AustLit logo

AustLit

John Barnes John Barnes i(A11610 works by) (a.k.a. Richard John Barnes)
Born: Established: 1931 ;
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Peter Cowan : An Angry Penguin in the West John Barnes , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 34 no. 1 2020; (p. 22-38)

'The central argument of this essay is that Peter Cowan's modernist experiments in fiction have not received due acknowledgment. A complex and conflicted personality, Cowan emerged in the 1940s as a writer under the sponsorship of the Angry Penguins in Melbourne but has become identified with Western Australia, where he was born and lived almost all his life. This essay, which discusses his love-hate relationship with the place, attempts to counter the limiting view that he is a regional writer. Drawing attention to the extraordinary contrast been his modernist fiction and his old-fashioned historical chronicles of his colonial forbears, it reveals him as a man psychically wounded by his family's past, whose overriding concern in his fiction was to match in words the emotional immediacy that the Angry Penguins achieved in paint.'  (Publication abstract)

1 Review of Mick : A Life of Randolph Stow, by Suzanne Falkiner John Barnes , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 33 no. 1 2018;

— Review of Mick : A Life of Randolph Stow Suzanne Falkiner , 2016 single work biography

'Most biographers like to think that what they have written would have been acceptable to the person they are writing about. Suzanne Falkiner has no such illusions about this work. In a postscript to her 890-page biography of Randolph Stow she remarks: ‘No doubt Stow would not have approved of this book, and more especially because it contains a large amount of “chatter about Harriet”’ (721). The phrase, ‘chatter about Harriet’ (originally from a review of a Shelley biography that gave considerable attention to Harriet, the first wife), had been used by Stow in a 1976 interview, when he had been asked whether he thought that ‘knowing something of the life and personality of an artist’ could help readers to understand his work. In reply he agreed on the need ‘to know a great deal – well, a certain amount, anyway – about an author’s life, and not only what he chooses to have known’. By way of illustration, he pointed to Conrad’s attempted suicide, which had only recently become known, as ‘obviously something that one needs to know’. At the same time, he hoped ‘this sort of thing could be kept to a minimum’, as ‘too much chatter about Harriet . . . distracts attention from the work’.' (Introduction)

1 3 y separately published work icon La Trobe: Traveller, Writer, Governor John Barnes , Braddon : Halstead Press , 2017 12322610 2017 single work biography

'Every man and his dog has heard of La Trobe. But just who was Charles Joseph La Trobe? He is at once a household name and a mystery man. A man vilified by his opponents, and misunderstood by his modern admirers.

'This lavishly illustrated biography uncovers the man behind the public name, as not only an important colonial figure but an author and artist. Traces his globetrotting early years and struggles as Governor in Victoria during the goldrush to his eventual blindness in old age. Filled with interesting colonial illustrations and his personal correspondence. ' (Publication Summary)

1 The Making of a Legend : Henry Lawson at Bourke John Barnes , 2017 single work biography
— Appears in: The La Trobe Journal , March no. 99 2017; (p. 35-49)
'‘If you know Bourke, you know Australia’, Henry Lawson wrote to Edward Garnett in February 1902, a few months before returning to Australia from England. He explained to Garnett that his new collection of stories, which he hen called ‘The Heart of Australia’, was ‘centred at Bourke and all the Union leaders are in it'. (When published later that year it was entitled Children of he Bush – a title probably chosen by the London publisher.) A decade after e had been there, Lawson was revisiting in memory a place that had had a profound influence on him. It is no exaggeration to say that his one and only stay in what he and other Australians called the ‘Out Back’ was crucial to his envelopment as a prose writer. Without the months that he spent in the northest of New South Wales, it is unlikely that he would ever have achieved the legendary status that he did as an interpreter of ‘the real Australia’.' (Introduction)
1 "A Man Apart :" The Unwritten Tragedy of Henry Lawson John Barnes , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 7 no. 1 2016;

' When Henry Lawson died in 1922, he was publicly honoured as a "national writer," but for the last twenty years of his life he had been a "derelict artist," caught in a cycle of poverty, alcoholism and depression, humiliated, frustrated, often ashamed of the work that he was producing and haunted by the sense of the writer that he might have been. Almost a century later, there is no biography that adequately portrays the man and the circumstances that contributed to his collapse. Underlying this article, which considers aspects of his struggle to realize his literary ambitions, is the assumption that because Lawson's work has such a strong autobiographical element, the way in which his life is read inevitably colours how his writing is read. Until there is a biography in which the tragic dimension of his life is fully recognized, our understanding of Lawson's literary achievement remains incomplete.' (Publication abstract)

1 Playing a Straight Bat : Laurie Clancy as Critic John Barnes , 2014 single work autobiography
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 4 2014;

