This first-ever collection of Australian poet Judith Wright’s nonfiction is a compelling portrait of a prescient voice on modern Australia.
Judith Wright (1915-2000) is one of the best-known Australian poets of her generation. Born into a pioneering bush family, her commitments to environmental protection, history writing and obtaining recognition for First Nations people drew her in new directions and assumed a major role in her life. She was the first president of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, a founder of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a member of the Aboriginal Treaty Commission.
This selection of her nonfiction, the first of its kind, brings together essays, speeches, family history, correspondence, memoir and criticism to reveal the personal and philosophical threads that bind together her work and life. It makes plain the shifts and transformations in her thinking, and the female friendships – in particular, with writer and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal – that opened her to new perspectives and connections.
This addition to the Australian Thinkers series shows what happens when a poet talks about a nation. It reveals a way of thinking about Australia – its land, history and culture – that draws on the best of human possibility.
Also in the series-
Inga Clendinnen (ed. James Boyce)
Donald Horne (ed. Nick Horne)
Hugh Stretton (ed. Graeme Davison)
George Seddon (ed. Andrea Gaynor)
Georgina Arnott is a scholar of Australian cultural and colonial history. She is based at the University of Melbourne, investigating British slavery in the Australian colonies, and is a freelance producer for Radio National’s The History Listen. Her debut The Unknown Judith Wright was shortlisted for the 2017 National Biography Award, and in 2021 she was named an ABC Top-5 Humanities Scholar.
