B

A. BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS

The Vital Science: Biology And The Literary Imagination 1860-1900.

London : George Allen & Unwin (1984).

The argument of this book is that in late Victorian England a group of novelists and essayists quite consciously sought and found ideas in post-Darwinian biology that were peculiarly susceptible to imaginative transformation. The period 1860-1900 was a time of great confusion in biology, and writers capitalised on this uncertainty and used it to their own ends. The core of The Vital Science is four interlocking chapters which examine certain ideas emerging from the new biology which particularly appealed to literary minds: evolutionism - the philosophy that organic adaptation is progressive in a human sense; degeneration - the belief that parasitism and retrogression are as applicable in the human sphere as in accounts of the extinction of species; eugenics - progress can be assured by aping nature's methods; and theories of heredity - read variously as encouraging or denying attempts to escape one's genetic destiny.

Extracts from the longer reviews:

"A rare example of a book that is genuinely interdisciplinary . . . it ranges more widely than its predecessors and the underlying argument is far more subtle.... In addition to being a reliable guide through such complex areas of thought as loss of religious faith, eugenics, Lamarckism and Social Darwinism, Peter Morton is careful and discriminating in his handling of works of literature. It is this combination of qualities that makes The Vital Science such an unusual book and will ensure its being read by anyone interested in the Victorian period."

Peter Keating in British Book News (April 1985).

"Morton is excellently widely read in the minor literature and scientific texts of the period, including journal discussions. His summaries of works are often entertaining though they may not encourage the reader to try the works themselves . . . Morton is more astute than subtle, better at the overview than at close reading, better at reading symptomatically than at paying attention to the ironies within the texts themselves.... His style can be sharp as well as swashbuckling.... His book can be recommended for the breadth of material to which it gives the reader access and for its exposition of some elements of the Victorian "synthesis"."

Gillian Beer in The Times Literary Supplement (14 June 1985).

"One of the fullest and best of several recent accounts of the influence of Darwin on writers in the second half of the nineteenth century.... Actually Dr Morton who is here described as a "scientific historian" offers stern discipline as a complementary quality to the untidy enthusiasm of Mrs Beer's book Darwin's Plots and is unwilling to accept anything but a very tight definition of "Darwinism". The result for the non-specialist is an extremely informative survey of the reaction against Darwin from scientists in the latter part of the nineteenth century and a good common-sensical account of Victorian biology and Victorian letters and the places where they overlapped and the consequences. W.H. Hudson, H.G. Wells, Samuel Butler and Thomas Hardy are the literary figures who feature most in a book which is bracingly sceptical. In such a climate one wonders whether Redmond O'Hanlon's Joseph Conrad and Charles Darwin which claims to investigate "the influence of scientific thought on Conrad's fiction" would have survived more than five minutes ... the text is strewn with adjectives like "Darwinian" and "Lamarckian" in such abundance that one begins to blush for the author under Peter Morton's stern gaze."

C.C. Barfoot in English Studies 6 (1985).

"I found much of interest in Morton's account of late nineteenth-century literature. Apart from his major discussions of Wells, Butler, and Hardy, he also includes a host of minor writers who throw valuable light on the way in which scientific ideas are taken up by popular culture. On Wells, he shows how the more pessimistic side of Darwinism would generate a powerful antidote to the progressionism that we so often associate with the impact of evolution theory. Morton's extensive discussion of Butler 's curious ideas on heredity allow him to uncover a deeper level of meaning in The Way of All Flesh. The pessimism of Hardy's hereditarianism in Tess of the D'Urbervilles is explored in detail, although one is left to wonder if Morton's conclusions would have been different had he realized that the hereditarian viewpoint was growing in strength at the time. Altogether, Morton has written a potentially useful book, the value of which is diminished by its failure to keep up with recent studies in the fields it tries to synthesize."

Peter Bowler in Albion, 17 (Winter 1985)

"Morton . . . takes no interest in the complex transmogrifications inherent in the creation of fictive art. There is no doubt that active debates in biology influenced Victorian writers. But so did political turmoil, economic upheaval, and technological change. These influences intersected, and the social history underlying late nineteenth-century English literature necessarily must engage a nexus of converging factors. The vital science, despite some intriguing insights and rich material, does not meet this engagement."

Julia L. Epstein in Clio 15:1 (1985).

"L'ouvrage de Peter Morton est un livre dense, particulierement interessant pour les historiens des idees.... L'information est abondante et precise, la langue et le style clairs et nets. Malgre ces qualites reelles la lecture du livre n'est pas toujours facile. L'ampleur des details nuit parfois a la perspective de l'ensemble, qui gagnerait souvent etre dans son exposition plus synthetique et moins descriptive. . . . Malgre ses faiblesses d'exposition ce livre est un bon instrument de travail pour tous ceux qu'interesse particulierement l'histoire des concepts biologiques et de leur repercussion sur la pensee et sur l'imagination au XIXe siecle."

Simone Lavabre in Etudes Anglaises 29:2 (1986) 227.

"The last three years have seen an upsurge of books dealing with the relations between evolutionary theory and nineteenth-century literature. Their arguments have, however, been liable to undistributed middles and too ready a confusion between post hoc and propter hoc. This criticism cannot be levelled against Peter Morton's study, which is thorough and wide-ranging within its clearly defined limits. Dr Morton outlines the enormously wide impact of Darwin's ideas (and those of fellow scientists and other theorists) on those writers of fiction who had a firm background in biology.... Dr Morton writes convincingly, and he is useful also on Darwin's style. His conclusion that the 'literary utility of a science is at its highest' while its central axioms are still ambiguous is ably supported by the critical parts of the book. These show careful and exact thought though, like the book as a whole, they are so densely packed as sometimes to strain the reader's attention ... In spite of a few uncharacteristic inconsistencies in dating, Dr Morton's debunking of Butler's scientific pretensions is crisp and salutary, and his stress on the unique nature of Hardy's continuing adherence to Darwinism provides a solid conclusion to this stimulating argument."

C.M. Jackson-Houlston in Notes and Queries 232:1 (March 1987).

"[Morton's argument] seeks a cultural model that would have literary and scientific interest in biological problems occurring in tandem, rather than have one lead the other. We are then thrown into a cultural history of scientific and literary responses to scientific problems that do not yet have compelling solutions.... He illuminates much about late Victorian concerns about degeneration and offers considerable insight into popular Darwinism, remarking that Darwinian thought proper is well served, as even Darwin might agree, by eugenics not by social Darwinism (something Darwin found repugnant)."

John M. Hill in The Arnoldian (Winter 1985/86).

"[The Vital Science], is a fine work of scholarly criticism, revises the picture of Darwin's influence on the late nineteenth century drawn by Lionel Stevenson, Peckham and others by probing the works of those 'whose writings had, in the broadest sense, some pretensions to literature' and 'who had a firm background in biology' between the publication of The Origin of Species and the rediscovery of Mendel. Morton also glances at pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, before providing an overview of 'Victorian Biology and Victorian Letters'. . . . An extensive bibliography provides a start to scholar-critics with the ambition to emulate Morton's intellectual curiosity."

Donald H. Reiman, "Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century," Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 25 (1985).

"There have been times when one science, and one only, seemed to capture the imagination of the reading public and to offer the key to all intellectual mysteries.... There are certain conditions that must be satisfied by any science that is to become as fertile a source of intellectual models and ideological sophistries as biology once was. Morton suggests towards the end of this densely-textured and richly informative study that "the degree to which a science may become popularly accessible is inversely related to the degree to which its findings have become quantifiable and unequivocal."... The author claims A.O. Lovejoy as his mentor, and the result is a mode of intellectual history which seems distinctly old-fashioned beside, for example, Gillian Beer's bold and tendentious use of textuality and narratology to enforce connections between biological and literary discourse. For Morton the connections are empirically present not only in the intellectual content that can be demonstrated in the fiction of a Hardy or a Wells but in the work of the popular writers, thinkers and journalists who kept novelists and their readers abreast of the current of ideas. And in fact it is its detailed and central treatment of such diverse figures as Herbert Spencer, Winwood Reade, Francis Galton, W.H. Hudson, and Grant Allen that constitutes this book's most distinctive feature. . . . Though he can be faulted for the occasional stylistic lapse and over-emphatic judgement, Peter Morton's book is definitive in scope and often pithily expressed. His ability to draw intelligently on very diverse sources is only one of The Vital Science's most attractive features. . . . The value of cultural history of this sort goes well beyond its explicit scholarly intentions."

Patrick Parrinder in Literature and History 12 (Autumn 1986).

Other short reviews of The Vital Science include:

H.V. Batchelor in Review of English Studies, 38 (1986), 99-100.

Anon in English Literature in Transition, 28 (1985).

Joseph W. Slade in Isis , 76:283 (1985), 412-413.

George Levine, 'Darwin and the Evolution of Fiction,' New York Times Book Review (Oct 1986), 1.

W.A. Wilson in Choice (April 1985).

Pierre Vitoux in Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, 22 (1985).

T.R. Wright in Durham University Journal (Dec 1985).

Ed Block in Victorian Studies (Spring 1986).

William Lloyd Fox in Journal of Medicine 41 (July 1986), 339.

Gunnar Broberg in Recensioner (in Swedish)

Richard Tobias in Victorian Poetry 24:3 (Autumn 1986), 275-6.

H.P. Breuer in Literature and Medicine 6 (1986), 128-138.

Representative citations of The Vital Science:

Robinson, Roger. "Hardy and Darwin," in Norman Page, ed. Thomas Hardy: The Writer and His Background. London: Bell & Hyman, 1980, 128-150. "Few critics have been as gloomily well-informed about evolutionary scientific literature. . . . It's an expertly marshalled argument. But as a response to the novel, as a guide to Hardy's own response to Darwin, I shall try to show, it is not enough".

Knapp, John V. "A response to Mieke Bal's Psychopoetics," Style, 21:2 (1986), 259-280.

Laquer, T. "Orgasm, generation and the politics of reproductive biology," Representat, 14 (1986), 1-41.

Levine, G. "Darwinism and the evolution of fiction," New York Times Review of Books (October 1986), 1-4.

Mistichelli, B. "Darwinism as tragedy in The Mayor of Casterbridge," CEA Critic, 48 (1986), 69-74.

Smith, Philip E. "Protoplasmic hierarchy and philosophical harmony: science and Hegelian aesthetics in Oscar Wilde's Notebooks," Victorian Newsletter, 74 (Fall 1988), 30-33.

Maik, Linda L. "Nordau's Degeneration: the American controversy," Journal of the History of Ideas, 50:4 (1989), 607-623.

Guest, D. "Acquired Characters and Cultural versus Biological Determinism in The Way of All Flesh,"s English Literature in Transition, 34:3 (1991), 282-292.

Sadrin, Anny. "De la metaphore a la metamorphose: l'homme-machine de Descartes a la science-fiction post-darwinienne, avec arret sur H.G. Wells," Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, 31 (1990), 119-136.

Becker, James M. "D'Annunzio and Darwinism: from the 'giaguaro famelico' to the 'nazione eletta'," Italica, 67:2 (1990), 181-195.

Forry, Steven Earl. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of Frankenstein from Mary Shelley to the Present. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

Lambert, E.G. "And Darwin Says They are Nearer the Cow's," Twentieth Century Literature, 37:1 (1991), 1-21.

Hilton, Boyd. The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785-1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Weintraub, S. "Victorian Poets and Physicians," Literature and Medicine, 10 (1991), 86-97.

McLaren, Angus. A Prescription for Murder: the Victorian Serial Killings of Dr Thomas Neill Cream. University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Ingram, Angela and Daphine Patai, eds. Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers, 1889-1939. Chapel Hill: U. North Carolina Press, 1993.

Morris, A.R. "Oscar Wilde and the Eclipse of Darwinism: aestheticism, degeneration and moral reaction in late-Victorian ideology," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 24 (4) (1993), 513-540.

Fasick, L. "Culture, nature and gender in Mary Ward's Robert Elsemere and Helbeck of Bannisdale," Victorian Newsletter, 83 (Spring 1993), 25-31.

Persak, C. "Spencer's Doctrines and Mr Hyde: moral evolution in Stevenson's "Strange Case"," Victorian Newsletter, 86 (Fall 1994), 13-18.

Lambert, E. "Unsocial impulses and wilting dinosaurs,"s CEA Critic, 58 (1) (1995), 91-94.

Griffith, John W. Joseph Conrad and the Anthropological Dilemma: Bewildered Traveller. OUP, 1995.

Roston, Murray. Victorian Contexts: Literature and the Visual Arts. Macmillan, 1996. "...a perceptive discussion of the impact of Darwinism in that period."

Bender, Bert. The Descent of Love: Darwin and the Theory of Sexual Selection in American Fiction, 1871-1926. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Parrinder, Patrick. "Eugenics and Utopia: sexual selection from Galton to Morris," Utopian Studies, 8:2 (1997), 1-12. [Quoted extensively].

Seagroatt, Heather. "Hard Science, Soft Psychology and Amorphous Art in The Picture of Dorian Gray,"s Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 38.4 (1998), 741-59.

Morgentaler, Goldie. " Meditating on the Low: A Darwinian Reading of Great Expectations," Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 38:4 (1998), 707-21.

Taylor, Jenny and Sally Shuttleworth, eds. Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts, 1830-1890. OUP, 1998.

Howarth, W. "Imagined Territory: The Writing of Wetlands," New Literary History, 30 (Summer 1999), 509-39.

Graff, Ann-Barbara. “Administrative Nihilism: Evolution, Ethics and Victorian Utopian Satire,’ Utopian Studies, 12.2 (2001) 33-

Ruddick, N. "'Tell-us-all-about-Little-Rosebery': Topicality and Temporality in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine," Science-Fiction Studies, 28 (Nov 2001), 337-54.

Lopez-Beltran, C. "In the Cradle of Heredity: French Physicians and L'Heredite Naturelle in the Early 19th Century," Journal of the History of Biology, 37 (Spring 2004), 39-72.

Zwierlein, A.J. "The Evolution of Frogs and Philosophers: William Paley's Natural Theology, G.H. Lewes's Studies in Animal Life and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Races ," Archiv fur das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 242 (2005), 349-56.

De May, T. "Imagination's Grip on Science," Metaphilosophy, 37 (April 2006), 222-39.

Fire Across The Desert: Woomera And The Anglo-Australian Joint Project 1946-1980.

Canberra & London: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989. Second ed. in hardback & paperback, 1997.

