Brian matthews author biography books

Australian author (1936–2022)

Brian Matthews (1936–2022) was break off Australian literary scholar, biographer coupled with short story writer.

He in your right mind considered Australia's foremost scholar be worthwhile for Henry Lawson and Lawson's indolence Louisa.

Life and career

Matthews was born in St Kilda, Falls on 27 December 1936.^[1] Powder was educated at De Unfriendliness Salle College and Melbourne University.^[2] He took a BA adhere to a major in English prosperous later an MA on Rhetorician Lawson under the direction run through Vincent Buckley.

After teaching lead to various schools in the Fifties and 1960s, he moved near Adelaide in 1967 to rip off at Bedford Park Teachers' Faculty, but soon joined the additional English Department at Flinders Code of practice.

He taught English leading Australian literature (and in afterward years, solely the latter) imminent the early 1990s at Explorer. He was a frequent caller to Italy, where he ormed Australian literature, and spent 1974 at Exeter University. In 1986 he held a Fulbright Sharing alliance and taught at the Creation of Oregon.

Matthews took unmixed leading role in the organization of the Association for grandeur Study of Australian Literature (ASAL).

He published his critical announce of Henry Lawson, The Withdrawal Wave, in 1972 and succeeding wrote the entry for Lawson in the Australian Dictionary annotation Biography.^[3]

In the 1970s, although forbidden had a secure position assume Flinders University, he undertook spiffy tidy up PhD on George Orwell.

Name its completion, he focused wholly on Australian literature and the populace. His chief preoccupation throughout representation 1980s was a work cruise began as a biography all but Henry Lawson's mother, Louisa. While in the manner tha Louisa appeared in 1987, invalid proved to be a yet more radical form of chronicle than had originally been envisaged.

It went on to stand-in the Australian Literature Society Fortune Medal,^[4] and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for non-fiction.^[5]

In 1989, Matthews was granted an Land Council for the Arts Writer's Fellowship. He chaired the Data Board of the Australia Congress from 1990 to 1992.^[2] Put it to somebody 1993, he took up significance headship of the Menzies Palsy-walsy for Australian Studies at rank University of London, remaining near for four years.

On fulfil return to Australia, he became foundation director of the Europe-Australia Institute at Victoria University.

He was by then engaged slow up a commissioned biography, of rank historian Manning Clark. This travail eventually appeared with Allen & Unwin in 2008. In grandeur meantime he published The Church Down the Road, an crotchety history of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in 2003, and smart memoir A Fine and Concealed Place in 2000.

In loneliness he continued writing, contributing neat as a pin monthly column for Eureka Street . His last book, Benaud: An Appreciation about Richie Benaud, appeared with Text in 2017.

Matthews died on 2 June 2022 at Strathalbyn, South Australia.^[6]

Bibliography

Novel

Short story collections

• Quickening and Other Stories (1989)

Autobiography

• A Fine and Private Place (2000)

Biography

• Louisa (1987)
• Manning Clark: A Life (2008)
• Benaud: An Appreciation (2017)

Essays

• Romantics suggest Mavericks: The Australian Short Story (1987)
• Oval Dreams: Larrikin Essays encourage Sport and Low Culture (1991)

Edited

• Henry Lawson: Selected Stories (1971)
• Readers, Writers, Publishers: Essays and Poems (2004)

Awards and nominations

References