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y separately published work icon 12 Edmondstone Street selected work   autobiography   essay  
  • Author:agent David Malouf http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/malouf-david
Issue Details: First known date: 1985... 1985 12 Edmondstone Street
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Malouf invites us on an intimate, beautifully described journey into his own past, beginning in his childhood home.

'This remarkable book combines autobiography with a subtle, almost painterly sense of the ways in which the objects which we surround ourselves, and the places in which we live, build up our private maps of reality and shape our personal mythologies. David Malouf begins by describing in love, evocative detail, the house in Brisbane where he was born and grew up, moving from room to room, always relating the smallest items in it to the life he remembers and his widening perception of the world at large. He moves on to describe life in the Tuscan village where he lived, and the arrival of an Australian Television crew; reflecting on his first visit to India, he touches on the problems of interpreting and evaluating unfamiliar places; back in Australia, he recalls a traumatic wartime journey with his father from Brisbane to Sydney. Funny, humane and beautifully written, this is a unique and extraordinary essay in autobiography.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint). (Sighted: 9/5/2014)

Notes

  • Dedication: For my sister, Jill.

Contents

* Contents derived from the London,
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
:
Chatto and Windus , 1985 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
12 Edmondstone Street, David Malouf , single work prose autobiography (p. 1-66)
A Place in Tuscany, David Malouf , single work prose (p. 67-102)
A Foot in the Stream, David Malouf , single work prose travel (p. 103-122)
al-Khaṭṭ al-ḥadīdī Kāyūjil. The Kyogle Line, David Malouf , single work prose (p. 123-134)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1986 .
      image of person or book cover 2777014211517491685.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online
      Extent: 134p.
      ISBN: 0140088733
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Chatto and Windus ,
      1993 .
      image of person or book cover 9221094647747990055.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 134p.
      Edition info: Collected ed.
      ISBN: 0701161191
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      1999 .
      image of person or book cover 4792385019286644875.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 153p.
      ISBN: 0099273780
Alternative title: Edmonstone Street 12
Language: Swedish
    • Stockholm,
      c
      Sweden,
      c
      Scandinavia, Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Meta Ottossen och Ellerstroms Forlag ,
      2009 .
      image of person or book cover 3062330764458789854.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 154p.p.
      Note/s:
      • The Swedish titles of the contents of this work are given as:

        • Edmonstone Street 12
        • En plats i Toscana
        • En fot i strömmen
        • Kyoglebanan
      • Illustrated by Jolyne Knox.
      ISBN: 9789172472082, 9172472081

Other Formats

  • Also braille, sound recording.

Works about this Work

The Kyogle Line : 12 Edmondstone Street, Hospitality and Memories of Home Suzie Gibson , 2020 single work essay
— Appears in: Queensland Review , June vol. 27 no. 1 2020; (p. 60-72)

'The spaces of our childhood maintain a particularly enduring hold when they cease to exist or are so reconstructed that the previous version is effectively obliterated. Recollections of an early home that no longer exists provide the framework for David Malouf’s celebrated 12 Edmondstone Street. In this article, I juxtapose Malouf’s experiences with recollections of my own family home in Kyogle, coincidentally situated at the other end of the old railway line that began just a couple of hundred metres from Malouf’s childhood dwelling. In addressing both the similarities and differences between Malouf’s and my own example, the discussion will develop around the fact that in contrast to the physical non-existence of the address of 12 Edmonstone Street, my own family home in Kyogle has not been extinguished; instead, it is today a disfigured ‘renovation’ of its former self. Ultimately, 12 Edmondstone Street – a piece of writing whose poetic power and mnemonic resonance go beyond the mortal limits of physical space – will operate as a literary shelter through which the power of memories of former living spaces can be articulated.' (Publication abstract)

