difficult to judge original publication dates on publishers' websites.

Tally: 10 books, 11 reviewers, 12 reviews

Memoir

• Evans, Ilsa - Ones a Poner Time. (Self-published)
     AustBookshelf, Book'd Out 
• Fincham, Jo - Out Of The Blue. (Allen & Unwin)
     Helen
• Gruel, Nicole - Dancing with Dragons. (Balboa Press) Mental Health
     Denise Imwold 
• James, Kate - When Gods Collide (Hardie Grant) Travel
     Ilona Nicola 
• Warbanoff, Rilka - Rilka's Feast. (HarperCollins) Cooking/Recipes/Memoirs
     Monique @WriteNoteReviews (Scroll down for review)

Biography

• Cherry, Derelie - Alexander Macleay: From Scotland to Sydney. (Paradise Publishers)
     Paula Grunseit, Janine Rizzetti 
• Danson, Stacey - Faint Echoes of Laughter. (Taylor Street Publishing)
     Brenda 
• Niall, Brenda - True North. (Text)
     Yvonne Perkins

History

• Frost, Lucy - Abandoned Women. (Allen & Unwin)
     Jayne @TheAustralianBookshelf 
• Gleeson-White, Jane - Double Entry. (Allen & Unwin) Business
     Yvonne Perkins

Are there other memoirs, biographies or histories published this year that haven't been reviewed for the challenge?

~ ~ ~

Shelleyrae from Book'd Out blog suggests:

• Love and Hunger by Charlotte Wood (Allen & Unwin 2012)
• Women of the land by Liz Harfull (Allen & Unwin 2012) 

Other suggestions from comments:

• The Censor's Library: Uncovering the Lost History of Australia's Banned Books by Nicole Moore (UQP 2012)
• Larrikins: A History by Melissa Bellanta (UQP 2012)
• The Lone Protestor by Fiona Paisley (Aboriginal Studies Press)

Sue T from Whispering Gums blog suggests:

• House of Fiction by Susan Swingler, about her parents, Elizabeth and Leonard Jolley, and herself. (Fremantle Press 2012) 

Creative nonfiction - Ashley Hay's Gum: The Story of Eucalypts & their Champions

One of the few male participants in the AWW challenge, Mark Web, yesterday posted an interesting blog about his participation in the challenge. In his post, "In which I become less impressed with my AWWC achievements", Mark notes that, while completing the challenge and achieving his goal of reading and reviewing ten books by women, he gained the impression that he was reading a majority of women writers this year, but his actual tally for reading came out at, roughly, 50/50. His experience demonstrates just how insidious and tenacious unconscious gender bias can be.

As part of my task hosting the AWW challenge, I have approached numerous men of my acquaintance over the past six months or more, including a current editor of a kids literary magazine, a high school English teacher, an ex-book seller, the owner of a writing school, a journalist and a psychologist, a geologist and an ex-judge. Of these, only the latter two expressed any interest in reading and reviewing a book written by a woman for this blog; both, it may be significant to add, are retired and have elected to review nonfiction. The others all had good excuses, none of which, they claimed, had anything to do with gender bias. One did say, though, quite unselfconsciously, that he just wasn't that interested in books written by women.

Today's guest reviewer is author Dr John Martyn. He has elected to review Ashley Hay's 2002 nonfiction title, Gum: The Story of Eucalypts and Their Champions (Duffy & Snellgrove, 2002).

Martyn writes:
 
This highly readable book ought to become a classic. While its core theme is the eucalyptus tree in all its diverse forms, more-especially it's about the people who explored, studied, named, championed, painted and caricatured Eucalyptus and its sister genera, and it even extends to those who propagated and sold the trees in Australia and spread them around the globe. It covers a large spread of Australia's post-colonial history from an intriguing and novel angle.

For example, one chapter follows the life of Ferdinand Von Mueller (or "Baron Blue Gum" as he was known) the young German pharmacist and amateur botanist who became a champion of the eucalyptus tree. He established the National Herbarium of Victoria and in 1857 became the first director of Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens. The book also cameos the amazing journeys of Major Thomas Mitchell who accurately surveyed vast tracts of a eucalypt-mantled landscape through which there were almost no roads (and certainly no maps, mobile phones or GPS's to navigate by!). And in which it was often impossible to see the next-nearest hill or ridge-line through a never-ending frieze of forest trees.

These people, and others of their eras, worked amongst a flora that was largely alien to them, across a landscape that was virtually unknown to westerners, whilst also trying to sustain their family relationships at home during long absences in the bush. So as well as covering the establishment of the systematics of a vast and complex flora, the author highlights the ups and downs of their family lives, their interpersonal relationships, their personality quirks and also their inevitable struggles with the bureaucracies and politicians of their day.

