The Thea Astley Collection in Fryer Library
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‘Queensland is where the tall yarn happens’ THE THEA ASTLEY COLLECTION IN FRYER LIBRARY SUSAN SHERIDAN, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S STUDIES AT FLINDERS UNIVERSITY IN ADELAIDE, WRITES ABOUT FRYER LIBRARY’S UNIQUE COLLECTION OF THEA ASTLEY MANUSCRIPTS. Thea Astley (1925-2004), more than two years or so. After retirement from Above: any other novelist, has put Queensland teaching, she lived for several years Thea Astley in the early on the map – especially the tropical in Kuranda, outside Cairns, before 1960s. Fryer Library, North. Almost all her sixteen titles moving back to New South Wales to Photograph Collection, are set in this state, of which she the South Coast. PIC 823 once wrote, ‘Queensland is where the tall yarn happens, acted out on Wherever she lived, Queensland Thea Astley’s green a stage where, despite its vastness, remained the heartland of her fiction, Hermes ‘Baby’ typewriter, the oddballs see and recognise each from suburban Brisbane around which she used from the other’. She was born and raised in 1960 in Slow Natives (1965) to the 1950s to the 1970s Brisbane, where her father was a Far North settings of the stories in journalist. She attended All Hallows Hunting the Wild Pineapple (1979) Convent and The University of and It’s Raining in Mango (1987) and Queensland, where she graduated dying small-towns like Drylands (1999). Bachelor of Arts in 1948. For the next More than a regional novelist, Astley twenty years she worked as a school was recognised as one of the leading teacher, and between 1967 and 1979 Australian modernist fiction writers she taught in the English Department of her generation, alongside Patrick at Macquarie University. Her first White and Hal Porter. She won the novel, Girl with a Monkey, appeared in prestigious Miles Franklin Prize no 1958, and from then on she produced less than four times. Yet there is no a novel or short story collection every extended study of her art in existence January 2009 2 (although there is a biography in The correspondence is largely preparation). The collection of critical literary, consisting of letters and cards essays on her work, plus an interview from other writers, and from editors and several essays by Astley, which and agents. These include Beatrice Paul Genoni and I edited (Thea Davis’s first letter, inviting Thea to Astley’s Fictional Worlds)1 was the first visit her at Angus and Robertson’s book on Astley’s work to be published, to talk about the manuscript of Girl as recently as 2006. This anomaly with a Monkey: ‘This piece is rather should surely be remedied, and the too slight, but I believe you could Thea Astley papers held in the Fryer become a very good novelist indeed.’ Library offer a rich resource from There are letters and postcards from which to begin such a study. Patrick White over the years 1960 to 1963, when they were friends in Ever the professional writer, during Sydney. A small collection of her her lifetime Astley deposited 17 books includes two of his novels and boxes of material, consisting of Selected Writings of Gérard de Nerval handwritten and typescript drafts inscribed to her by Patrick White. His of 11 of her books, from the first letters include severe criticism of one (Girl with a Monkey) to The Multiple of her manuscripts entitled ‘The Little Effects of Rainshadow (1996). These Lie’ (1961), despite the fact that Angus manuscripts have accompanying and Robertson wanted to publish it. A notes by the author. Many of them also question for literary sleuths – was this include correspondence with editors novel in fact never published, or did and publishers, and background it transmute into her third novel, The research material. In some cases there Well Dressed Explorer? are overseas editions of the novels. There are draft manuscripts of short The correspondence files also offer stories and articles or talks, and a few some insights into Thea Astley’s family unpublished manuscripts. Notebooks of origin – letters from her father and contain handwritten drafts of prose mother, and from her brother Philip, and poems, some of which date from who became a Jesuit priest. There is the 1940s when she was a member of also material by and about Philip, who the Barjai group in Brisbane. died in 1997. There are some 20 letters from her husband, Jack Gregson, most The Fryer Library recently acquired of them written from Europe where an additional six boxes of material he went travelling alone in 1975, and from Thea Astley’s estate. They a few cards and letters from Thea include successive drafts of several to members of her family. There is a more of her works, and a significant folder of material about Thea’s paternal amount of biographical material in the grandfather, Charles Astley, who taught form of correspondence. I recently had art at Toowoomba and Warwick in the the pleasure of looking through this early years of the twentieth century. new material. A folder of publishing contracts also Of literary manuscripts, there