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‘Locating Australian Literary Memory’ explores the cultural meanings suffusing local literary commemorations. It is orientated around eleven authors – Adam Lindsay Gordon, Joseph Furphy, Henry Handel Richardson, Henry Lawson, A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Nan Chauncy, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Eleanor Dark, P. L. Travers, Kylie Tennant and David Unaipon – who have all been celebrated through a range of forms including statues, huts, trees, writers’ houses and assorted objects. Brigid Magner illuminates the social memory residing in these monuments and artefacts, which were largely created as bulwarks against forgetting. Acknowledging the value of literary memorials and the voluntary labour that enables them, she traverses the many contradictions, ironies and eccentricities of authorial commemoration in Australia, arguing for an expanded repertoire of practices to recognise those who have been hitherto excluded.
Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature -- Book Review
The Conversation -- Author Article
Brigid Magner explores this strange and idiosyncratic feature of Australian cultural expression, in an informative study of literary heritage, offering a comprehensive account of the ways in which Australians remember ten now absent authors, beginning with Adam Lindsay Gordon and moving through a range of writers, to finish with a focussed consideration of monuments to David Unaipon, one at Raukkan in South Australia and another still in the making, to be installed at Tailem Bend. — Anne Pender, University of Adelaide, https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14655/12940, accessed 19 August 2020
‘Brigid Magner’s fascinating study sets out the ways in which a nation can build an identity by actively constructing a literary memory, and then using those memories to paper over the deep history of our First Nations and their stories. In doing so she helps us understand both how fragile Australian culture is and also the ways in which literature is a powerful force.’ —Sophie Cunningham
"Magner's book is an innovative addition to Australian literary studies, and will hopefully inspire further efforts to memorialise more recent Australian authors. —Webby, Elizabeth. ‘Review of Locating Australian Literary Memory, by Brigid Magner.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 35, no. 2, 2020, doi: 10.20314/als.d589b6304"
Acknowledgements; Introduction: Remembering Absent Authors; 1. Adam Lindsay Gordon’s Grave; 2. Joseph Furphy in the Riverina; 3. Henry Handel Richardson and the Haunting of Lake View; 4. Henry Lawson Country; 5. The Multiple Birthplaces of A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson; 6. Nan Chauncy’s Sanctuary; 7. Living Memorials: The Houses of Katharine Susannah Prichard and Eleanor Dark; 8. Statue: Mania: P. L. Travers and the Appeal of Mary Poppins; 9. Kylie Tennant’s Hut; 10. The David Unaipon Monument at Raukkan; Conclusion: Towards an Expanded Repertoire of Literary; Commemorations; Index.