Australian Dictionary Of Biography Research Articles

100 years flashback

100 years flashback

The Role of Serendipity and Collaboration in Adding Texture and Family Context to the Career of Australian Educator Renée Erdos (1911–1997)

ABSTRACT Renée Erdos was a history teacher and distance educator whose significance to Australian and international education was recognised in 2021 with an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. During her lifetime Erdos published a memoir, Teaching Beyond the Campus, and has left a collection of papers with the National Library of Australia. However, this material deals almost exclusively with her professional life. Her family history and personal life have been difficult to reconstruct even though the digital revolution and access to online resources such as Trove and Ancestry.com have helped to reveal more of the traces of her past. This article reflects on the way in which old-fashioned serendipity and collaboration resulting from chance encounters with researchers in different fields have played a role in providing access to otherwise hidden sources and information. The stories that emerge are interesting and add new dimensions to our understanding of Erdos's early life. Even though the serendipity and collaboration have been mediated by the internet and its instantaneous international reach, they highlight the way in which life writing can thrive on personal meetings across the range of historical practice, including family history.

Celebrating Women in Paleobotany: A Tribute to Edith L. Taylor—Introduction and Dedication

Celebrating Women in Paleobotany: A Tribute to Edith L. Taylor—Introduction and Dedication

Sarah Bellamy, the women transported to Botany Bay, biographical genres and the Australian Dictionary of Biography

Sarah Bellamy, the women transported to Botany Bay, biographical genres and the Australian Dictionary of Biography

A Free Country: Australians' Search for Utopia

A Free Country: Australians' Search for Utopia

A city and its people: Canberra in the Australian Dictionary of Biography

A city and its people: Canberra in the Australian Dictionary of Biography

Chinese in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and in Australia

Chinese in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and in Australia

‘The Librarian as Historian’: Hugh Wright, C. H. Bertie and Their Circle

‘The Librarian as Historian’ was the title of an article written in 1902 by the first Mitchell Librarian, Hugh Wright (1909–1932). His ‘old friend’ Charles Henry Bertie was inaugural Sydney Municipal Librarian (1909–1939), and the two worked with other librarian historians in a range of endeavours over several decades. While Bertie has an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Wright was overlooked and remains without a biographical study. This paper builds on fundamental biographical research on the two men as a basis for an examination of their careers as librarians, historians and collaborators. Both men wrote and lectured on Australian history in public forums, as well as collecting, cataloguing and providing access to material for other historians. From its beginnings the Mitchell Library under Wright searched Britain and Europe for manuscripts and books, and soon became the leading research centre for the study of the history of Australia and the Pacific. Bertie’s influence extended well beyond the Municipality of Sydney through his extensive journalism and his involvement in the 1938 Australian Sesquicentenary Historical Exhibition. The legacy of this circle is still a strong influence on public versions of Australia’s national narrative.

Before Alternative Voices: <em>The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser</em>

Before Alternative Voices: <em>The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser</em>

An initial inventory of Australian foresters’ lives

ABSTRACTAn initial inventory of foresters’ lives was prepared by entering the digitised obituaries of 186 foresters onto the National Centre of Biography’s website, where they complemented the entries for a further 20 foresters in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Obituaries were taken from forestry journals, newsletters and newspapers. The inventory includes about 8–10% of the population of Australia’s past foresters, with obituaries dating from 1900 to 2015. The content of the inventory is discussed in four periods: establishing state forestry, building state forestry, post-war expansion, and fracturing. The possibility of extending the initial inventory using publications and oral histories, including those of living foresters, is discussed.

Re-imagining a Nation: The Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

This essay investigates how the digital medium has recently enabled radicalchanges in the ways that national biography can be generated and engagedwith. It takes the position that national biography, whether or not it sets out todo so, reflects how a nation views itself. The Australian Dictionary of Biography(ADB) has been produced continuously for more than 50 years, and has cumulatively generated a story of a nation. The nature of that collective narrative, however, is not easy to discover. Now, as a result of the ADB’s recent adoption of digital formats, the potential for analysis of the biographies it contains has expanded exponentially, offering unprecedented research opportunities for investigating in new ways how the idea of nation itself has evolved in Australia.This article was submitted to the European Journal of Life Writing in May 2014 and publidhed on 25 June 2015,

Resilience, Agency and Resistance in the Storytelling Practice of Aunty Hilda Wilson (1911-2007), Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Elder

Resilience, Agency and Resistance in the Storytelling Practice of Aunty Hilda Wilson (1911-2007), Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Elder

Cookbooks for Making History: As Sources for Historians and as Records of the Past

Cookbooks for Making History: As Sources for Historians and as Records of the Past

Coffee Palaces in Australia: A Pub with No Beer

Coffee Palaces in Australia: A Pub with No Beer

Biography Today: A Commentary

Are we living in a ‘golden age’ of biography? This extended commentary on biography today concludes that we probably are. Based on a selection of recent significant biographies, mostly Australian, a long association with the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and personal experience, it offers a perspective on the enhanced status of biography, highlights the widening scope and inclusiveness of the genre, and notes its increasingly porous boundaries. Problems of innovation are considered as well as achievements. Some current issues and expectations are also addressed. An awareness that the collapse of ‘grand narratives’ in the 1970s has created new opportunities for biography underpins the argument.

Lionel Logue: A Pioneer in Speech-Language Pathology

Lionel Logue: A Pioneer in Speech-Language Pathology

John Piper, ‘Conqueror of the Interior’

There are two John Pipers in Australia's history. The better known was John Piper, 1773-1851, military officer, public servant, bon vivant and landowner near Bathurst who was the subject of a short, somewhat romantic and perhaps over-sympathetic biography by M. Barnard Eldershaw: The Life and Times of Captain John Piper, Sydney, 1939. One of its two authors, Marjorie Barnard, also wrote the lively sketch of his chequered career in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The lesser known John Piper, usually referred to simply as Piper, the subject of this article, was an Aborigine who accompanied Thomas Mitchell on his 1836 expedition into Australia Felix. Very probably be got his name by being referred to as 'John Piper's boy', this phrase being abbreviated to 'Piper'. Almost all we know about this Piper comes from the second volume of Mitchell's Three Expeditions into Eastern Australia and the copy of the journal of Mitchell's second-in-command, Granville Stapylton.

Australian Dictionary of Biography (online edition)

Australian Dictionary of Biography (online edition)

‘A worse importation than chewing gum’: American Influences on The Australian Press and Their Limits—The Australian Gallup Poll, 1941–1973

In studies of the Australian press, a wide range of American influences—on news genres, on notions of newsworthiness and presentation, and on the language in which stories are written—has been larg...

From Waste to Superbrand: The Uneasy Relationship between Vegemite and Its Origins

From Waste to Superbrand: The Uneasy Relationship between Vegemite and Its Origins