The author also reaches into the artistic realm of the eucalypt, which was the subject of many of the magical paintings of artists like Hans Heysen and also the evocative cartoon drawings of May Gibb. Train driver and passionate eucalypt lover Stan Kelly faithfully recorded more than 600 species as watercolours, which have been published in two volumes; he desperately wanted to paint them all except that the botanists were working faster than he was in describing and defining new species, and he had to admit defeat. And the research on this beautiful and sometimes bizarre tree continues – there are decades, probably centuries of study still to be done but, in the meantime, please read this book!

Dr John Martyn was born in Cornwall and came to Australia in 1970 after mapping in the Rift Valley of Kenya for his PhD in geology. Although he has lived in Sydney since 1979, much of his fieldwork as a minerals exploration geologist over the last 30 years has been in Western Australia. He is the author of a number of nonfiction titles, including Field Guide to the Bushland of the Lane Cove Valley and Sydney's Natural World. 

Note: Ashely Hay's 2010 novel, The Body in the Clouds (Allen & Unwin 2010) has been received to great acclaim.

• Longlisted for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
• Nominated for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first novel in the south-east Asia and Pacific Region
• Nominated for the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the 2011 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and 
• Shortlisted for the Fiction category of the 2010 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards.

Hay is also the author of a number of nonfiction titles, including The Secret: The Strange Marriage of Annabelle Milbanke & Lord Byron (2000), Herbarium (2004), and Museum: The Macleays, Their Collections, and the Search for Order (2007).

Susanna de Vries' Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor: reviewed by Hazel Edwards

Susanna de Vries is well known for her championing of Australian women in history. Today's guest reviewer, National Year of Reading Ambassador Hazel Edwards, has chosen to review de Vries' new nonfiction title, Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor: Secrets, Scandals and Betrayals. 

‘Every arranged marriage provides a vacancy for a mistress.’ Translation of an old French proverb.

The UK marriage of Prince William and Kate seems a love match.  Charles’ marriage with Diana was arranged.  His ancestors (Hanover to Windsor name change during wartime to remove the apparent Germanic link) married Protestant, European aristocracy for love-less, political reasons, and then kept multiple mistresses.

Former royal marriages were political and religious property arrangements involving land, big dowries, titles and the need for healthy, legitimate male heirs.  The trade of Royal Mistress was precarious, but recognised with temporary prestige and social acceptance.  Thus many of the mistresses sought to accumulate jewels and money before falling from favour and being replaced by a younger model.

In the confusion of titles and names, de Vries tells a readable story, clarifying the roles and contexts. The various, former ‘Princes’ (plural) of Wales seemed to suffer from over- indulgence, lack of a job and the need for the constant attention of a mother-lover mistress who would tolerate gambling, drinking, over-eating and provide all kinds of entertainment to relieve boredom.

Catering for the whims of royalty was a short-term occupation: with easy falls from favour. Hard to say ‘no’ to an all powerful, potential ruler who could ostracise you into poverty, or make your fortune, by providing access to him.

Because the mistresses were so reliant on financial handouts, usually in the form of jewellery, they seemed mercenary, but didn’t have many other options.  Even if they were personable and intelligent, (as well as beautiful and accommodating) they were rarely independent financially. And if a child had to be supported, as in the case of Perdita Robinson who originally had paid work as an actor, and was forced by Prince George of Wales to give up her career, she still lost out on the promised house he was going to gift her. Others had multiple illegitimate children to aristocratic lovers and since DNA testing was not used then, the parent was problematic. Some claimed to be Royal bastards. And others were.

The dilemma was that gambling princes ran up big debts against their eventual gaining of the throne, and had to marry Protestant princesses with big dowries, despite being fond of their mistresses. Religion was an important variable, but money was greater.

Being a mistress appeared to be a trade. But with no trade union. So, many mistresses spent up quickly, on clothes and fashionable property while they could.

Today’s readers will be more familiar with the relationship of Mrs Wallis Simpson and Edward, or Camilla and Prince Charles, both of which are interesting chapters with new content.

However, some of the lesser known, married mistresses appeared to have a genuine fondness for their prince and tried to keep him healthier and doing some actual kingly business.  Many retiring husbands appeared to benefit financially or politically from their wife becoming the royal mistress. Winston Churchill’s mother Lady Jennie Churchill, and the heiress, Daisy, Countess of Warwick who in later life created worthwhile occupations for herself, make fascinating reading. Alice Keppel became the love of Edward's life and the great grandmother of Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, now Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla's story and that of her Aussie rival, Lady Dale Tryon are included.

Edward V11 (later Duke of Windsor) was a sad case having suffered an attack of mumps that ensured he remained physically and mentally immature and obsessively dependent upon manipulative Mrs Simpson.

The ‘Royal Mistresses’ title will attract readers, as will the subtitle of ‘Secrets, Scandal and Betrayals’ but de Vries' ‘readability’ in portraying well researched history in an accessible fashion for the general reader, make all her books the kind that avid readers share.

