Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life Book

Introduction: Australian writers - tourists or residents? ix

Part 1 Wright and White: Big figures in the cultural landscape 1940s to 1970s 1

Chapter 1 A play of opposites: Judith Wright's poetic-public crossings 3

Chapter 2 Imagining the real: Patrick White's literary-political career 29

Part 2 Inheritance, (dis)possession, poetry 1960s to 1980s 57

Chapter 3 Networks and shadows: the public sisterhood of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Judith Wright 59

Chapter 4 Inheritance and refusal: the properties of white Australian poetry 78

Part 3 Fractured consensus: literary whiteness and belonging in the 1990s 95

Chapter 5 Alienating powers: Les Murray's poetry and politics 97

Chapter 6 Cultivating nation: the quiet diplomacy of David Malouf 119

Part 4 Fragmentation and renewal: Australia's changing literary publics 1995 to the present 137

Chapter 7 J'accuse in the Antipodes: Helen Garner's public interventions 139

Chapter 8 Engaging the masses: Tim Winton, activism and the literary bestseller 158

Coda: Australian writer-intellectuals in the twenty-first century: legacy and future 181

Acknowledgments 195

Endnotes 198

Select bibliography 235

Index 251