Guide to the Papers of Ivan Southall, 1935-2015

Summary

Collection number:

MS 5379; MS Acc08.031; MS Acc08.052;.MS Acc09.039; MS Acc12.002; MS Acc13.146;.MS Acc15.075; MS Acc17.087; MS Acc17.124

Creator:

Southall, Ivan

Extent:

(150 boxes + 2 small folio boxes + 1 medium folio box + 2 large folio boxes + 6 folders + 45 digital carriers)

Language:

English and English

Preferred citation:

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

Availability:

Available

Access conditions:

Part available for research; part requires permission for research; part not available for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The collection includes correspondence with Australian and overseas children in response to Southall's books,his family members and friends, literary agents and publishers, drafts of over fifty books and short stories, published and unpublished, speeches, scripts for radio plays, articles for newspapers and magazines, photographs,awards and medals, scrapbooks, newspaper cuttings, background materials for Ivan Southall's adult non-fiction, and papers relating to his war service, his time in Indonesia and lecture tours in Australia, England and the United States.

Biographical Note:

Ivan Southall, son of Francis Gordon and Rachel Elizabeth Southall, was born in 1921 in Melbourne and grew up in Surrey Hills. He attended Box Hill Grammar School until the age of fourteen, when his father died. He was then sent to work washing bottles and glassware and later obtained a position as a copy boy at the Melbourne Herald. Though his main ambition was to become a journalist, the Herald apprenticed him to process engraving. In his spare time he wrote fiction. He completed four books before he was twenty, three of which were published after the war. In 1945 Southall married Joy Blackburn. They lived on a property in the Dandenong Ranges until their separation in 1974. They divorced in 1976. Southall married Susan Westerland Stanton in 1976.

Southall spent one year in the army whilst awaiting his call for the RAAF during World War II. It was his experience there, subsequently as a RAAF historian, that influenced his early post-war writings, notably his Simon Black Books for boys published between 1950 and 1961.

During this period Southall also completed a number of works of non-fiction: Journey into mystery (1961), Indonesia face to face (1964); 'Lawrence Hargrave' in the Six great Australians series (1964), The challenge: Is the church obsolete?(1966) and Parson on the track (1961).

His first book for children, Hills End was published in 1962. It received immediate critical recognition both in Australia and overseas. Over the next ten years Southall published some of his most acclaimed children's novels with Ashroad, To the wild sky, Finn's folly, Chinaman's Reef is ours, and The foxhole. The idealistic hero of his Simon Black novels gave way to more complex and realistic characters placed in situations outside of their normal experience. He experimented with a number of different narrative techniques, pioneering the interior monologues found in Let the balloon go, Bread and honey and Josh. He also faced severe criticism for his challenging subject matters.

In 1962, Southall's fourth child, Melissa, was born, and diagnosed with Down Syndrome. The challenges involved in raising Melissa found expression in Southall's writing in his books Finn's folly and Let the balloon go which both involve disabled protagonists, the impact of their disabilities on their families and their ability to survive in a dangerous situation.

Southall published numerous children's books, as well as a number of adult novels, essays and short stories. His work for children has been translated into more than twenty languages including Swedish, German, Japanese and Russian. He has won numerous awards including the Children's Books of the Year Award for Ash road (1966), To the wild sky (1968), Bread and honey (1971) and Fly west (1976); the Children's Picture Book of the Year: Sly old wardrobe (1969) pictures by Ted Greenwood. He is the only Australian children's writer ever to receive the Carnegie Medal, awarded for Josh, which was also an honour book for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. He was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1981. Ivan Southall died in 2008.

Collection Retrieval Advice:

Please note: each consignment in this collection has a separate box number sequence (i.e. there are multiple Box 1's). Please cite the relevant Class number as well as the Box number when requesting retrieval of material from the collection.

Provenance:

The papers were purchased by the National Library from Ivan Southall in two instalments in 1977 and 1997. Further papers were received in 2008, 2009, 2012,2013, 2015 and 2017.

Indexed terms

Subjects:

Literature

Conditions Governing Access:

Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn692329).

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 Ivan Southall, National Library of Australia, [class/series/file number]'.

Location of this collection:

National Library of Australia

Parkes Place

Canberra ACT 2600, Australia

Contact:

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