Fire across the Desert is the authoritative account of the history of Woomera, the "space town", up to 1980. Its chapters deal with the social and domestic life of the Village over the years, as well as with the technical work at the Range. Because it uses documents not in the public domain, it also casts some surprising light on the political relations between Australia and the "Mother Country" in the post-war period. It is written in a semi-popular style and is designed to appeal to the interested layman as well as academic historians.

The book was published in Canberra and launched at Parliament House and Adelaide in October 1989 and in London early in 1990. The first printing sold out at once and it was reprinted. In 1997 AGPS Press produced a second edition in both a hard cover and paperback version, which are still in print, and there is an online version.

Extracts from the longer reviews:

"Fire Across the Desert is a detailed, well-researched book which provides a readable, in-depth account of the Joint Project. Sponsored by the Australian Department of Defence, it gives the lie to the generally accepted view that official histories make dull reading. The author, Peter Morton, writes from an Australian standpoint as he concentrates on the political, social and economic history of the project through all the peaks, troughs and changes of direction in its 33-year existence. People figure prominently, and particularly interesting are the sections that deal with how the authorities treated the native aborigines who inhabited the firing range. . . . The first academic treatment of the Joint Project has been a long time coming. . . . Morton sensitively describes the changes in fortune of the Joint Project: from the days of expectancy after 1954, when Britain announced that it intended to build its own medium-range ballistic missile, Blue Streak, to the death knell in 1971 with the cancellation of Black Arrow, a satellite launcher. Morton reveals, for the first time, many of the political intricacies of this period. . . . This excellent volume deserves a wider readership than I fear its price will allow. It is expensive, but its content and scholarship make it almost essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of international collaborative technical ventures as well as for the space historian and enthusiast."

Dr John Becklake, Head of Technology, Science Museum London in New Scientist, 25 August 1990, p.52.

"Peter Morton's painstaking and highly commendable history of the joint project provides a timely reminder of those now largely forgotten days. Like the story of the project itself, the book gives pride of place to the various weapons and rocket trials. . . . The book is not just about weapons and rocket trials. Interwoven with the descriptions of rocket launches is the human face of the project: the key planning and operational personnel, the important work of the Native Patrol Officers, the living and working conditions of the staff and their families and how these changed as the focus of the project changed, and descriptions of the rise and decline of the Woomera village and its surrounding ranges. This sympathetic, sometimes amusing and nostalgic look at Australia's recent past is a fitting testimony to the men and women who lived and worked at Woomera and the other joint project establishments. It serves also to remind us of both the difficulties of seeking to remain at the forefront of technology, and the potential dangers of sublimating our own interests to those of our allies. For, as Morton concludes, Australia gained very little from the joint project other than work for a generation of engineers and scientists, and a sense of worth from being involved in a major scientific enterprise."

Graeme Cheeseman in The [Melbourne] Age, 9 June 1990

"Long anticipated and worth the wait, this official Defence Department history is an absorbing, well-presented overview of the people, technologies and politics of the Woomera rocket programmes. . . . Given the daunting task of assembling such a history, Peter Morton has well captured the spirit of Woomera with a popular style. . . . Complete chapters in the book are devoted to the Black Knight, Black Arrow, Blue Streak, Wresat and ELDO programmes with a level of detail not seen in any other summary publication. In concluding the text, Morton assesses the relative total contributions to Woomera and the United Kingdom after noting some of the political disputes involved. He also discusses the value of the project in hindsight, suggesting that today's defence programmes are better defined and probably of more practical use. It is difficult to fault the book on any count, but it is clear that despite its comprehensive nature and indexed 550 pages, by the author's own admission more material was left out than incorporated. Despite the many amusing anecdotes, for instance, there is only a concise coverage of the social history of Woomera . . . this impressive coffee-table book will serve for many years as the standard reference text on Australia's entry into the space age."

Matthew L. James, Convenor, Australian Space Policy Institute, Canberra in Southern Astronomy 3,1 (May-June 1990), p.62.

"It is extraordinary that a book such as Fire across the desert should have emerged so soon, and that it is so detailed and explicit in describing what happened. Given that the events had high security classifications and that most of the key personalities are still alive, the odds against any book emerging at all were very high indeed. So many organisations, including the British, had to vet the work that the slightest prejudice against the book could easily have left it locked indefinitely within the Defence Department, on the unchallengeable ground of national security. . . . Peter Morton's book is informative at many levels. There is considerable detail on many technical activities, governed overall by the author's lucid and simple explanations of the important scientific and engineering principles associated with particular projects. . . . The author also places each project in its political setting at both government and project-team levels. What he says is interesting and sometimes intriguing, but there is obviously much more to be said concerning the human relationships, particularly at the project-team level. . . . Morton alludes to many of these, but is not able to pursue them too far because of national sensitivities and the fact that key personalities are still living - in some cases, still occupying important positions. . . . A surprising and happy feature of the book is the examination of the social setting of the Joint Project, particularly at Woomera and its range. Many historians of science, particularly of Australian science, do not consider the social context in which scientific activities occur, an argument in favour of encouraging more non-scientists to write history of science. Morton covers a wide range of subjects, including the workforce and conditions during the building of Woomera, the housing and family problems which followed, the social structure of the Woomera village, the transportation system, and the Aborigines on the rocket range. . . . Histories of science rarely consider whether the scientific endeavour described can be shown to have been successful. All scientific activity is generally regarded as contributing to world knowledge in some way or another, and that is its justification. It is tempting to view the Joint Project in the same way, and hence to close this prominent period of Australian science with a warm, happy glow. . . . Consequently the present author is to be congratulated for attempting an evaluation of the scientific worth of the Joint Project. In doing this he is laying himself open to criticism by partisan groups, but his attempt makes the book much more valuable to professional science administrators. In summary, this book is a valuable addition to the increasing library of books on Australian science. It is considerably better than many of them. . . ."

A.T. Ross in Historical Records of Australian Science, 8:2 (June 1990), pp.89-90.

"Morton's detailed study of Woomera examines the technical, social, and political history of this facility and, in so doing, scrutinises Australia's aerospace program. For an official history, the book is surprisingly candid and basically concludes that except for encouraging technological transfer to Australia and subsidising Australian scientists, Woomera produced few long-term benefits for the nation. Although Morton has done an excellent job under the circumstances, his book suffers from a tendency to include everyone who played any significant role in the development of the testing range and sometimes seems to be written primarily for Woomera alumni. Profusely illustrated and well written, the book will nevertheless attract a limited audience, which might include students of aerospace history and the history of modern Australia."

C.J. Weeks in Choice [US], 28 (September 1990), p.190

"Dr Peter Morton and the Department of Defence have produced a large, handsome, scholarly book about some of the weapons that made World War II blockbusters obsolete. The first of these weapons was the German V2 rocket, used to bombard England in the later stages of the war, and this where the book begins. The consequent radical changes in military thinking, prompted by the ingenuity of the Germans, and set in the context of the early cold war, form the background to the rocket range proposal. . . . With such a lot of technology, politics takes second place. After all, the book was commissioned by the Department of Defence, not the Minister! By the same token, the final chapter, assessing benefits to Britain and Australia, is rather slight. Decisions made in the 1940s are judged only from the vantage point of the 1980s. Presumably the Department of Defence did not contract for a judge but a narrator, and as narrative, this history could hardly be better. Given the need to find one's way through a maze of acronyms, Morton's style is admirably lucid. (The book was short-listed for the 1990 Adelaide Festival literary prize.). . . It was reported in the Advertiser of 5 and 8 May 1986 that the book cost over $700,000 to produce. The Australian Audit Office raised its corporate eyebrows, but there is no doubting that Morton has made a major contribution to Australian and British history."

