Guide to the Papers of Vance and Nettie Palmer, 1889-1964

Summary

Collection number:

MS 1174 and MS Acc10.018

Creator:

Palmer, Vance, Mr

Extent:

12.10 metres and (64 security binders + 38 archives boxes + 1 medium folio box, 1 small folio box + 1 folio packet + 1 folder)

Language:

English

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Vance and Nettie Palmer, National Library of Australia, [class/series/file/item number]'.

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The collection covers the period from 1889 to 1964, although only a small number ofpapers have survived from before 1910. Correspondence makes up a large proportion of thecollection. As the letters are nearly all personal in their content and are seldomrestricted to any particular subject, activity or interest, it was not practicable todivide them into series; instead they have all been kept in one chronological sequence.Many of the letters are those which passed between Vance and Nettie on the occasionsthey spent apart. Most of the remainder are from people who have achieved some standingin Australian literary history.

The rest of the collection consists of Vance and Nettie's handwritten and typescriptdrafts of novels, short stores, plays, poems, articles, broadcasts and lectures, and alarge collection of newspaper cuttings which relate to the Palmers and their work. Thereare also original manuscripts of other writers and notes, printed material and cuttingsabout them. There are newspaper cuttings reflecting the wide range of subjects in whichthe Palmers were interested. Photographs and some miscellaneous personal items completethe collection. There is a name index covering the correspondence.

Biographical Note:

VANCE PALMER (1885-1959)

Edward Vivian (Vance) Palmer was born in Bundaberg,Queensland, on 28 August 1885, the son of Henry Burnet Palmer, a school master withliterary leanings and literary friendships. His youth was spent in a succession ofcountry towns between Bundaberg and Stanthorpe. In 1899 he went as a boarder to theIpswich Boys' Grammar School where he remained until December 1901.

In 1905 Vance went to London where he worked as a freelance journalist. After threeyears he made the return journey via Finland and Russia. Back in Australia he worked forsome time as tutor and bookkeeper on a cattle station in the Maranoa district ofQueensland. On his second visit to London in 1910, Vance met many noted literaryfigures, and this association - in particular with the editor of the NewAge, A.R. Orage - influenced his later social and political opinions. Orage'smagazine carried much of the contemporary radical, socialist, and Fabian social comment,and back in Australia, Vance gravitated to groups of a similar persuasion. He becameclosely allied to the Victorian Socialist Party, and was a member of the Y Club, adiscussion group formed in 1918 for those with socialist inclinations.

Vance was married in London on 23 May 1914 to Janet (Nettie) Higgins. This was thebeginning of the most famous partnership in Australian literary history, and, for Vance,it was a personal relationship from which he was to draw steady strength for the rest ofhis life.

When war broke out in 1915 the Palmers were in Brittany. Nettie had been teaching andstudying and Vance was writing. They returned to Australia in September 1915. Beforeleaving England they had both published two books. Vance enlisted in the FourteenthBattalion, A.I.F.. He was sent overseas, but the Armistice had been signed when hearrived in Europe.

After the war he lived for a time in Melbourne. In 1925 he and Nettie, with their twoyoung daughters, went to Caloundra on the Queensland coast for a holiday. They remainedthere for four years. Nettie assumed the responsibility of providing for the family andwrote thousands of words every week for papers around Australia. This left Vance free toconcentrate solely on his creative writings. During this period Vance drafted the smallgroup of novels where were to establish his reputation - The man Hamilton(1928), Men are human (1930), Daybreak (1932) andThe Swayne family (1934).

The Palmers went to London in 1935. By mid-1936 they had moved to Spain where Vanceworked on Such is life and Legend for Sanderson. They leftthe country after the outbreak of civil war later the same year. Aileen remained as aninterpreter with the Republican forces. The Palmers were deeply involved with the warand on their return to Australia endeavoured to awaken the people to the issues beingfought on the other side of the world. Through his life-time Vance was vitallyinterested in world events and was concerned with the apathetic attitude of the averageAustralian to such matters.

Another decade had passed before Vance was to publish another novel. In 1947 he wroteCyclone and the next year the first volume of a trilogy Golcondaappeared. The second volume, Seedtime, was published in 1957, followedtwo years later by The big fellow.

