For a published work of nonfiction. Judges in this category are seeking evidence of a command of the subject as well as a fluent and outstanding literary style. There is no restriction in this category regarding subject matter.
Prize: $15,000
166 nominations – Judges: Penelope Curtin, Susan Fleming, Dr Robert Foster
Winner
Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography by Jill Roe (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins)
On 28 September 1901 the Bulletin critic, A.G. Stephens, wrote that My Brilliant Career was the very first Australian novel to be published. In a monumental undertaking – monumental in its scope, detail and importance – Jill Roe celebrates the extraordinary life of the writer of Australia’s first novel, Stella Miles Franklin. Jill Roe’s scholarly biography, in which she seamlessly combines literary and historical detail, brings fascinating insights into the personality and writing of Australia’s best-known female writer. Always with a light and lively touch, Jill Roe describes her epic life journey – her early encounters with figures from Australia’s literary world (Banjo Paterson and Joseph Furphy), her forays into the world of journalism (she was an equally talented journalist), her involvement in the labour movement in Chicago and in the first wave of feminism, her encounters with the intelligentsia in London and then her decision to travel to the Balkans to nurse wounded soldiers. On her return to Australia she took the cause of Australian writers to her heart, including mentoring other writers. Her lasting legacy to Australian writers was the endowment of the Miles Franklin Award, a legacy as long-lived and significant as her extraordinarily diverse oeuvre. This most compelling – and towards the end of Miles Franklin’s life – deeply moving biography is an outstanding and prodigious contribution to Australian literary scholarship. It is destined to be the definitive account of the life Stella Miles Franklin.
Shortlisted
Van Diemen’s Land by James Boyce (Black Inc.)
For most of us the image of Van Diemen’s Land is Port Arthur, brutalised convicts and a brutal race war, but Boyce digs deeper and further back to expose a hidden world. What is revealed is a unique convict society, forged by the need to adapt to a new environment just to survive. Boyce vividly illuminates the ‘kangaroo economy’ that sustained the early settlement with not just food but also clothing. It is hard not to marvel at a world in which the military, as much as the convicts, were likely to be dressed in animal skins and furs – warmer and more waterproof than their imported cotton and hemp. This was a place where, for a time, there was a necessary co-existence between Aboriginal people and Europeans and bushrangers were an alternative source of political authority. Boyce describes a hybrid class system in which the military were as much gentry as gaolers and the convicts more servants than prisoners. Revelations unfold page after page. Engagingly written, this is an enthralling account of a hitherto obscure facet of Australia’s settlement history. Because it changes our understanding of Van Diemen’s Land is one of many reasons why this book is a worthy inclusion in the shortlist.
Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia by David Day (HarperCollins Publishers)
David Day delivers a rigorous account of a much-neglected but important historical figure in Australian politics. In writing on Fisher, Day has resurrected one of the founders of the Australian Labor Party as well as a three-time prime minister. Researching from among letters, publications and primary and secondary sources, Day lifts the veil on important political events and decisions of the early twentieth century. Fisher’s life is a fascinating one. Born on the coalfields of Ayrshire, Scotland the subject goes ‘down pit’ as a boy but is always looking to improve not only himself (workers’ education, libraries, debating) but also the lives of others (trade unions, friendly societies, labour press). Moving to Australia in 1885, aged twenty-three, Fisher continues in mining (coal, gold), becomes a mine manager, shareholder and state MP. Day’s overall portrait is of a noble figure who rises from the working class, remains true to his background and seeks to improve the lives of those around him (fellow workers, Australian citizens). At the point when he is on the cusp of creating a just society, he narrowly loses an election, and then regains office at the outbreak of the First World War. This is a tragedy for Fisher and the Labor party as the labour movement is divided from without and within. The book is comprehensive in scope and graceful in style.
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island by Chloe Hooper (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)
In November 2004 Cameron Doomadgee was arrested after he swore at a policeman, and less than an hour later he lay dead in a police cell on Palm Island. With the skills of an investigative journalist, the hard-edged prose of a crime writer and the lyricism of a poet, Chloe Hooper explores the circumstances leading up to the tragic death, and follows the formal investigations that ensued. Reading her account of how the enraged community responded to the death by besieging the police station and burning it to the ground, and of how riot police were helicoptered in from the mainland as reinforcements, one cannot help but draw uncomfortable parallels with the racial violence of earlier Australian frontiers. No less discomforting is her account of the trials of the criminal justice system – with equally unsettling echoes – that flowed in the wake of these events. This is a powerful book: eloquent, even-handed, and illuminating.
Notes and references provide the reader with a myriad of detail of family life and are exceptional in their scope.
An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin by Jacqueline Kent (Penguin/Viking)
Jacqueline Kent provides a poignant exploration of one of the most mysterious women of the mid-twentieth century. This beautifully written and engaging book provides new insights into her subject. Hephzibah Menuhin performed to great acclaim as a child prodigy, but was overshadowed by her older brother Yehudi. Kent, her own curiosity piqued from a young age, delves into what it what was to be an intelligent, talented and beautiful woman who could forsake a glittering career – to the amazement of critics and audiences alike. The author unpacks what it was to be the ‘good wife’ and embrace what, she thought, would be freedom away from the strictures of her performance routine and her family. Kent digs deeply. Previously un-accessed letters provide insights and observations which are seamlessly threaded through a compelling narrative. Kent’s fluid style is one that is rich in ideas and allows the reader to taste the inner psyche of such an individual woman. For these reasons the author is a worthy inclusion on the shortlist.
Darwin’s Armada: How four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world by Iain McCalman (Penguin/Viking)
McCalman’s lively, imaginative and coherent approach to the achievements of Darwin, Huxley, Hooker and Wallace breaks new ground in the understanding of the time and values in which this burgeoning (r)evolutionary science sprang. The drama associated with the emergence of the theory of evolution makes this a compelling read and a worthy inclusion on the shortlist for the award. The book is a faithful account of four men who propelled evolution onto the scientific stage and laid the foundation of tenets still held true to this day. The author employs motifs to weave a texture for the reader of what it was to be a sea-faring explorer of the times, as well as part of the brotherhood that constituted ‘Darwin’s Armada’. In large measure, these voyages of hardships and epiphanies shaped their ideas. The seascape is as vitally recorded as the landscape, with such unique destinations as colonial Australia, the Amazon and, of course, the Galapagos Islands (to name a few) all springing into life. The personal and scientific details are married seamlessly together in this well-researched and footnoted book. McCalman, and his research helpers, provide a consummate bibliography of primary and secondary sources.