are contains speaking invitations with drafts of An Item from the Late News associated correspondence. There (published in 1982 but not represented are folders of newspaper cuttings and in the earlier acquisition) and the reviews, not in any particular order, but original handwritten draft of Drylands, including some of the American ones plus edited drafts of this novel: there which would be difficult to access is rich material here for a study of the otherwise; perhaps they indicate the evolution of this, her last novel. There reviews Astley was willing to keep. are also drafts of various sketches, talks and short stories (her Collected One box contains all the awards Stories were published in 1997). Astley won, literary and civil, as well Above: as her Bachelor of Arts certificate from Thea Astley’s 1988 Steele Rudd award for It’s The University of Queensland. Finally, Raining in Mango and her 1 Susan Sheridan and Paul Genoni, eds, Thea an unusual holding – two Hermes Astley’s Fictional Worlds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: 1992 Order of Australia Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. Paperback edition typewriters (which Thea used to refer medal 2008. to as ‘typers’), one a present from her 3 Fryer Folios husband Jack and used from the late into her relations with publishers, 1950s to 1970s, and a second one which would in turn provide insights purchased in the mid-1980s. into conditions of publication for fiction writers in Australia over the period of This additional acquisition makes her career. As well as the early poems the Fryer collection of Astley papers included in this collection, the Fryer the most extensive in the country. As a also holds a small collection of poems collection, it is exceptionally strong in she published in the school magazine holdings of successive drafts and proof – the makings perhaps for a collection copies of her novels. Apart from the of her poetry. It is to be hoped that drafts of The Well Dressed Explorer (her literary researchers will quickly take up third novel) and The Acolyte (her sixth), the opportunity to work with this rich which are held in the National Library, collection. the Fryer collection of Astley’s papers holds all the crucial material for a study SUSAN SHERIDAN was educated at of the processes of composition of her Sydney University (BA Hons 1967) and novels (the only novel not represented Adelaide University (PhD 1980). She at all in the archives seems to be A Boat is Adjunct Professor of English and Load of Home Folk, her fifth novel). Women’s Studies at Flinders University, where she taught women’s studies While this kind of study is most from 1987 to 2006. She has published urgently needed, there is also material widely on women writers, cultural from which to begin an investigation studies and feminist theory. A RECENT DONATION then, and which none of the rest of us would have believed was Fryer Library recently received possible.’ a very interesting donation in the form of two letters written McWatters left Australia in by David Malouf to Professor 1958 to begin studying for his Keith McWatters and his wife Dr doctorate at Grenoble University PA McWatters. Professor Keith where, as Peter Edwards has McWatters, professor of French noted, he became ‘in many at the University of Liverpool respects more French than the in England and international French’. Though he did return authority on the writer Stendhal, briefly to teach in UQ’s French was born in Maryborough, Department between 1961 and Queensland, in 1931. He attended 1964, McWatters spent the rest of The University of Queensland, his academic career in England, graduating with first-class where his major scholarly work Professor Keith McWatters in the late 1980s honours in French and English was a seven-volume edition in 1952, the year David Malouf of Stendhal’s Chroniques pour began studying at UQ. l’Angleterre. simplicity – for an idea of some simpler Australia that we have In the second of these two Neither he nor Malouf found a somehow fallen away from and letters written to McWatters’ wife particularly congenial intellectual ought to revive. It is, in fact, after McWatters’ death in 1995, environment in Queensland in the truly awful Australia of our Malouf recalled that ‘Keith was the 1950s and it is this problem youth.’ Malouf ends by noting: just enough older and further that the first letter addresses. ‘Queensland still upsets me…but ahead at University…for me to Written in 1985 in response to a when I come to write about it I find him (I was seventeen) very letter from McWatters praising get overwhelmed by my physical intimidating’, noting ‘the qualities Harland’s Half Acre, Malouf feeling for its light and colour.’ that justified my feeling it, the discusses Queensland under Joh intellectual seriousness and rigour Bjelke-Petersen: ‘The injustice We thank Dr PA McWatters for that was so rare in him.’ Malouf and cruelty stops short of actual depositing these two remarkable added: ‘It’s extraordinary to think bloodshed – so people don’t letters in Fryer Library.