'Laurie Clancy was already a lecturer at La Trobe University when I arrived there in 1970. In those heady days when universities were expanding rapidly, and there was a widely shared belief among both staff and students that the humanities mattered, teaching in an English department could be an exciting experience. The La Trobe English staff was young and enthusiastic, ready to try out new ideas about teaching and assessment, and staff meetings could be lively—and even acrimonious—as everyone had their say. What I quickly learned was that Laurie was a colleague who was easy to work with: he was a voice of reason at staff meetings; eschewed the factionalism that seemed to bedevil English departments in Australia during those years; and could always be relied upon to take a practical approach to things. Unfailingly sociable and never less than co-operative, with a strong sense of esprit de corps, he was a stalwart in the department, generous with his time in his dealings with both staff and students. As a teacher he was readily accessible to students, willing to spend time with them, mindful of their welfare, and full of encouragement for those who showed promise. My memory is that he was never less than busy, but never asked for relief or special favours to get more time for himself. He did not shirk the various administrative chores that came his way, handling them with a minimum of fuss, and sat on committees when it was required of him. Conscientious though he was about his university responsibilities, he did not spend more time on campus than he needed to, because he lived a double life, somehow managing to reconcile being a full-time academic with being a creative writer and journalist. Within a few years of his going to La Trobe he was probably the best-known member of the English department, with a solid reputation as a fiction writer and as a reviewer as well as an academic. ' (Author's introduction)

1 Beginnings : 1956-1965 John Barnes , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 59 no. 2 2014; (p. 144-158)
1 On Reading and Re-reading Patrick White John Barnes , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Quarterly , September vol. 43 no. 3 2014; (p. 212-230)
'Few writers have received as much attention and have been so little understood as Patrick White, the only Australian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Critics have found his novels demanding and puzzling, and have been divided over the nature of his achievement. This essay points to the failure of critics to recognise the extent of the influence of Flaubert as well as that of the English modernists on White, and discusses the kind of attentiveness that his writing demands of the reader.' (Publication abstract)
1 Travelling in Lawson's Tracks : A Review-Essay John Barnes , 2014 single work review essay
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 13 2014; (p. 244-254)

— Review of Biography of a Book : Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils Paul Eggert , 2013 single work criticism ; While the Billy Boils : The Original Newspaper Versions Henry Lawson , 2013 selected work short story
1 Australia’s Prodigal Son John Barnes , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son 2014; (p. 2-21)
'Meeting Patrick White, July 1988. In his later years Patrick White, with his black beret and walking stick, became a familiar, easily recognisable public figure. I did not need anyone to explain who he was when I met him on the grounds of La Trobe University one afternoon in July, 1988. He had come to the Bundoora campus to give, what proved to be, his last public speech. It was his second visit to the university: in 1984 he had given a very successful lunchtime talk supporting the newly fonned Nuclear Disarmament Party. This time he was speaking in the evening, giving the final talk in a series named after Ben Meredith, the first Master of Menzies College. I had been invited to chair his talk and to join the small group who were to dine with him at the college beforehand. ' (Introduction)
1 A Marriage of True Minds : Leonard and Elizabeth Jolley John Barnes , 2013 single work biography
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 58 no. 2 2013; (p. 118-137)
1 ‘The Secret of England’s Greatness’ : A Note on the Anti-Imperialism of Such is Life John Barnes , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 1 2013;

'The article traces the phrase 'Secret of England's Greatness' through its currency in nineteenth-century British culture, including the title of the painting of Queen Victoria by Thomas Jones Barker (1863), and other references, to argue that it was a commonplace in Joseph Furphy's time. The paper traces Furphy's critique of British imperialism in the novel.' (Author's abstract)

1 Joseph Furphy : The Philosopher at the Foundry John Barnes , 2013 single work biography
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 13 no. 1 2013;
1 An Honorary West Australian Remembers Bruce Bennett John Barnes , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 9 2012;
1 ‘Relationship and Love’ : The Teaching of Dr Ginibi John Barnes , 2012 single work prose
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 3 no. 1 2012; (p. 32-39)
1 Remembering the Palmers John Barnes , 2009 single work essay
— Appears in: The La Trobe Journal , May no. 83 2009; (p. 56-67)
A memoir of Barnes's friendship with Nettie Palmer and his meetings with her husband Vance.
1 Henry Lawson and the 'Pinker of Literary Agents' John Barnes , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 23 no. 2 2007; (p. 89-105)
1 4 y separately published work icon Socialist Champion : Portrait of the Gentleman as Crusader John Barnes , Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2006 Z1262364 2006 single work biography
1 y separately published work icon Furphy : The Water Cart and the Word John Barnes , Andrew Furphy , Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2005 Z1231187 2005 single work biography
1 [Review] City Bushman : Henry Lawson and the Australian Imagination John Barnes , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , October vol. 36 no. 126 2005; (p. 362-363)

— Review of City Bushman : Henry Lawson and the Australian Imagination Christopher Lee , 2004 single work criticism
X