Review of Bards, Bohemians, and Bookmen: Essays in Australian Literature ed. Leon Cantrell, Letters of Vance and Nettie Palmer 1915-1963, ed. Vivian Smith, and A Critical History of South Australian Literature 1836-1930 by Paul Depasquale

Abstract

Each of the essays in Bards, Bohemians, and Bookmen is interesting; and if some are not more interesting than others, they are at least interesting in different ways. . . . Which is to say that one cannot quite tell what the intention of the book as a whole is, or what its interest is meant to be. The title gives us three possible foci, but that's a somewhat desperate bedspread to throw over the Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice collection that has got between the covers here. It's not a title that accommodates Patrick White, for example, yet there are two essays on him. On the other hand Christopher Brennan ecumenically embraces the lot.

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Published 1 October 1978 in Volume 8 No. 4.

Cite as: Mitchell, Adrian. ‘Review of Bards, Bohemians, and Bookmen: Essays in Australian Literature ed. Leon Cantrell, Letters of Vance and Nettie Palmer 1915-1963, ed. Vivian Smith, and A Critical History of South Australian Literature 1836-1930 by Paul Depasquale.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 8, no. 4, 1978, doi: 10.20314/als.4358e3729a.