John Love in Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 18 (1990), pp.169-171.

Shorter reviews also appeared in:

Government Publication Review [US] 17 June 1990.

Prizes and Awards

Fire across the Desert won the Fellowship of Australian Writers' National Award for Local History in February 1990. The prize was presented to the author in Melbourne.

Fire was the runner-up for the Adelaide Festival of Arts Nonfiction Award in March 1990. The judges' report at the time commented:

"This is really two books in one: a critical analysis of one of the most significant areas of Australian defence policy and a significant contribution to the history of science. . . . The judges were impressed with Morton's control of the mass of research material, and with his clear, flexible and witty style. Peter Morton writes equally well on every aspect of his complex brief, whether he is explaining the scientific problems of rocket technology for the lay reader, giving a sensitive account of the disruption caused to the indigenous people in the Woomera region, or unravelling the often frustrating relations between the British and Australian defence establishments."

Representative citations of Fire

K.H. Lloyd, Upper Atmosphere Research. Canberra: AGPS (Bicentennial Series of Five Historical Monographs, 1988).

David Lowe, Australia's Cold War 1948-54. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1999.

Reynolds, Wayne, "Rethinking the Joint Project: Australia's Bid for Nuclear Weapons, 1945-1960." Historical Journal, 41:3 (1998), 853-873.

Wright, D. & Hill N. "What Went Wrong with Dan Dare? The Failure of Britain's Post-war Attempts to Join the Space Race," History Today, 49 (July 1999), 509-39.

Reynolds, Wayne. Australia's Bid for the Atomic Bomb. Melbourne University Press, 2000.

P. Deery, "Menzies, Macmillan and the 'Woomera Spy Case' of 1958," Intelligence & National Security, 16:2 (Summer 2001), 23-38.

Spufford, Francis. Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin. Faber, 2003.

Gorman, A. "The Cultural Landscape of Interplanetary Space," Journal of Social Archaeology, 5 (Feb 2005), 85-107.

Woodford, James. The Dog Fence: A Journey Across the Heart of Australia. Melbourne: Text, 2003, 96-107.

Testing Blue Streak At Woomera: An Episode In Anglo-Australian Collaboration And Conflict

(Working Papers in Australian Studies No. 32) London: Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies (1988).

A monograph originally presented as a seminar paper under the auspices of the Centre in February 1988 and subsequently published by it.

After Light: A History Of The City Of Adelaide And Its Council, 1878-1928.

Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1996.

After Light aims to be more than a parochial municipal history. The emphasis throughout in on social and technological change and one of its strengths is that it relates shifting tastes and the cross-currents of ideas active in Adelaide to those found elsewhere in the Western world. The book has a full scholarly documentation but it is written in an accessible style likely to appeal to the informed lay reader as well as the historian.

Extracts from the longer reviews:

"With a terrific sense of timing, Flinders University historian Dr Peter Morton has just published a history of the city and council just as the latest - only the latest - stoush between council and government reaches its peak. You might think that a book dedicated to Adelaide’s mainly municipal history between 1878 and 1928 would be dry as dust. After Light is anything but."

Tony Baker, "The latest fracas only child’s play", Advertiser, 16 November 1996.

"Two of my favourite apothegms - there's no such thing as the Good Old Days, only the old days; and the Yorkshire adage: - There's nowt so queer as folk' - are vividly, informatively, sometimes hilariously proved by this timely book. The Adelaide City Council employed for two years Peter Morton, Leicester-born linguist, historian and author, a Flinders academic and long-term Adelaidean, to write a follow-up to Worsnop'ss celebrated municipal history (1878). It may not be (but should be) overjoyed with the end result.. So it goes; a few juicy examples from a book which oozes with them and, being honestly, readably, fairly descriptive about real people, our predecessors, warts and haloes and all, is lovely to dip into and hard to put down. After Light is the bold but not brutal wine from Morton's treading of archival grapes. Traditionally, civic histories are unread and unreadable heaps of municipally correct humbug and rhodomontade. This one isn't. This one shows how it should be done."

Derek Whitelock, "Civil look at city", Advertiser, 4 January 1997.

"Readers who have enjoyed the author's earlier history of Woomera and the Anglo-Australian Project will not be surprised to find that this new book is not only filled with historical detail based on commendable and meticulous research, but that it is also a mighty good read. It has none of the sense of parochialism and tedium which even the most ardent admirer of Adelaide may find in Thomas Worsnop's 1878 Council history. It must be said, though, that Morton credits Worsnop at least with being a fine antiquarian.

There is a great deal of the well known story, but the author has thrown all the messages up in the air, rearranged them and produced an insightful and quite refreshing view. There has also been a far more comprehensive use of the valuable but often neglected City of Adelaide Archives.

But the real value of the book is that it is not just a history of the formal side of Adelaide, although much of that can be found. Many previous gaps have been filled. . . . Sections on such diverse issues as the city baths, early environmental disasters, slums, road sealing and storm water are not the dull stories a prospective reader might fear. Instead, they offer an easy entry to the everyday life of an active and growing provincial city and its population. The constant theme is the difficulty the Council faced in coping with the rapid pace of change."

Robert Nicol, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 25 (1997), 149-50.

Representative citations:

Jones, David. "20th Century Landscape Design in Adelaide: Three Significant Designers," Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 25 (1997), 35-57.

Grant Allen (1848-1899): A Bibliography. Victorian Fiction Research Guide #31.

Brisbane: Victorian Fiction Research Unit, U. Queensland, 2002. ISBN 1 86499 5866.

This bibliographical monograph summarises my bibliographical research into Grant Allen's work. It has a long introductory essay dealing with some of the problems posed by Allen's fiction and then follows a complete bibliography of all known appearances of his creative work: novels, short fiction, poetry, translations, films and critical assessments of his work.

"The Busiest Man in England": Grant Allen and the Writing Trade 1875-1900.

New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, June 2005.

This book is a critical biography of Grant Allen (1848-1899), the first for a century, based on all the surviving primary sources. Born in into a cultured and affluent Canadian family, Allen was educated in France and England. A mysterious marriage while he was an undergraduate wrecked his academic career and radicalized his views on sexual and marital questions, as did a three-year teaching stint in Jamaica. Despite his lifelong ill-health and relatively short life, Allen was a writer of extraordinary productivity and range. About half - more than 30 books and many hundreds of articles - reflects interests which ran from Darwinian biology to cultural travel guides. His prosperity, however, was underpinned by fiction; more than 30 novels, including The Woman Who Did which has attracted much recent attention from feminist critics and historians. The Busiest Man in England uses Allen's career to examine the role and status of the freelance author/journalist in the late-Victorian period. It throws much light on what it took to succeed in this notoriously tough profession.

Extract from the jacket:

"For reasons which have long been mysterious, Allen, from a wealthy Canadian family, was dependent upon the new mass market for popular fiction to keep the wolf from the door. Peter Morton, having combed through dusty archives with the energy of a Sherlock Holmes, has emerged, not only with a solution to the mystery, but also with an unsurpassed knowledge of Grant Allen and his times. His beautifully-written biography – the first for more than a century – of this remarkable and unjustly neglected figure throws a brilliant new light on the entire literary-cultural scene of late nineteenth-century England."

Nicholas Ruddick, University of Regina, Canada.

