HAS IT ARRIVED?

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 9, 11 July 1934, Page 9

HAS IT ARRIVED?

A TYPICAL LITERATURE

EXHIBITION IN LONDON

Has the British; Empire, or any of its four Dominions, produced a characteristic literature? The question is Taised by an enterprise of Messrs. J. and E. Bumpus in organising a show of Literature of the British Empire in the old Maiylebono Courthouse, says a writer in the ''Observer."

. To organise such an exhibition is to start on a quest for whatever in the Einpiro's four corners is indigenous or characteristic. The quarry is elusive Has Australia, for. instance, spoken yet with an authentic voice f Is the literature of Australia, if such exists, published in London (perhaps even written here?) or is a literature being written and: published in the Southern Hemisphere without attracting attention from readers and critics here?

I put such questions to Mr. J. G. Wilson, who is organising the exhibition, and to: Miss Winifred Hill, chief cataloguer of the Koyal Empire Society, whose bibliography, '' The Overseas Empire in. Fiction," represents perhaps tne most thorough-going research yet done .in this field. Their answers illuminated parts of a landscape which, is still obscure.

"We have to recognise first, as all agree, the powerful centripetal pull of London. Martial, colonial poet from Spain, made his way unhesitatingly to Rome. The Australian poet, equally unhesitatingly, takes the first possible boat to London. ( :. In the past ten years there have been' several invasions of London little groups of South African, Australian, and New Zealand poets and critics. Most of them become at once English, writers in the general, sense. Theymake occasionally a^reference back to tjheir country of origin (much as Mr. Priestley nods at Bradford), but less and less as time goes on.

But all colonial writers are/not emigrants. Iri Australia a". generation or two ago a genuine home-grown litorature seemed,about to .emerge. The convict settlements, the • early pioneering days;, and the days of the gold rush, all blossomed ,of their own ■ accord into stories. ,In the nineties Rolf "Boldrewood.was writing "Robbery Under Arms," "The Squatter's Dream," "The Miner's Eight"—the titles tell most-of the story—which may not'be great as literature, but are distinctly Australian. Henry Lawson's bushyanging stories came a few years later. THE CONVICT DAYS. -Marcus Clarice, writing "3for the Term of His Natural Life," started, in .1870, a -fashion for stories of Australian convict days which produced a Tegular literature of semi-historical novels. And there is still a tendency for Australian writers to look backwards for .their themes. Thus Henry Handel ;Richardson, .most, distinguished of living .Australian-novelists, covers in herj-jf^nious trilogy life'from the gold daysito the eighties., '' ' / " ( In,~,this; little.' literature^; of; works; of, history and of imagination the contemporary.; voice^'of Australia is not to be-heard with much distinctness. :And of the other Dominions there is much the same story to tell—except that they have generally a less plentiful history. of .their ,own'past. Canada, it is true, can boast her Parkman, historian of ; colonial adventuring, and a school of historical novelists, beginning with John Richardson (his "Waqousta" was published in '1832); and igoingtvorito the brisk, historical fiction of Sir Gxibert'''ParKey-in° our: own'dayviPf eneflCanada definitely has a literature in little. ■ A.nd, of course, there is Stephen Leaeock." ' ' ' : ' ' .'ik'^.-Zr-L-', '■' ■:'..'

.But New Zealand, unless wo count Samuel Butler, has little. South Africa has one jimportant. figure in ]. Olive Schreiner; has abl&. women novelists like Sarah Gertrude Miilhi^and Highly popular ones like Gertrude Page. ; It Would seem that of South African writers the women stay at home and write of their own country,' the men comb to London arid write'about things in general. ; . . *v;i; ■••

, A rec^Qgriisabte home-grown literature seems to be' discernible' 'in rih'ost of the Dominions at,the end of- last century atid the beginning, of this. Its gradual disappearance in- our own time seems to be equally general. • And here surely is! a phenomenon of some interest. Is it!, a part of ,a' general internationalising process and the greying-down of local colour?