Vance had an active interest in the theatre. In 1922 and 1923 both he and Nettie hadbeen intimately connected with the Pioneer Players, a group of amateur actors organisedby Louis Esson and Dr Stewart Macky with the express intention of fostering andproducing native Australian drama. Vance was later to write a history of the Players inhis book Louis Esson and the Australian theatre (1948). He was also adramatist in his own right. The black horse and other plays was publishedin 1924 and Hail tomorrow, a full length four act play, in 1947.

Vance Palmer was one of Australia's leading literary critics. He contributed reviewarticles to newspapers and literary magazines and also wrote several books in which hesought to delineate the nature of the Australian social and cultural tradition. In 1940National portraits appeared, to be followed in 1941 by A.G. Stephens: his lifeand work, Frank Wilmot (1942), Old Australian bush ballads (with MargaretSutherland) in 1951 and The legend of the nineties in 1954.

From 1940 onwards Vance was heard regularly over the national network of the A.B.C. Hetalked on a wide variety of literary matters, and it was his review programme 'CurrentBooks Worth Reading' to which he largely owed his reputation as one of the foremost andreliable critics in Australia.

In 1942 he was appointed to a position on the Advisory Board of the CommonwealthLiterary Fund. Five years later he became chairman of the Board. Vance enjoyedconsiderable prestige among Australian writers at this time, and he was chosen as theirrepresentative at the Writers' Conference in New Zealand in 1951.

Vance continued on write and to lecture in spite of persistent illness in his lateryears. He died unexpectedly at his home in Kew, Melbourne, on 15 July 1959.

As a writer Vance Palmer held a prominent position in the Australianradical-nationalistic tradition which began with the Bulletin andincluded such writers as Bernard O'Dowd, Louis Esson, Katharine Susannah Prichard, E.J.Brady, and Alan Marshall. T. Inglis Moore gives Palmer particular credit with in thistradition in being able to accept the realities of the Australian scene naturally andunconsciously:

'In fiction Vance was one of the pioneers ... in evolving the climate in which writerscould write about their own country and people without a twinge of either colonialinferiority or nationalist self-consciousness'.

NETTIE PALMER (1885-1964)

Janet (Nettie) Gertrude Higgins was born in Bendigo,Victoria, on 18 August 1885, daughter of John and Kitty Higgins. Her uncle, H.B. Higginswas the noted federationist, parliamentarian, judge and arbitrator. Nettie was educatedat the Presbyterian Ladies' College and the University of Melbourne, where she graduatedin 1908 as an M.A. in Greek and Latin. Subsequently she spent some years in London,Paris and Berlin, and shortly after her marriage with Vance Palmer, returned toAustralia in 1915.

The first literary recognition Nettie received was as a poet. Her earliest publicationswere two volumes of verse The south wind which appeared in 1914, and, thefollowing year, Shadow paths.

Nettie Palmer's prose and essay works include An Australian story book(1928), Modern Australian literature 1900-23 (1924), Talking itover (1923), Henry Bournes Higgins: a memoir (1931), andHenry Handel Richardson: a study (1950). Extracts from Nettie'sprivate journal were published as Fourteen years (1948).

Nettie Palmer was several times appointed lecturer in Australian literature for theCommonwealth Literary Fund and spoke in most Australian capitals. In 1964 she receivedan award from the Fund to enable her to complete her autobiography but the work wasnever finished. She died, in Melbourne, on 19 October 1964.

Apart from her literary career, Nettie Palmer devoted herself to many humanitariancauses, in particular to the assimilation of refugees at the end of World War II and bygiving lectures on Australian life and history to European migrants.

Immediate Source of Acquisition:

The first and largest consignment of the Vance and Nettie Palmer collection wasreceived by the National Library in 1965 from their daughters Aileen and HelenPalmer, after some years of negotiations. Further batches arrived in 1966 and 1967.It was found necessary to house the collection in different parts of the Library, foran important part of it consisted of non-manuscript material. The large library ofbooks and pamphlets are housed as a distinct collection in the Australian book stackswith each publication bearing a special Palmer book plate. The portraits of thePalmer and Higgins families are held in the Pictorial Section.

Related

Related Documentation:

1. Supplementary finding aid (Type: pdf, Size: 1.31 MB)

   Correspondence Index

Conditions Governing Access:

Available for research

Preferred citation:

Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Vance and Nettie Palmer, National Library of Australia, [class/series/file/item number]'.

Location of this collection:

National Library of Australia

Parkes Place

Canberra ACT 2600, Australia

Contact:

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