Extracts from Reviews:

"Though Morton's scholarship is prodigious and his study as readable as a novel, the audience for this book is limited, given Allen's literary stature."

M.S. Stevenson, Choice, 43 (Oct 2005), 293.

"The publication of this book has been eagerly awaited for some time . . . . With the exception of Edward Clodd’s memoir of his friend, no book-size study of Grant Allen (1848-1899) has ever been published, and there must have been many historians of literature and critics since his death who would have welcomed a detailed study of his life and works if only to offer replies to questions about The Woman Who Did and a selection of his main novels. At last the patience of those people has been rewarded, and the task has been done so brilliantly that there seems no room left for any volume that might attempt to improve upon the present one by Peter Morton. . . .

His splendidly documented, stimulating, often witty investigation should be read by historians of feminism and literary critics. His familiarity with the cultural climate of the last quarter of the nineteenth century proves a valuable asset. Throughout his book we feel, not only that he knows his subject in depth, but that he can be trusted unreservedly. . . . His Busiest Man in England is not likely to be superseded in the foreseeable future. It is by any standards a distinguished contribution to late Victorian studies."

Pierre Coustillas, Gissing Journal, 42:1 (Jan 2006), 29-35.

"... this readable and impressively researched study ... a meticulously detailed account of how Allen's work as a writer was informed by market considerations ... [Morton] uses Allen's career as a window on a whole lost literary culture, and for this reason The Busiest Man is a book anyone interested in late-Victorian literature and culture can read with profit."

Nicholas Daly, Nineteenth Century Literature, 61:1 (June 2006), 124-127.

"Morton's literary biography offers a fascinating insight into the socioeconomics of authorship ... Morton is in his element in charting the manner in which Grant Allen's career reflected the rise of a professionalised literary class over the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He is particularly good at contrasting and embedding Allen's work within the framework of contemporary professional and literary journalism activity ... Morton's erudite and eminently readable study ... has justifiably been awarded a share of the 2006 inaugural Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize for the manner in which it advances our knowledge of the history of Victorian authorship and periodical studies."

David Finkelstein, Victorian Periodicals Review, 39:3 (Fall 2006), 298-300.

"This judicious study conveys not only the calculating energy but also the extraordinary range of serious intellectual interests of a New Grub 00Street hack. Morton has chosen to make his biography-the first serious one-an exploration of the socioeconomics of late-Victorian print culture as well as the intellectual biography of its subject;

it is both informed and well written.

Elizabeth Helsinger, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 46:4 (Autumn 2006).

"Peter Morton's excellent new biography of Allen, the first published since shortly after his premature death in 1899, takes as its controlling idea Allen's position as a freelancer in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Morton emphasizes the economic context of writing for a mass readership at the time that literature became a trade. the biography is written with the knowledge and judgement that we would expect from the author of The Vital Science (1984). No one has read more of Allen than Morton. He has tracked down the greater part of Allen's prodigious output of articles and stories (a bibliography of which Morton has previously made available online).

Morton's stance ranges from admiration for Allen's ability and versatility to admissions of his mediocrity. We get good insight into Allen's psychology: Morton portrays both Allen's attractive personal qualities - his charm, his scrupulous honesty- and his weaknesses - his tendency, for instance, to swing between self-deprecation and self-importance. We also get a picture of Allen's extraordinary productivity. in his twenty-two years as a freelancer, Allen produced seventy-seven volumes of writing. He wrote hundreds of essays -- 102 for Cornhill alone -- and perhaps 200 stories, in addition to dozens of books. Morton's "sociology of authorship" (3) offers a detailed account of what Allen wrote, for which venues, and what pay, along with other information on the socioeconomics of late-Victorian authorship.

We learn more, through Morton's impressive digging, about what and how Allen published than about his personal life. The account of Allen's first marriage to a working-class woman (perhaps a former prostitute) is speculative beyond the bare bones facts available in public records, because "there is not a single direct mention of it anywhere in his writings" (21). Morton provides guesses, and he persuasively employs literary evidence to fill in the gaps. I was left wondering why so little information about Allen's intimate relationships is available, although the book manages without those personal details to convey a strong sense of Allen's character.

The biography is structured by chapters that cover specific years in Allen's life, which are interspersed with three chapters on particular aspects of his writing: fiction, science, and his best-seller The Woman Who Did (1895). Morton knows Victorian science well, and his chapter on Allen's scientific writing may be the best in the book. it is here that Morton finds the most to admire: "As a scientific popularizer, synthesizer, and middleman, Allen was without peer in his own day" (106).

Allen began writing fiction when he discovered that it paid far more than scientific journalism. He "spoke of himself as declining into fiction 'as many men drop into drink, or opium-eating'" (112) and wrote bitterly about his pandering: "'I am trying with each new novel to go a step lower to catch the market'" (87). Allen's scientific concerns were nevertheless integrated into his fiction, largely concerned with atavism, miscegenation, heredity, and eugenics. "it could be said," writes Morton, "that all of Allen's fiction is essentially a set of footnotes to Darwinism" (190).

The Woman Who Did is the only work of fiction extensively treated in the book. Morton argues that the novel's sexual selection plot was motivated by Allen's advocacy of early (short term) mating as a means of eradicating prostitution, a concern provoked by his first marriage. it makes sense that Morton would want to enter into discussion of this novel, both because his interpretation depends upon aspects of Allen's biography and because The Woman Who Did is the text that has received the most critical attention. I would, nevertheless, have also welcomed analysis of one of the lesser-known novels."

Suzy Anger, Victorian Studies, 49 (Winter 2007), 362-6.

"Morton’s book is valuable for analyzing the place of journalism in sustaining a literary career, commentary about the networks of writers and editors associated with relatively unfamiliar periodicals, detailed information on journalists’ strategies and earnings, and helpful analyses of dailies, weeklies, monthlies and of such forms as leaders, middles, and turnovers. ... Morton's ... scholarship shows the successful literary professional deeply embedded in the business of periodicals and reveals the competing economic and ideological (as well as personal) forces that shaped a journalist’s world."

Sally Mitchell, 'Victorian Journalism in Plenty,' Victorian Literature and Culture, 37 (2009), 311-21.

Prizes and Awards

The Busiest Man in England jointly won an inaugural Robert Colby Scholarly Book Prize for "a work published in the preceding year which has made a significant contribution to the study of nineteenth-century periodicals". The cash prize is administered by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and was awarded in New York at the CUNY Graduate Centre in September 2006.

Representative citations:

Lipscombe, Susan Bruxvoort. 'Introducing Gilbert White: An exemplary natural historian and his editors', Victorian Literature and Culture, 35:2 (2007), 551-67.

The Diary of a Nobody by George & Weedon Grossmith

Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, November 2008.

This is the first properly edited edition of the Victorian classic comic diary, which first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been out of print since. The hilariously trivial doings of the accident-prone Pooter, his wife Carrie, and their troublesome son Lupin have inspired many writers since. Evelyn Waugh called it "the funniest book in the world." My edition includes a critical introduction, comprehensive notes on the many historical allusions in the text, and a wide selection of relevant contemporary materials on the clerk's life, suburbia, spiritualism, and domestic economy. A selection of Weedon Grossmith's original illustrations also accompanies the novel.

