Guide to the Papers of Varney Monk, 1907-1986

 

Collection context

Summary

Collection number:
MS 2294
Creator:
Varney Monk
Extent:
5.52 metres and (17 boxes, 1 folio box)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Varney Monk, National Library of Australia, MS 2294, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Availability:
Available
Access conditions:
Available for reference. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

This collection comprises mainly scores of musical compositions by Monk, the bulk of which relate to her two professionally produced musical comedies of the 1930s, Collits' Inn and The cedar tree. There are also compositions based on poems of Henry Lawson and Henry Kendall and a small amount of correspondence relating to her professional career. Correspondents include Angus and Robertson, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Howard Carr, Fred Kendall (son of Henry Kendall), Katharine Susannah Prichard and Colin Roderick.

The papers of Varney Monk provide a record of the pioneering role she played in promoting the use of Australian themes and settings in the performing arts at a time when overseas shows featuring overseas artists dominated the Australian theatre circuit.

Biographical Note:

Varney Monk was a composer and pianist. She was born Isabel Varney Desmond Peterson on 18 January 1892 at Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, the daughter of Ernest John Peterson and Miriam Jane (née Roberts). On 22 December 1913, she married the violinist Cyril Monk, with whom she had two children.

Monk composed her first song in her early teens entitled When roses fall, which was published by Palings, and in 1923 she won The Sunday Times song competition with her work 'The old bush track'. She went on to become a prolific composer, with the majority of her compositions being based on Australian themes. She felt very strongly that Australian history provided a rich wealth of material for plays, films and literature and that it was possible to give Australian audiences something which was different, but at the same time essentially their own. The appeal of Monk's work was the fact that it was fresh and original, and not a copy of overseas works.

In collaboration with T. Stuart Gurr, Monk wrote the first professionally produced Australian musical comedy, Collits' Inn. Staged by F.W. Thring and starring Gladys Moncrieff and George Wallace, the musical premiered at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne in 1933, where it ran for four months. This was followed by a Sydney season of three months at the Tivoli Theatre. The fact that the setting was not an exotic foreign location, but one based on Australia's colonial past had an enormous impact on Australian audiences of that time, and the production of Collits' Inn was described as the beginning of a new era for Australian stage productions.

Monk's second musical comedy, written in collaboration with Helene and Edmund Barclay and entitled The cedar tree, followed in 1934. It was also staged by F.W. Thring and, although warmly received and enjoying a three month run at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne, it did not receive the same critical acclaim that had been afforded Collits' Inn.

During the course of her career, Monk produced over 150 songs. In addition to composing works with her own lyrics, Monk set to music the poems of several Australian poets, including those of Henry Lawson and Henry Kendall. In 1966 she won the Henry Lawson Festival Song Award at Grenfell for her song A world of wattle.

Varney Monk died on 7 February 1967.

ReferencesAustralian Dictionary of Biography

Bronwen Arthur, 'The Pub with no Peer, or Collits' Inn: the first Australian musical romance', in One hand on the manuscript: music in Australian cultural history, 1930-1960, ed Nicholas Brown (et al), Canberra, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, 1995

Provenance:

The bulk of the collection was originally acquired by the National Film and Sound Archive (later ScreenSound Australia) in 1986, from Monk's daughter, Pam Evans. It was transferred from ScreenSound to the National Library in 1998. In 1969, 14cm of material relating to Collits' Inn was donated to the Library by Monk's son, Ian.

Arrangement:

The Library has arranged the papers into nine series and within each series, grouped like papers together. The papers relating to Collits' Inn, which were received by the Library in 1969, have been combined with those received from ScreenSound Australia in 1998.

Monk dated very few of the compositions in the collection. At the start of her career and before her marriage, she experimented with variations of her maiden name for use as her professional name. They include Varney Desmond, Isabel Varney and Varney Peterson, which she was using in c1904. Where she has used one of these variations, the name has been noted in brackets after the description of the work, as a means of roughly dating the composition.

Indexed terms

Names:
Varney Monk

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:
Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn759625).
Conditions Governing Use:
Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Varney Monk, National Library of Australia, MS 2294, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Location of this collection:
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
Contact: