'Ern Malley' James McAuley Harold Stewart Max Harris John Reed McAuley and Stewart then sent Harris their In the 1940's, Angry Penguins was a magazine work and a letter under the name of Ethel for the Australian literary and artistic avant­ Malley (Ern's supposed sister). Harris was garde movement published by the surrealist ecstatic, deeming Malley in the class of poet MAX HARRIS. It had a strong focus on Dylan Thomas. His fiends agreed. He then publishing modernist poetry. Before the rushed out a special edition of Angry Second World War, JAMES MCAULEY Penguins.Not all were convinced. An article (who later worked at Middle Head) and in the Adelaide University student paper HAROLD STEWART had been part of suggested that Harris had penned the poems Sydney's Bohemian arts world. They decried as some form of elaborate hoax. the evolution of early Modernism to later Subsequently, Harris hired a private forms that could best described as incoherent investigator to find Ethel Malley. Later the messes. They lamented the loss of Sydney Sunday Sun reported that the poems craftmanship and of meaning in poetry. had been written by McAuley and Stewart. So they decided to hoax Harris and his co­ editor JOHN REED. They constructed a fictional biography for 'Ernest Lalor Malley' a The Ern Malley hoax poet who it was claimed had died at the age had long­lasting of 25. Then in one afternoom, they penned an repercussions. The entire body of work (to be ascribed to Malley) Australian movement ­ seventeen poems of a page or less each. for modernistic They called the works ­ The Darkening Ecliptic. writing received a They subsequently reported that they wrote severe setback. The down the first things that came into their conservatives were heads. strengthened. It was reported that A splash — the silver nymph prominent artist Was a foam flake in the night. Sidney Nolan But though the careful winds credited Ern Malley with inspiring him to Visited our trembling flesh paint his first Ned Kelly series "it made me They carried no echo. Night Piece 2 take the risk of putting against the Australian bush an utterly strange object"..