Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 1, 2018
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Contents ARTICLES Australian historians and biography 3 Malcolm Allbrook and Melanie Nolan The Lady Principal, Miss Annie Hughston (1859–1943) 23 Mary Lush, Elisabeth Christensen, Prudence Gill and Elizabeth Roberts Nancy Atkinson, bacteriologist, winemaker and writer 59 Emma McEwin Andruana Ann Jean Jimmy: A Mapoon leader’s struggle to regain a homeland 79 Geoff Wharton Upstaged! Eunice Hanger and Shakespeare in Australia 93 Sophie Scott-Brown Frederick Dalton (1815–80): Uncovering a life in gold 113 Brendan Dalton Australian legal dynasties: The Stephens and the Streets 141 Karen Fox Jungle stories from ‘Dok’ Kostermans (1906–94), prisoner of war on the Burma–Thailand railway 151 Michèle Constance Horne Chinese in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and in Australia 171 Tiping Su BOOK REVIEWS Michelle Grattan review of Tom Frame (ed.), The Ascent to Power, 1996: The Howard Government 183 Ragbir Bathal review of Peter Robertson, Radio Astronomer: John Bolton and a New Window on the Universe 189 Darryl Bennet review of Peter Monteath, Escape Artist: The Incredible Second World War of Johnny Peck 191 Barbara Dawson review of Stephen Foster, Zoffany’s Daughter: Love and Treachery on a Small Island 197 Nichola Garvey review of Kerrie Davies, A Wife’s Heart: The Untold Story of Bertha and Henry Lawson 201 Les Hetherington review of Eric Berti (conceived and introduced) and Ivan Barki (ed.), French Lives in Australia: A Collection of Biographical Essays 205 Juliette Peers review of Deborah Beck, Rayner Hoff: The Life of a Sculptor 211 Stephen Wilks review of John Murphy, Evatt: A Life 217 Notes on contributors 223 Australian Journal of Biography and History is published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is available online at press.anu.edu.au ISSN 2209-9522 (print) ISSN 2209-9573 (online) This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). About the Journal The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode The Australian Journal of Biography and History is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography (NCB) in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. The NCB Cover design and layout by ANU Press. was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve Cover image: Stephen Baxter, The Australian Crowd, 2014. as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally. The Australian Journal of Biography and © 2018 ANU Press History seeks to promote the study of biography in Australia. Articles that appear in the journal are lively, engaging and provocative, and are intended to appeal to the current popular and scholarly interest in biography, memoir and autobiography. They recount interesting and telling life stories and engage Editor: Malcolm Allbrook; Book Review Editor: Melanie Nolan; Copyeditor: Geoff Hunt. critically with issues and problems in historiography and life writing. Members of the Editorial Board The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles on Australian historical biography, including biographical studies, studies relating to theory and methodology, and the associated genres of autobiography, life Malcolm Allbrook (ANU), David Carment (Charles Darwin University), Libby Connors (University of writing, memoir, collective biography and prosopography. We are especially interested in articles that Southern Queensland), Karen Fox (ANU), Sam Furphy (ANU), Doug Munro (University of Queensland), explore the way in which biography and its associated genres can illuminate themes in Australian Melanie Nolan (ANU), Carolyn Rasmussen (University of Melbourne), Sophie Scott-Brown (University history, including women in Australian society, family history, transnational networks and mobilities, and of East Anglia). Indigenous history. Contact Details Submission Details All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Australian Journal of Biography and History, Please send article submissions or abstracts to the Editor, Dr Malcolm Allbrook, National Centre National Centre of Biography, School of History, RSSS, 9 Fellows Road (Coombs Building), Acton, of Biography, The Australian National University. Email: [email protected]. ANU, 2610, or [email protected]. Articles should be in the range of 5,000 to 8,000 words (excluding footnotes), although longer WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication contains the names and images submissions may be considered after consultation with the Editor. of deceased persons. Style and referencing: please use footnotes in Chicago style, and follow British spelling. Australian Journal of Biography and History is published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is available online at press.anu.edu.au ISSN 2209-9522 (print) ISSN 2209-9573 (online) This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). About the Journal The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode The Australian Journal of Biography and History is an initiative of the National Centre of Biography (NCB) in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. The NCB Cover design and layout by ANU Press. was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve Cover image: Stephen Baxter, The Australian Crowd, 2014. as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally. The Australian Journal of Biography and © 2018 ANU Press History seeks to promote the study of biography in Australia. Articles that appear in the journal are lively, engaging and provocative, and are intended to appeal to the current popular and scholarly interest in biography, memoir and autobiography. They recount interesting and telling life stories and engage Editor: Malcolm Allbrook; Book Review Editor: Melanie Nolan; Copyeditor: Geoff Hunt. critically with issues and problems in historiography and life writing. Members of the Editorial Board The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles on Australian historical biography, including biographical studies, studies relating to theory and methodology, and the associated genres of autobiography, life Malcolm Allbrook (ANU), David Carment (Charles Darwin University), Libby Connors (University of writing, memoir, collective biography and prosopography. We are especially interested in articles that Southern Queensland), Karen Fox (ANU), Sam Furphy (ANU), Doug Munro (University of Queensland), explore the way in which biography and its associated genres can illuminate themes in Australian Melanie Nolan (ANU), Carolyn Rasmussen (University of Melbourne), Sophie Scott-Brown (University history, including women in Australian society, family history, transnational networks and mobilities, and of East Anglia). Indigenous history. Contact Details Submission Details All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, Australian Journal of Biography and History, Please send article submissions or abstracts to the Editor, Dr Malcolm Allbrook, National Centre National Centre of Biography, School of History, RSSS, 9 Fellows Road (Coombs Building), Acton, of Biography, The Australian National University. Email: [email protected]. ANU, 2610, or [email protected]. Articles should be in the range of 5,000 to 8,000 words (excluding footnotes), although longer WARNING: Readers are notified that this publication contains the names and images submissions may be considered after consultation with the Editor. of deceased persons. Style and referencing: please use footnotes in Chicago style, and follow British spelling. ARTICLES Australian historians and biography MALCOLM ALLBROOK AND MELANIE NOLAN Australian biography amid the recent biographical turn The publication of the first number of the Australian Journal of Biography and History provides an opportunity to reflect on recent Australian biographical practice.1 By recent, we mean the last two decades, with our starting point Stuart Macintyre’s 1998 survey of biography in the Oxford Companion to Australian History. He noted that the genre was wide-ranging: The writing of a life is an activity practised by historians in company with other academic, professional and amateur writers. It is a popular and deceptively simple genre that spans the filial memoir and the critical study, and ranges from the formal record to the imaginative re-creation that spills into fiction.2 Macintyre pointed to a fork in Australian biographical practice in the 1950s (common to western historiographies) when, on the one hand, professional historians turned to biography and, on the other, academic historians developed a newly found ‘mistrust’, finding defects in adequately comprehending a completed life and a tendency to rely on singularity and individual agency in preference to structural causation.3 Biography is perhaps only just starting to shake off this history, although to some it remains academic historians’ ‘unloved stepchild, occasionally but grudgingly let in the door, more often shut outside with the riffraff’.4