Extract from the jacket:

"Although The Diary of a Nobody has never been out of print over the last hundred years, it has, until now, failed to attract an edition capable of really illuminating its lost social and literary contexts. Peter Morton's Broadview edition remedies this lack with its excellent introduction, incisive textual annotation, and its comprehensive selection of extracts from background material. This extensive scholarly apparatus, rather than overwhelming the Diary's comedy, succeeds in breathing new life into an established classic of the genre."

Jonathan Wild, University of Edinburgh.

"Finally the Grossmiths' The Diary of a Nobody has an edition worthy of its importance. Peter Morton's introduction, like the secondary materials he has wisely chosen, pays attention to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the text. The selection of contemporary reviews and other materials allows readers to see that the Diary for all its notoriety was not a singular phenomenon, but rather part of a flourishing of interest in the lives of clerks and other lower-middle-class figures. This is another fine Broadview edition that will find its home on the bookshelves of scholars, students, and readers of nineteenth-century literature."

Scott Banville, University of Nevada, Reno.

Lusting for London: Australian Expatriate Writers at the Hub of Empire, 1870-1950.

New York: Palgrave 2011.

According to an old and bitter joke, the leading exports of Australia are wool and brains. This book investigates the haemorrhage of so much of its literary brainpower which the country suffered over several decades on each side of the year of Federation, 1901. It analyses the behaviour of those who expatriated themselves to the British Isles permanently, or for a long time, on a quest to discover their authorial talents, or to develop them, or to try to make a better living, or simply to escape from a birthplace that they regarded as stultifying. It expresses their hopes and fears, measures their successes and failures, and studies comparatively how their careers were shaped by shifting their country of residence. It also tries to evaluate some of the best attempts to exploit creatively the expatriate experience—in three very different novels in particular—and the degree to which, insofar as their work was done elsewhere, the loss of these expatriates supplemented or hampered the evolving literary culture of Australia. And last but not least, since in every case the destination and residence of these people was London and its environs, it is also part of the task of this book to investigate what Julian Wolfreys calls ‘the rhetoric of imagining London’—here, specifically from an antipodean perspective, and from the late nineteenth up to the mid-twentieth century.

Lusting for London tries to handle questions such as: What is an expatriate writer? What distinguishes an Australian expatriate writer from, say, the American equivalent? At what point does a long-stay visitor become an expatriate? Were those who eventually returned to Australia after many years away simply going back home, or does it make more sense to think of them as ex-expatriates? What changes in the standing of the expatriate writer are detectable over the period, and was the concept, as it had been previously understood, still intact by 1950, or had it started to disintegrate or mutate into something different?

Its ‘raw material’ is the careers of about 150 Australian expatriates who moved to London semi-permanently before 1950 – these writers range from the more or less forgotten journalists like Arthur Adams, P.R. Stephensen and Louise Mack, to canonical Australian expatriate novelists such as Martin Boyd, Christina Stead and H.H. Richardson. Some of the literary characters who left, or fled, Australia in my period and found ‘darkest London’ a suitable habitat for their further activities, were both eccentric and morally dubious. It would be hard to invent a character like the doctor-journalist Dr Norman Haire, or the soft pornographer and muck-raker William Willis. Several writers left Australia to avoid, or after serving, a gaol sentence; and for people of this type London offered concealment. For the sexual escapist, exhibitionist or entrepreneur London’s anonymous, swarming multitudes supplied deep cover to all sorts of transgressive sexuality—promiscuity, homosexuality, adultery, paedophilia—providing one were discreet and superficially respectable enough to pass unchallenged by generally deferential policemen. As another immigrant, Joseph Conrad, puts it in another study of a different kind of exile, the terrorist, in The Secret Agent (1907)—and in this comment he is must be drawing a contrast specifically with Australia—London is a ‘monstrous town more populous than some continents’ with room for any story, depth for any passion, darkness enough to bury any life. Such was the dark romance of the great metropolis whose population, right through this period, exceeded the whole of Australia’s.

Throughout Lusting for London the emphasis is on what Australians of literary bent made of the expatriate experience at the personal level. It therefore draws most productively on memoirs, journals and (particularly) novels where the semi-autobiographical element is uppermost. It aims to be both a scholarly work – it draws on unpublished archival material and is thoroughly documented – but also a readable piece of social history exploring an almost totally unexplored field. Given that the loss to Britain of so many of Australia’s most creative people was a persistent theme in the history of the first half of the last century, it is extraordinary that my subject has not been tackled before.

Extracts from Reviews:

"Expatriation has long been recognised as a significant feature of Australian literary history. But it is rarely subjected to the kind of in-depth, historically grounded analysis that Morton undertakes in this wide-ranging and readable study. ... The cliched interpretation is that Australian writers departed en masse to escape the stifling effects of a cultural wasteland. Some clearly did feel this way, but rather than foreground psychological questions or emotive arguments about literary nationalism, Morton presents an even-handed account of the prevailing conditions and the writers' recorded impressions. In doing so, he encourages a nuanced understanding of his topic."

James Ley, 'Siren Song of London Calling', Weekend Australian, 19-20 May 2012.

The Rare or Unread Stories of Grant Allen (1848-1899)

Aberdeen: Vulpine Press 2019.

This is a collection of some of Grant Allen's lesser-known or unknown stories, many of which have not been reprinted since the original 19th century publications. They have remained largely unread since then. They cover a wide range of genres from detective fiction and romance, to science fiction, each story depicting Victorian British society with a humour and insight which have stood the test of time. Some of Allen's short fiction dealt with 'unseemly' topics and were refused by all the major magazines of the day, like the Cornhill and the Belgravia.

There is a general introduction, a preface to each story explaining its place in Allen's career and his manifold intellectual interests, and a set of end-notes elucidating Allen's allusions and quotations in the several languages in which he was fluent.

Reviewed positively by Bharat Tandon, Times Literary Supplement, 24 May 2019.

zines of the time,

B. CHAPTERS, PAPERS & ARTICLES in published books

"Sticks and Stones". In Graham Tulloch, ed. Following the Runes: Writings for Ralph Elliott. Adelaide: Centre for Research in the New Literatures in English, 1989. [Also in Quadrant, October 1989: see below].

"Neo-Darwinian Fate in Hardy". In Scott Elledge, ed. The Norton Critical Edition of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". NY: W.W. Norton, 1990.

"The Tinsel Crown: The Pursuit of the Lord Mayoralty, 1910-1919". In Brian Dickey, ed. William Shakespeare's Adelaide. Adelaide: Flinders, 1992

"Engaging with Leviathan: A Historian's Perspective on Using the Scientific Archives of the Department of Defence". In Recovering Science: Strategies and Models for the Past, Present and Future. Melbourne: Science Archives Centre, University of Melbourne, 1994.

"Journey into Space: Visiting Woomera." In Cristene Carey, ed. Our Hidden State: South Australia Through the Eyes of its Scientists. Adelaide: ANZAAS, 1997.

"Dead Babies: Constructing an Image of Urban Normality in late Victorian Adelaide". In Lynette Finch & Chris McConville, eds. Images of the Urban: Conference Proceedings. Maroochydore: Sunshine Coast UC & International Australian Studies Association, 1997.

"The City of Adelaide." In Wifred Prest, ed. Wakefield Companion to South Australian History. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2001.

"Maralinga." In Wifred Prest, ed. Wakefield Companion to South Australian History. Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2001.

"Grant Allen." In James Strick, ed. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists. London: Thoemmes Continuum, July 2004.