De Vries is especially good at placing her characters in context. The endnotes are well documented and the index works, and the photos indicate the beauty of some of the mistresses. But I found it hard to be sympathetic to the expensive mistress lifestyle and aristocratic spending when the general population was struggling, and this included tenants providing the income from the Prince of Wales' estates. I preferred reading about the heroic women in de Vries' other histories of significant working women during wartime and pioneering times.

As well as being a well-known children's writer, Hazel Edwards is the author of Writing a Non Boring Family History. She has also contributed to the Aussie Heroes series with Sir Edward ‘Weary Dunlop’ and Professor Fred Hollows.

de Vries, Susanna, Royal Mistresses of the House of Hanover-Windsor: Secrets, Scandals and Betrayals ($34.95) ISBN: 978-0-9806216-2-1, First Published 2012

Other books by Susanna de Vries:

• Great Australian Women: From Federation to Freedom
• Great Australian Women: From Pioneering Days to the Present
• The Complete Book of Great Australian Women

Epic Walk: Sahara by Paula Constant, reviewed by Christine Osborne

The Australian Women Writers Challenge has attracted a lot of reviews of fiction. Today's guest blogger, author and photojournalist Christine Osborne, bucks the trend by reviewing a real-life epic journey. (Links to other AWW nonfiction reviews appear below.)

Christine Osborne writes:

It is with regret that I have just read the last word of Sahara, the account by Paula Constant of her epic walk across the Western Sahara, to Mali and ‘not quite’ Niger — where authorities forbade her to continue across this volatile belt of Africa with on-going Tuareg dissent and latterly, an active al Qaeda cell. Indeed God knows what might have happened had she proceeded through Chad, a plan that was politically naïve and indicative of a gap in knowledge of events, sometimes tragic, that have befallen travellers in this desperate part of Africa.

Sahara is long — almost 400 pages, but I found it gripping from beginning to end, and while I hold the above view, I found it a rivetting read.

Though haunted by a failing marriage (the least interesting part of the book) and plagued by difficult guides, perpetual interest in herself — as a lone white woman walking with camels — burrs catching in her clothes and a urinary tract infection about which she is brutally frank—Paula still managed to keep a diary after walking 25kms a day, from well to desert well.

Her writing is achingly descriptive of a landscape that often has little to describe. And it is never repetitive. We encounter the nomad tea-making ritual on a dozen occasions, but something colourful is always included to make it different to the last one.

Her character comes across as tough, honest and determined and her writing flows easily from page to page, like the great sand dunes she crosses with her camels.

I particularly loved the part where on hearing the evocative music of the Saharoui, she and her two guides jump up, stamping out rhythmic dance on the desert sand. “Madani and I dance with our arms up and out to the sides...he stamps his feet and cocks his hand over his head...I hold my arms out and turn my hands, my hips roll and twist beneath my melekhva [the sari-like dress worn by Saharoui women]".

Paula Constant is one cool head and one helluva writer and I feel her publisher —Bantam— might have done her better in the choice of paper and a cover that does not buckle up. And while the writing can stand alone in this powerful account of ‘love, loss and survival’ it begs for pictures of the splendid and maddening people she met en route. Especially her nomad guides — M’Barak, Madani, Mohammed, Ali and Ibrahim.

Photo in S Luangwa (Zambia) Courtesy of C Osborne.

Sahara by Paula Constant
Bantam 2009— ISBN: 978-1-74166-929-9

Christine Osborne is author of books on Morocco, the Middle East and Pakistan. Recently returned to Australia after living 40 years overseas, she is writing about her own adventures as a photojournalist in the Muslim world. Her website is Travels With My Hat and she also writes a blog.





Nonfiction books by Australian women reviewed for the AWW challenge include:

• The Paper War by Anna Johnston reviewed by Yvonne Perkins
• My Place by Sally Morgan, reviewed by M D Brady
• Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia by Penny Russell, reviewed by Paula Grunseit
• Waiting Room: a memoir by Gabrielle Carey, reviewed by Paula Grunsheit
• The Double Life of Herman Rockefeller by Hillary Bonney, reivewed by Miss M (true crime)
• The Confession of an Unrepentant Lesbian Ex-Mormon by Sue-Ann Post, reviewed by Heidi.
• Bad Faith: A Story of Family and Fatherland, by Carmen Callil, reviewed by Heidi 
• A Woman's War: The Exceptional Life Of Wilma Oram Young, Am by Barbara Angell, reviewed by Heidi 
• Spaces in Her Day: Australian Women’s Diaries by Katie Holmes, reviewed by M D Brady.
• Women of Letters: Reviving the Lost Art of Correspondence, reviewed by Jet.

Have you written a review of nonfiction for the AWW challenge? Please leave a comment with the link to your review so it can be added here.