AustLit

'the articles in this theme issue of Australian Historical Studies use interviews from the Australian Generations Oral History Project to explore a range of issues in Australian social and cultural history and about the documentation, interpretation and use of oral history. ...'(Abstract)

'In the context of debates on personal identity and social relationships in late modern societies, this article explores several narratives through which the Australian Generations Oral History Project's interviewees make sense of themselves. As they ‘re-member’ family connections formed in specific time and place—and often recalled through emotionally significant material objects—some tell life stories marked by stability, others by contingency, while others construct so-called ‘do-it-yourself’ biographies. I conclude that the complexity of these lives, and of their telling, reveals the ways in which a sense of generational location mediates other dimensions of identity and shapes responses to broad structural and cultural developments.' (Abstract)

'In 1917 the Australian Imperial Force suffered thirty-eight thousand casualties in Flanders, far outstripping those endured at Gallipoli. Despite this, the AIF's campaign in Belgium has received relatively little attention from historians or the public. As Australia's official war correspondent and historian, C.E.W. Bean has long been recognised as one of the principal Anzac mythmakers. Scrutinising his correspondence, diaries and Official History, this article argues that Bean struggled to integrate the third Ypres offensive into his vision of the Anzac legend and this may have helped marginalise Belgium's place in the Australian memory of the war. ...'

'The subtitle suggests that this is a biography. In fact it is only partly that, and the biographical elements are not the most successful aspects of the book. Connors’ real achievement lies in her depiction of the collective responses of Aboriginal people to the British intrusion into what is now south-eastern Queensland. ...'

'I am always interested in the lives of successful women: we tend to do success differently from men and Celia Rosser is no exception. Even her biographer, Carolyn Landon, was initially underwhelmed by Rosser, a ‘small woman with a round smiling face’, deciding that she might warrant a brief biography in a book aimed at tourists. Yet, Landon came to see potential in the life story of the acclaimed botanical artist and even converted from a botanical illiterate to a budding botanical illustrator, banksia grower and friend of the Australian Garden at Cranbourne. ...'

'Baptist minister Rev. John Saunders is probably best known for his fiery sermon in 1838 during the Myall Creek trial, in which he scorched the NSW squattocracy for their barbarous treatment of local Aboriginal peoples. If you are not familiar with the sermon, ‘The Grace of Goodness’ is worth reading for this alone. But beyond Saunders’ humane and liberal views on the treatment of local peoples, this volume of his collected writings traverses several key issues of the colony in the 1830s and 1840s. Leading church historian Ken Manley and researcher Barbara Coe describe this book as a documentary biography, and they have produced a valuable and lively volume. Saunders was a generous correspondent with family and with the press. His writings are presented thematically, showing Saunders’ deep concern particularly with temperance and education in the colony. Manley and Coe have ensured the texts are richly and carefully annotated and each section is placed usefully in context. There is wonderful detail in Saunders’ writings on immigration and the long sea journey, religious family life and the preoccupations of siblings, and associational and public life in mid-nineteenth-century Sydney. The appendices offer strong genealogical information on Saunders’ family, and delightfully, a detailed list of those who subscribed to the building fund for the Baptist chapel on Bathurst Street and their occupations, from pastoralist Henry Dangar to servants and convict shoemakers. ...'