"Grant Allen: A Biographical Introduction". In W. Greenslade & T. Rodgers, Grant Allen: Cultural Politics and the Fin-de-Siecle. London: Ashgate Press, 2005.

"Grant: Allen: A Complete Annotated Bibliographical Checklist". In W. Greenslade & T. Rodgers, Grant Allen: Cultural Politics and the Fin-de-Siecle. London: Ashgate Psress, 2005.

"'Polluted with the Diseases and Vices of Centuries': Writers Negating London, 1880-1914". In Tully Barnett et al (eds.) London Was Full of Rooms. Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2006, pp.108-125.

"George Gissing" in Jay Winter and John Merriman, eds. The Encyclopedia of Modern Europe. Vol. 1: Europe 1789-1914. Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 2006.

“Australia’s England 1880-1950”. In The New Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. Peter Pierce. London: Cambridge UP, 2009, 255-281.

C. ARTICLES and REVIEW-ESSAYS in peer-reviewed journals

"Tess of the D'Urbervilles: A Neo-Darwinian Reading," Southern Review, VII (February 1974), 38-40. This article generated some critical comment and was the subject of an editorial and an exchange of views in the same journal (see below).

"Tess and August Weismann: Unholy Alliance?" Southern Review, IX (November 1975), 254-6. A reply to J. R. Ebbatson, "Critical Exchange: The Darwinian view of Tess: A Reply" in the same issue.

"Biological Degeneration: A Theme in H. G. Wells and Other Late Victorian Utopianists," Southern Review, IX (July 1976), 93-112.

"The Third Conference of the Australasian Victorian Studies Association: a Critical Review," Victorian Studies , XXI (Autumn 1977), 188-120.

"Augmenting and updating the Harkness Bibliography. 1: Pre-Harkness items," Samuel Butler Newsletter, I (Winter 1978), 2-9.

"Augmenting and updating the Harkness Bibliography. 2: Post-Harkness items," Samuel Butler Newsletter, II (Spring 1978), 13-19. Also an appendix of correspondence between myself and Wayne Hammond of the Chapin Library, Mass., plus corrections relating to Part 1, above.

"Aldous Huxley Revived," Quadrant (Jan/Feb 1979), 110-111. (Based on Aldous Huxley's The Human Situation, 1979).

"[Huxley's] Point Counter Point, Chapter III," Explicator, 37 (Summer 1979), 10-11.

"The Body in Question," Quadrant (Jan/Feb.1980), 60-62. (Based on Jonathan Miller's TV series and book The body in question, 1980).

"The Seventies - Superficially," Quadrant (December 1980). (Based on Christopher Booker's social history The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade, 1980).

"Never the Twain...," Quadrant (Jan/Feb 1981). (Based on Gita Mehta, Karma Cola, 1980 and Richard Neville & Julie Clarke, The life and crimes of Charles Sobhraj, 1980).

"The Crimes and Follies of Mankind," Quadrant (October 1981). (Based on Grigson, ed., The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, 1980).

"The New Dunciad," Quadrant (November 1981). (Based on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, 1980).

"Orchids and Fireworks," Quadrant (December 1981). (Based on Jocelyn Brooke's The Orchid Trilogy, 1981).

"Very Special People," Quadrant (December 1982). (Based on Leslie Fiedler's Freaks: Images of the Secret Self, 1982).

"Tracing a Theme in W.H. Hudson's A Crystal Age," English Language Notes, XXV (June 1988), 61-65.

"Some Truths about an Author," Quadrant (June 1993). [Based on Paul F. Mattheisen, Arthur C. Young & Pierre Coustillas, eds. The Collected Letters of George Gissing. Volume 1 (1863-1880); Volume 2 (1881-1885). 1990-1991].

"'Hapless Flies Caught in a Huge Web?' More about Gissing resources on the Internet," Gissing Journal XXXIII, No.2 (April 1997), 25-29.

"Notes on the Net," [Gissing update] Gissing Journal XXXIV, No.3 (July 1998), 30-32.

"Problems of Historicity in David Malouf's An Imaginary Life," Classical & Modern Literature, 20:1 (2000), 1-17.

"Enlivening History Writing," Community History 9:2 (June 1999), 15-16.

"Novel Oxfords: Two Biographical Fictions Presenting Edward de Vere as 'Shakespeare'," Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century English Literature, 5.2 (September, 1999): 6.1-19.

"Allusions to Gissing in the Complete Works of George Orwell," Gissing Journal XXXVI, No.1 (Jan 2000), 25-29.

"In Gissing's Footsteps to Magna Graecia," [review-article based on A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea by John Keahey]," Gissing Journal 36:3 (July 2000), 26-31.

"Grant Allen: A Centenary Reassessment,” ELT: English Literature in Transition, 44:4 (2001), 404-440.

"The Electronic Gissing: A Further Update," Gissing Journal, XXXIX, No.1 (Jan 2003), 31-34.

"'The Funniest Book in the World': Evelyn Waugh and The Diary of a Nobody," Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies, 36:1 (Spring 2005).

"Pootering About," History Today (London), 55:10 (October 2005), 28-9.

D. CREATIVE WORK (SHORT FICTION)

"Diptych." Quadrant (October 1988), 44-46.

"Sticks and Stones." Quadrant (October 1989), 53-56.

"Real Wood Veneer". [Under consideration]

E. REVIEWS & JOURNALISM

"Painful Awakening to Anaesthesia," The Advertiser (22 October 1977). [Richard Gordon, The Sleep of Life].

"Those Writers under Siege," The Advertiser (4 March 1978). [Robert Hewison, Under Siege: Literary life in London 1939-45].

"Let There Be Light," Weekend Australian (10 December 1977). [Steven Weisberg, The first three minutes: A modern view of the origins of the universe].

"Dark Angel," Weekend Australian (16 April 1978). [Fraser Harrison, The Dark Angel: Aspects of Victorian Sexuality].

"The Minor Pre-Raphaelites," Weekend Australian (6 May 1978). [Raleigh Trevelyan, A Pre-Raphaelite Circle].

"The Leonardo of Litchfield," The Advertiser (20 May 1978). [Desmond King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution: The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin].

"In Melbourne after the Catastrophe," The Advertiser (3 June 1978). [George Turner, Beloved Son].

"New Look at a Literary Giant," The Advertiser (16 September 1978). [W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson].

"Making Goodness Fashionable," The Critic (January 1979). [John Pollock, William Wilberforce].

"A Catchphrase to Suit Everyone," The Critic (November 1978). [Alan Bullock & O. Stallybrass, The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought].

"They Do Like to Be," The Critic (April 1979). [James Walvin, Beside the Seaside: A Social History of the Popular Seaside Holiday].

"Musings on Writers' Week," Quadrant (June 1980), 89-93. [Reflections on the Adelaide Festival events of February 1980].

"Parapsychology in Crisis," Omega (May/June 1982), 49-52.

"Trapped in the Web of Cable TV," Advertiser Saturday Review, 22 May 1982.

"The End of the Occult," Quadrant (Jan/Feb 1983)

"Dial "S" for Superphones," Advertiser Saturday Review, 19 February 1983.

"Could Australians ever become the desert dwellers?" Omega (May/June 1983), 44-9.

"A Tale of two Xanadus [Hearst San Simeon]," Pol (December 1983).

"Mythologising Maralinga," Adelaide Review (December 1987). (Based on the film Ground zero, 1987).

"Maralinga," Quadrant (May 1988), 24-25.

