Guide to the Papers of Bill Wannan, c. 1926-2002

Request this via the Catalogue
 

Summary

Collection number:
MS 9924, MS Acc10.081
Creator:
Wannan, Bill, 1915-2003
Extent:
10.8 metres and (57 boxes + 6 cartons + 1 folio item)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Bill Wannan, National Library of Australia [class number, box number and series and/or file number]'.
Availability:
Available
Access conditions:
Available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The papers consist largely of research material compiled by Wannan during his career as a folklorist, columnist, editor, writer and anthologist. They comprise correspondence, publications, cuttings, photocopies of articles, notes and notebooks, scrapbooks, pictorial material and a comprehensive selection of Wannan's own publications. A large part of the correspondence scattered throughout the collection is from readers of his Australasian Post column, 'Come in Spinner' (1955-1980).

Writers and folklorists with whom Wannan associated and who are well-represented in the correspondence include Alan Marshall, Len Fox, Mona Brand, Olaf Ruhen, Stephen Murray-Smith, Cyril E. Goode, Judah Waten, F. Bert Vickers, Ron Edwards, John Ryan, Edgar Penzig, Wendy Lowenstein, Gwenda Davey, Gary Shearston, Bill Scott and Barry Jones. Other correspondents include agent Tim Curnow, family members and various publishers.

Biographical Note:

William Fielding Fearn-Wannan was born in Princes Hill, Melbourne, on 28 May 1915, the son of William Llewellyn Fearn and Ruby Roberta Wannan. Wannan spent his primary school years in Bairnsdale, Victoria, and later attended University High School in Melbourne. In 1943 he married Ora White and they had two children.

During the depression Wannan worked at various jobs, including fruit-picking and road-mending. He began writing as a child and his first adult work to be published was in The Age when he was a 21-year old journalist. In 1938 he travelled to Japan as a freelance writer reporting on the changing political mood. During World War II Wannan served with the AIF in Darwin, New Guinea, Morotai and Balikpapan. After the war he worked in Postwar Reconstruction, for the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce and as a crime reporter on the Melbourne Truth.

Wannan's career as a writer on folklore commenced in 1952 with a daily column for The Argus, 'Plain Australian', and a weekly feature, 'Colonial Cavalcade'. He published his first collection of folklore material in 1954, The Australian. In 1955 Wannan began a weekly column in Australasian Post, 'Come in, Spinner', illustrated by Vane Lindesay, which continued until 1980. An armchair collector, Wannan used the column as a means to collect and re-cycle legends, yarns, bush medicine and other Australiana. He published more than fifty books on Australian literature, legends and humour, many of which went into several editions, and he provided the material for a Channel 9 television series in 1984.

Wannan was an active member of the Victorian Fellowship of Austalian Writers, a founding member, including secretary for two years, of the Australasian Book Society and a member of the Melbourne Bread and Cheese Club, Realist Writers Group (including editing two issues of Overland in 1952), Left Book Club, Australian Journalists Association and Australian Society of Authors, as well as a number of human rights organisations. In 1965 he attended an International Writers Meeting in Berlin and Weimar. Wannan was awarded membership of the Order of Australia in 1991 for services to literature and folklore.

Wannan died in Melbourne on 20 April 2003, survived by his wife and daughter.

Bibliographic Reference(s)

  • Fahey, Warren. 'A bowerbird of the Australian way', The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 2003, p. 40.
  • McLaren, John. Writing in hope and fear : literature as politics in postwar Australia. Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • Ryan, John. 'An ear attuned to a nation's voices of literature and legend', The Age, 7 June 2003, p. 23.
Provenance:

Wannan's papers were donated to the Library in 2003 by his daughter and son-in-law, Paula and Roger Hyland. A collection of 49 books by Bill Wannan were purchased from Wannan's estate and can be found in Series 3.

Arrangement:

Wannan used a number of different methods to control the research material he compiled, including: manila files of correspondence which have been retained in the order in which they were received; scrapbooks, mainly arranged chronologically, which have been grouped into a single series by the Library; manila files of subject material with titles in his handwriting, which have been separated into two alphabetical series of persons and subject files; and concertina files of material arranged alphabetically. The concertina files contained publications, press cuttings and some correspondence and this material has been allocated to appropriate series by the Library, as has a quantity of loose, unarranged papers.

Container List:
Series File Box
1 1-7 1
2 1-5 2
2 6-11 3
2 12-16 4
2 17-20 5
2 21-25 6
2 26-29 7
2 30-34 8
2 35-42 9
2 43-51 10
2 52-59 11
2 60-65 12
3 Books A-Bi 13
3 Books Bi 14
3 Books Bi-Gr 15
3 Books Gr-M 16
3 Books P-Tr 17
3 Books Tr-W 18
4 1-8 19
4 9-14 20
5 1-4 21
5 5-10 22
5 11-15 23
6 1-5 24
6 6-9 25
6 10-13 26
6 14-17 27
6 18-21 28
6 22-24 29
7 1-7 30
7 8-9 31
7 10 Folio
7 11-15 31
7 16-18 32
7 19-26 33
7 27-32 34
8 1-7 35
8 8-13 36
8 14-20 37
8 21-25 38
8 26-30 39
8 31-37 40
8 38-41 41
9 1 41
9 2-9 42
9 10-14 43
10 1 44
10 2-4 45
10 5-6 46
10 7-9 47
10 10-11 48
10 12-14 49
10 15-17 50
10 18-21 51
10 22 52
11 1-3 52
11 4-9 53
11 10-15 54
11 16-20 55
12 1 55
12 2-8 56
12 9-14 57
12 15-19 58
12 20-25 59
12 26-29 60
13 1-2 60
13 3-5 61
14 1-6 61
14 7-9 62
15 1-4 62

Indexed terms

Names:
Wannan, Bill, 1915-2003

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:
The collection is available for reference.
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 Bill Wannan, National Library of Australia [class number, box number and series and/or file number]'.
Location of this collection:
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
Contact:
Contact us