First peoples..
For the sake of chronology as much as for the sake of paying homage, it would be impossible not to begin this presentation of Australian literature without taking an interest in those who were the first inhabitants, even though their numerous languages - estimated at several hundred - were never written down and hardly survived the torments of colonization. The aboriginal culture - but here again, we should use the plural - was indeed a victim of the prejudices spread after the return of the first European to have officially had a contact (brutal, needless to say) with them: Willem Janszoon, born around 1570, probably in Amsterdam, where he died about sixty years later. In his diary, James Cook, the famous British explorer (1728-1779) who initiated colonization in 1770, was more nuanced in his opinion of the local population, granting them a joie de vivre which he nevertheless ignored, judging the island to be Terra nullius ("without a master"), a sine qua non condition for taking it over legally... and without too many scruples. The confrontation will be fatal to the native culture of which only snatches survived thanks to a few artifacts, like the drawings that adorn the Bunjil cave, and to the oral tradition that kept the memory of a rich mythology. This last one has the specificity to be inspired by the geography, offering another vision of the topography which then is adorned with a whole cosmogony calling upon spirits of the nature which would have created the world in its infinite diversity.
One among a thousand, we could mention Baiame, venerated by the Kamilaroi, god of rain who came to visit the earth after a flood to initiate the surviving living beings to the secrets of life and death, but also Bunjil, linked to the region of Victoria, a hero represented in the form of an eagle, who created the rivers and mountains, before asking the Raven to make the wind blow. These myths governed societal issues and territorial divisions, but were also affiliated with a shamanic religion, which later took on a Catholic tone after the time of the meeting, just as the legends were fleshed out with real-life characters, such as Captain Cook. Recognition and reconciliation - legislated by the Aboriginal Land Rights Act only in 1976 - will take time, and it is not certain that they will be achieved in view of the new scandal that in 2020 saw the destruction of sacred sites by the mining group Rio Tinto. Nevertheless, in spite of all these ravages, it is estimated today that a few hundred aboriginal languages are still spoken - the majority of which are in danger of imminent extinction - and we must also mention the Creole, known as "Kriol", which still has several tens of thousands of speakers. It should be noted that literature has been gradually enveloped in this heritage, whether through the settlers who collected the stories, or through the talent of native writers such as David Unaipon (1872-1967) who is considered the father of indigenous literature. The son of a Ngarrindjeri chief, he was educated at McLeay Point Mission and later became a minister. But the man had other strings to his bow, as he also filed ten patents for a wide variety of inventions, which gave him a solid reputation as the "Australian Leonardo da Vinci". As for his writings, they are collected under the title Legendary Tales of Australian Aborigines. They prompted him to embark on a lecture tour, during which he had to endure the torments of discrimination, but which nevertheless allowed him to achieve a real posterity, confirmed in particular by his portrait appearing on the 50 dollar bill.
...and first writings
More generally, it was in the second half of the 19th century that Australian literature began to emerge, even if a few texts had already been published earlier, such as First Fruits of Australian Poetry (1819) by English-born judge Barron Field, or the poetry of politician and journalist William Charles Wentworth, born on Norfolk Island in 1790. It's worth remembering that from 1850 onwards, the country was experiencing a gold rush, so its population grew considerably, and with it the demand for leisure activities.
Among the many authors who took up the pen, we might mention Louisa Anne Meredith (1812-1895), who wrote about her life in My home in Tasmania (1852), and suffragette Catherine Helen Spence (1825-1910), whose Tender and True (1856) was reprinted several times: both paved the way for an abundance of women's literature, which was at times in the majority (although female authors sometimes signed with male names), undoubtedly one of the distinctive features of Australian letters. On the other hand, while some writers continued to draw inspiration from European literary trends, such as Henry Kingsley (1830-1876), who wrote novels aimed more at an English audience and in which Australia served only as a backdrop, or Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), whose ballads had strong Victorian accents, others, on the contrary, devoted themselves fully to telling the story of the country in which they lived. Thomas Alexander Browne (1826-1915), for example, published Robbery Under Arms in three volumes under the pseudonym of Rolf Boldrewood, a story of Bushrangers (outlaws of the early colonial period) that has been adapted for the screen on numerous occasions, while Marcus Clarke (1846-1881) described life in an Australian penal colony in For the Term of his Natural Life. In the very particular genre of detective fiction, Mary Helena Fortune was one of the first to write her plots from the detective's point of view - hers was called Mark Sinclair - while Ada Cambridge was more interested in the psychology of couples, causing something of a scandal since she herself was a clergyman's wife. However, Joseph Furphy (1843-1912) is still considered the father of the Australian novel: Such is Life(published under the pseudonym Tom Collins) is now a classic, despite its slow start. Finally, we could conclude the 19th century with two renowned poets, both correspondents for The Bulletin magazine: Banjo Paterson(The Man From Snowy River) and Henry Lawson(A Song of the Republic).
