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Elizabeth Webby

Elizabeth Webby AM is Professor Emerita of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney.

Affiliation

University of Sydney

Elizabeth Webby

Articles

Elizabeth Webby
Review of Locating Australian Literary Memory, by Brigid Magner

Locating Australian Literary Memory begins with a typically pithy quotation from Miles Franklin about its subject matter: ‘Such monuments alas, too often are a saving…

29 October 2020
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy, by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver

Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy, by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver. Sydney University Press, 2017.

25 February 2018
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Angus & Robertson and the British Trade in Australian Books, 1930-1970. The Getting of Bookselling Wisdom, by Jason D. Ensor

With the growing interest in the history of the book, the extensive Angus & Robertson archive, now held at the State Library of NSW, has…

1 October 2014
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Remembering Patrick White: Contemporary Critical Essays, edited by Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas

Remembering Patrick White: Contemporary Critical Essays includes twelve essays based on papers delivered at a symposium of the same title, held in Sydney in May…

1 May 2011
Elizabeth Webby
Not Reading the Nation: Australian Readers of the 1890s

The article explores the tastes and values of late-nineteenth-century reading groups and societies in Hobart, Sydney and Adelaide, and of their interest (or lack thereof)…

1 May 2006
Elizabeth Webby
Australian Literary Lives

Webby presents a detailed analysis of the first two Australian volumes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

1 October 2003
Elizabeth Webby
Reading My Brilliant Career

Places My Brilliant Career in the wider context of late nineteenth century Australian writing and literary cultures, examining its position in the Australian literary canon…

1 October 2002
Elizabeth Webby
Review of The Bibliography of Australian Literature, A- E, Index to Serials in Australian Periodicals and Newspapers: Nineteenth Century, and The Poems of Charles Harpur: An Analytical Finding List

Bibliographies, indexes, finding lists—essential tools for the literary scholar and cultural historian, but ones often lacking for Australian material. The three works reviewed here represent…

1 October 2002
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre, by Helen Gilbert, and Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s, edited by Veronica Kelly

In the past, drama has been something of the Cinderella among Australia's literary genres. In nationalist constructions of of literary history, for example, poetry and…

1 May 1999
Elizabeth Webby
Walter and Mary Richardson’s Letters and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

Discusses the influence Richardson's reading of her parents' romantic letters may have had on the composition of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

1 May 1998
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Henry Handel Richardson, by Michael Ackland, Henry Handel Richardson, edited by Susan Lever and Catherine Pratt, and The Tomis Complex: Exile and Eros in Australian Literature, by Irina Grigorescu Pana

It is fascinating to watch the ebbs and flows of the reputations of various Australian writers Someone like Douglas Stewart, for example, for years so…

1 October 1997
Elizabeth Webby
Review of The Portrayal of Women in the Fiction of Henry Handel Richardson, Gender, Politics and Fiction. Twentieth Century Australian Women's Novels, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre. 1788-1914, Henry Handel Richardson: a Critical Study

Between them, these four books indicate something of the present widening range of Australian literary studies. Our writers, especially our novelists, are attracting increasing attention…

1 October 1986
Elizabeth Webby
Review of Australia on the Popular Stage: 1829-1929 by Margaret Williams

Margaret Williams' book has been subtitled 'an historical entertainment in six acts'. Its format—quarto size, large print, generous margins, plentiful illustrations—seems designed for the coffee…

1 May 1984
Elizabeth Webby
Australian Short Fiction from While the Billy Boils to The Everlasting Secret Family

As every writing on or of short fiction knows, beginnings and endings are vital. The boundaries of this critical outline of twentieth-century Australian short fiction…

1 October 1981
Elizabeth Webby
Review of books by Hal Porter, Catherine Helen Spence, Douglas Stewart and Ric Throssell

Webby reviews the following books:

The Extra by Hal Porter (Thomas Nelson Australia Limited. Melbourne, 1975).

An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence (W.K. Thomas &amp…

1 October 1976
Elizabeth Webby
More Substance to Fisher’s Ghost?

Hadgraft and Webby account for the legend of Fisher's Ghost, which has its origins in the murder of farmer Frederick Fisher in Campbell Town on…

1 May 1968