"Woomera Dream Turns to Dust," Advertiser Saturday Review, 24 December 1988.

"The South Australia Story," Association of Professional Historians' Newsletter (May 1990).

"Selling History vs. Selling Nostalgia: Some Idle Thoughts on Marketing Nineteenth century History in the United States and the United Kingdom," Association of Professional Historians' Newsletter (March 1991).

"Pseudoscience in language: a Brief Rejoinder," Australian Skeptic (Autumn 1991).

"[Review of] The Odd Women by George Gissing, edited by Arlene Young," Gissing Journal XXXIV, No.4 (October 1998), 26-29.

"[Review of] De Vere is Shakespeare: Evidence from the Biography and Wordplay by Denis Baron," Elizabethan Review 6:2 (Autumn 1998), 84-88.

"[Review of] Beyond Belief: The British Bomb Tests: Australia's Veterans Speak Out by Roger Cross & Avon Hudson. Journal of the South Australian Historical Society, 34 (2006), 112-113.

"A Twisted Tale" [Review of] The Real Oliver Twist. Robert Blincoe: A Life that Illustrates an Age by John Waller. Australian Book Review, 288 (February 2007), 39-40.

F. PUBLICATIONS & FILMS IN WHICH I HAD AN EDITORIAL OR CONSULTANT’S HAND

Paul Raffaele, "Woomera: Our Outback Space Town," Australian Geographic 12 (October-December 1988), 98-150

Jane Hutchinson, "Woomera in Decay," Time, 3 July 1989.

Helen Covernton, "The spy suspect who won over ASIO's boss," Advertiser, 5 October 1989.

Helen Covernton, "Woomera: high tech kangaroo chase," Advertiser, 5 October 1989.

Chris Hill, "Lost and found - one Redstone rocket," Australian Geographic, 18 (April-June 1990), 20-21.

Nadine Williams, "Man of Plants: August Pelzer," Advertiser (5 June 1999), 6.

Thea Williams, "Chequered history for city statues," City Messenger (16 June 1999), 9.

Fortress Australia (2002). Film Australia/ABC. Director Peter Butt. Last screened on ABC, 24 October 2006.

Welcome to Woomera (2004). Film Australia/ABC. Director Steve Thomas. Screened in Australia and UK seven times to 29 July 2006

G. LETTERS, MEDIA ARTICLES ON MY WORK, ETC

"Woomera book to "blast off"," Gibber-Gabber (August 1983).

"Unsupported claim," Advertiser, 20 October 1983.

"Making history," Defence Research News, June 1985.

"Range's story may be filmed," Advertiser, 18 February 1986.

"$700,000 spent on unfinished Woomera report," Advertiser, 5 May 1986.

"Author of Woomera's history explains role," Advertiser, 8 May 1986.

"Woomera project," Advertiser, 8 May 1986.

"Rocket men in a small world," Leicester Mercury (UK), 8 July 1986.

"Book on history of Woomera being vetted," Advertiser, 1 January 1987.

"Australian-British relations over Woomera," Advertiser, 6 January 1987.

John Kerin, "ASIO giveth, ASIO taketh away," TNT (London) 14 March 1988.

Peter Hackett, "KGB may have spy in SA: Author," Advertiser, 25 October 1989.

Ken Smith, "Prospero still in orbit," Advertiser, 11 January 1989.

"Not of very much significance to Woomera," Advertiser, 8 June 1989.

Fiona Baker, "Slow progress for prudish Adelaide," City Messenger, October 1989.

"Olive oil from the Parklands," Advertiser, 8 August 1990.

Nick Cater, "Adelaide's deep secrets," Advertiser, 5 November 1990.

"Misquoted," Advertiser, 1 January 1991.

"History is vanished personalities, ideas and influence," Advertiser, 23 March 1992

"Working on English at Flinders," Campus Review, 22 April 1993.

"Seven Years On, City's Story to be Published," Advertiser, 14 May 1996.

Robert Mayne, "Going Ballistic. Blast from the Past: The Woomera Project Celebrates its 50th Anniversary," Bulletin, 1 April 1997.

H. CONFERENCE PAPERS, PUBLIC LECTURES, SPEECHES

"The body as omnibus: Late Victorian theoretical biology and The Way of All Flesh." Paper presented at the Australasian Victorian Studies Association annual conference, Flinders University, 1974.

"The Anglo-Australian Joint Project, 1946-1980: Some Historical and Cultural Considerations". Seminar paper presented at the Australian Studies Centre, University of London, 17 February 1988.

"Town Planning and Housing Reform in the City of Adelaide, 1878-1928." Public lecture for the History Trust of South Australia, Old Parliament House, 2 August 1991.

"Engaging with Leviathan: A historian's perspective on using the scientific archives of the Department of Defence". Paper presented at the Recovering Science conference, University of Melbourne, 16 November 1992. [Published as chapter in book]

"Testing Blue Streak at Woomera: An episode in Anglo-Australian collaboration and conflict, 1954-1960". Paper presented at conference 'From Singapore to Maastricht: Britain and Australia, 1942-1992'. Centre for Australian Studies in Wales, University of Wales, Lampeter, UK, 2 July 1993.

"King Herod's Very Own City? Colonial Debate and Denial over Infant Mortality Rates in Late Victorian Adelaide". Paper presented at the Australian Identities conference, University College Dublin, Ireland, June 1996.

"Woomera: What was it all about?" Public lecture for the Historical Society of South Australia, Prince Alfred College, 13 June 1997.

"Teenage fiction". Address launching Ruth Starke's The Twist in the Tale, Paul's, Norwood, 27 June 1997.

"Dead Babies: Constructing an Image of Urban Normality in late Victorian Adelaide". Paper presented at the Images of the Urban conference, Sunshine Coast University College, 17-19 July 1997. [Later published as chapter in book]

"Dealing with the Critics". Panel paper given at the SA State History Conference, Port Adelaide, 15-17 May 1998.

"Enlivening Historical Writing". Panel paper given at the SA State History Conference, Port Adelaide, 15-17 May 1998. [Later revised and published in Community History (see above)].

"'Something New and Appetizing'": Notes to accompany a bibliography of Grant Allen". Keynote address at plenary session of the Grant Allen and Cultural Politics at the Fin de Siecle: Centenary Conference, Bristol, UK, 13 November 1999.

"Cracking the Best-Seller Code: 'Faction' and Fiction in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code". FHRC Seminar, Flinders, September 2005.

"In the Belly of the Beast: Reflections on Writing the Woomera History". Keynote Address at the Department of Archaeology Symposium Home on the Range: The Cold War, Space Exploration and Heritage at Woomera, South Australia, Flinders University, 4 November 2005.

"Narrative Strategies in the Fictive Diary: Reader-Response Theory and the Grossmiths' Diary of a Nobody". Powerpoint presentation at the Life Writing Symposium, Flinders University, 13-15 June 2006.

I. RESEARCH/TEACHING WEBSITES

"The George Gissing Website." Online in April 1997. Approved by BBC OnLine as an educational resource: "This magnificent site provides an excellent introduction to Gissing, including a detailed biography, a superb critical survey of his work," etc.

J. INTERNAL REPORTS COMMISSIONED AND FUNDED BY FLINDERS

"Report on the teaching of Professional Writing in some Californian universities." August 1992.

"Report on a visit to the American Cultural Exchange (ACE) in Seattle, Washington." December 1993.

Updated Aug 19