Scenes of Reading : Australia-Canada-Australia Sneja Gunew , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015;
'I found the idea of a ‘scene of writing’ very generative and tried to retrieve a few mises en scène in relation to my own obsessions over the past 45 years of teaching both in Australia and Canada. Reading some of the publications coming out of Robert Dixon’s project (e.g. Dixon and Rooney) I speculated about how fascinating it would be to track Australian scenes of reading in relation to those writers who came to Australian literary texts with knowledge of languages other than English and with cultural contexts other than Anglo-Celtic ones. After the panel session I launched a kind of Festschrift for a writer who has embodied all this for forty years: Antigone Kefala. The book captures many scenes of reading her work in numerous languages and places across the world (Karalis and Nikas). I also started speculating about the recent work by Kim Scott and many others who have been working to salvage Aboriginal languages and that here too there is an important intervention into a prevailing mono-lingualism that still seems to be the default position in Australia. Paradoxically, the work of indigenous writers and critics may make it easier to argue for more attention to be paid to that intra-cosmopolitanism multilingualism comprising the many writers and artists who have always worked within Australia—sometimes in English or an English inflected differently as well as many many other languages (Chow).' (Author's introduction)
The Mythology of Absence : David Malouf's 12 Edmonstone Street and Stefan Ackerie's Skyneedle Suzie Gibson , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Folklore , November no. 29 2014; (p. 161-168)

'The folkloric power of place cannot be underestimated. This article examines the importance of David Malouf's childhood home in South Brisbane–12 Edmonstone Place–in shaping the imagination of one of Australia's most celebrated writers. It also addresses another very different kind of South Brisbane architectural site, hairdresser Stefan Ackerie's phallic Skyneedle. What will be considered is how Malouf's now long destroyed weatherboard home preserves the sheen of mythology, whereas Ackerie's all too visible Skyneedle short circuits the very possibility of being legendary because of its vertical omnipresence.'

Source: Abstract.

David Malouf and the Poetics of Possibility Bill Ashcroft , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014;

'The essay addresses the poetic dimension of David Malouf's novels, suggesting that a poetics of possibility can be found in all his work. The poetics of possibility is a function both of Malouf’s thematic interest in the future and of his use of poetic language to draw the reader to imagine various kinds of ways of experiencing and knowing the world. The essay draws upon the philosophy of Ernst Bloch to illuminate the utopian dimension of Malouf’s work, whether in seeing the radiance of possibility in simple objects, the silent ‘presence’ at the centre of language, or the possibility of a different kind of future that Australian society might have experienced.' (Publication abstract)

Our Cup Runneth Over : Life-Stories from Fremantle Go National Per Henningsgaard , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Telling Stories : Australian Life and Literature 1935–2012 2013; (p. 431-436)
Mirrors of Memory Murray Bramwell , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , December no. 20 1985; (p. 21)

— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 selected work autobiography essay
Malouf Revives with Elegance a Neglected Genre Geoffrey Dutton , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16-17 November 1985; (p. 16)

— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 selected work autobiography essay
Malouf's Book of Memories Veronica Sen , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 23 November 1985; (p. B2)

— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 selected work autobiography essay
Malouf's Meditative Pause Rosemary Dobson , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30 November 1985; (p. 46)

— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 selected work autobiography essay
[Review] 12 Edmonstone Street J. Davidson , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 7 December 1985; (p. 13)

— Review of 12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 selected work autobiography essay
Writing of Australian Dwelling : Animate Houses and Anxious Ground David Crouch , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 80 2004; (p. 43-52, notes 235-236)
Invisible and Indisivible Boundaries in David Malouf's 12 Edmondstone Street Deirdre Gilfedder , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Politics and Poetics of Passage in Canadian and Australian Culture and Fiction 2006; (p. 209-220)
Teaching Contemporary Australian Autobiography Richard Freadman , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Life Writing Texts 2007; (p. 208-213)
Somatic Choreographies Sneja Gunew , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Haunted Nations : The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms 2003; (p. 93-106)
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology Jack Bowers , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
Last amended 11 Jun 2020 14:09:57
Subjects:
  • Brisbane, Queensland,
  • Tuscany,
    c
    Italy,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • c
    India,
    c
    South Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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