The twentieth century opened on an important date, January1, 1901, when Australia became an independent Dominion of the British Empire (and later of the Commonwealth). Literature, which had hitherto tended towards nationalism, began to explore the question of Australian identity with greater nuance, as suggested by the works of Paul Wenz, a French expatriate and close friend of Jack London, who became a little more critical after the First World War in a body of work to be discovered by Zulma(L'Écharde) and Editions de La Petite Maison(Récits du bush, L'Homme du soleil couchant), or those of Carlton Dawe, who did not hesitate to confront the thorny question of racism. Jeannie Gunn, for her part, portrayed the childhood of an Aborigine in The Little Black Princess, her second hit with We of the Never Never, and C.J. Dennis used dialect in his long poem The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. While Miles Franklin (1879-1954) was a feminist pioneer with Ma Brillante carrière (éditions de l'Aube), Arthur Upfield (born in England in 1890 and died in Australia in 1964) invented a half-breed detective, Napoléon Bonaparte, whom he portrayed in a vast series of novels (éditions 10-18).
A wealth of literature
To be honest, the abundance is such that it imposes drastic choices, but how can one not succumb to Picnic at Hanging Rock (The Pocket Book) by Joan Lindsay (1896-1984), to the anticipation novel The Last Shore (Railroad Editions) by Nevil Shute (1899-1960), to the character of Mary Poppins created by Pamela L. Travers (1899-1996), to the love story Splendors and Furies (The Observatory) by Christina Stead (1902-1983) or to the humor of Trimardeurs (The Dawn) by Kylie Tennant (1912-1988)? So many facets of a literature whose multitude of translations into French is a guarantee of its influence! To tell the truth, if in 1938 Xavier Herbert (1901-1984) had a great success with Capricorn based on his experience as a protector of the Aborigines, a title for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society and which anticipated the Miles Franklin Prize that he would later receive for Poor Fellow My Country, the one who was to really acquire an international reputation, after the Second World War, was Patrick White. Although he was born in London in 1912, he died in Sydney in 1990: he remains to this day the only Australian writer to have received the Nobel Prize (in 1973) for "his art of psychological and epic narration which brought a new continent into the world of literature ". His novels have been published by Gallimard: Les Cacatoès, Le Jardin suspendu, Eden-ville, Des Morts et des vivants... The poet Judith Wright, three years younger than him, also received recognition for her environmentalist work and her commitment to the rights of the Aborigines, while Morris West won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Devil's Advocate, which was adapted into a play by Avant-Scène magazine. Equally militant, Kahtleen Ruska became known as Oodgeroo Noonuccal and became the first Aboriginal woman to publish with We Are Going in 1964, a text that some considered (fiercely!) closer to propaganda than poetry..
Over the decades, some writers became so well known that their names have become familiar to us. Kenneth Cook is still considered the funniest of contemporary writers, even though he died in 1987 at the age of 57. Thomas Keneally, born in 1935 in Sydney, is by no means an unknown either, since the film Schindler's List, inspired by his novel Schindler's Ark, enjoyed a very large audience... and what can we say about Birds Hide to Die, published by Colleen McCullough (1937-2015) in 1977, whose resonance remains interplanetary? In a more sentimental style, we could not fail to mention Tamara McKinley and, in particular, her historical trilogy published by Archipoche(The Land at the End of the World, The Pioneers at the End of the World and The Gold at the End of the World), which remains a good example of the Australian-style river novel, or Katherine Scholes, also born in Tasmania, whose novels (published by Pocket: The Cradle of the World, The Lady with the Blue Sari...) have been translated many times around the world. Another great international success, the autobiographical story Shantaram (J'ai lu) is also the fruit of an Australian pen, that of Gregory David Roberts, who recounted his escape and his departure for Bombay in search of a second chance. Finally, Christos Tsiolkas, the son of Greek immigrants raised in Melbourne, attracted attention from his first title - The Slap (Belfond, 2011), a talent confirmed later in Jesus Man, Barracuda, Gods without mercy... Liane Moriarty for her part signed a real bestseller with The Secret of the husband (Albin Michel, 2015) and Richard Flanagan accumulates praise since The Book of Gould (Flammarion, 2005). These brilliant careers should not make us forget the authors who have acquired a more local but equally important reputation, from the poet Bruce Dawe (1930-2020) to Bryce Courtenay - of South African origin, just like the Nobelist JM. Coetzee, who became an Australian citizen in 2006, and Frank Moorhouse (1938-2022), as well as Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) and Jill Ker Conway (1934-2018), both of whom chose to leave their native island to settle in the United States.
