Flora Eldershaw
Encyclopedia
Flora Sydney Patricia Eldershaw (16 March 1897 – 20 September 1956) was an Australian novelist, critic and historian. With Marjorie Barnard
she formed the writing collaboration known as M. Barnard Eldershaw. She was also a teacher and later a public servant.
Eldershaw was active in Australian literary circles, including becoming the first woman President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers
and being a long-time member of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund. For both her writing output and her active support for and promotion of writers, Eldershaw made a significant contribution to Australian literary life.
but grew up in the Riverina
district of country New South Wales
. She was the fifth of eight children born to Henry Sirdefield Eldershaw, a station manager, and Margaret (née McCarroll). She attended boarding school at Mount Erin Convent in Wagga Wagga.
After school, she studied history and Latin at the University of Sydney
where she met Marjorie Barnard
with whom she later formed a writing collaboration, under the name M. Barnard Eldershaw
. She worked as a teacher, first at Cremorne Church of England Grammar
and then, from 1923, at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Croydon
, where she became senior English mistress and head of the boarding school
. According to Dever, her Catholic education precluded her becoming headmistress. In 1941, she moved to Canberra to take up a government position, transferring to Melbourne in 1943 where she worked for the Department of Labour and National Service. In 1948 she started working as a private consultant in industrial matters such as women's legal rights and equal pay, and extending her interests into the welfare of Aboriginal and migrant women.
Like many women writers of the time, she had to work to support her writing activities. Like them too, she faced difficulties about where to live. For a time she lived as a resident mistress at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, but came to hate the restrictions this entailed. Barnard, herself living under the restrictions of home, described Eldershaw's situation as 'untenable'. In 1936 Eldershaw and Barnard rented a small flat in Potts Point
where they could give small dinner parties and to which they could retreat from school and home. In 1938 she moved out of school completely into a better flat in King's Cross. During this time, these flats operated as something like a literary salon, as it was here that Eldershaw and Barnard were able to entertain many of their literary peers.
Like Marjorie Barnard, she never married. As her health failed due to "years of overwork and financial worries", she went to her sister's place in 1955. Ironically, she was granted one of the literary pensions she had fought hard to establish a decade earlier. She died in hospital of a cerebral thrombosis in 1956.
(FAW), a position she held again in 1943. As Dever writes, "With Barnard
and Frank Dalby Davison
, she developed policies on political and cultural issues, and helped to transform the F.A.W. into a vocal and sometimes controversial lobby group". Through the late 1930s, these three were known as "the triumvirate". Besides these two, her literary associates included Vance and Nettie Palmer
, Katharine Susannah Prichard
, Judah Waten
and Tom Inglis Moore.
It is well recognised that during the interwar years in Australia "women represented a significant section of the writing community", that, in fact, this concentration "could be said to be one of the major distinguishing features of the then Australian literary landscape". Women, including Eldershaw, were significant in the reviewing community, held office in major literary societies, judged literary competitions and edited anthologies.
Eldershaw actively promoted the needs of writers and in 1938 helped persuade the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF) to include grants and pensions for writers, and funding for university lectures on Australian literature. She was a member of the CLF from 1939 to 1953. In much of this more political, advocacy work she was often the only woman present. She was known to Australian politicians like H. V. Evatt
, Ben Chifley
and Robert Menzies
. Dever writes that Vance Palmer admired Eldershaw for "what he saw as her ability to neutralise conventional masculine expectation of the threat posed by women in 'public life'", though she suggests that he failed to recognise that she often achieved this by playing on men's expectations.
. Their first novel, A House is Built (1929) shared first prize, with Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo, in the Bulletin
novel competition. They wrote four other novels, the last being the censored utopian novel, published in 1947 as Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and reissued in its entirety in 1983 under its original title, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947).
The collaboration, which lasted two decades, also produced histories, critical essays and lectures, and radio drama.
However, being unable to obtain permanent employment in the Public Service for health reasons, she found work as a private management consultant. This was to prove disastrous financially as her employer often didn't pay her.
During the war years, Eldershaw documented cases in which police raids on individuals and left-wing organisations resulted in the confiscation of property, arguing that writers must have "in their libraries all shades of opinion as tools of the trade". She strongly supported the FAW's pro-Soviet stance and, with Katharine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin
and Frank Dalby Davison, was invited to speak at the Cultural Conference of the NSW Aid Russia Committee. As FAW President in 1943, she conveyed a message of support for Soviet writers to the Soviet Consul in Canberra.
Dever quotes Melbourne writer John Morrison as saying that Eldershaw was "socially and politically inclined to the left" and says that her pro-Soviet position and involvement in the Peace Movement
resulted in her having "a slim if predictable ASIO
file".
Marjorie Barnard
Marjorie Faith Barnard AO was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian - and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian...
she formed the writing collaboration known as M. Barnard Eldershaw. She was also a teacher and later a public servant.
Eldershaw was active in Australian literary circles, including becoming the first woman President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers
Fellowship of Australian Writers
The Fellowship of Australian Writers, also known as FAW, was established in Sydney in 1928. Its aim is to bring writers together and promote their interests...
and being a long-time member of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund. For both her writing output and her active support for and promotion of writers, Eldershaw made a significant contribution to Australian literary life.
Life
Eldershaw was born in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
but grew up in the Riverina
Riverina
The Riverina is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales , Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation. This combination has allowed the Riverina to develop...
district of country New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. She was the fifth of eight children born to Henry Sirdefield Eldershaw, a station manager, and Margaret (née McCarroll). She attended boarding school at Mount Erin Convent in Wagga Wagga.
After school, she studied history and Latin at the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
where she met Marjorie Barnard
Marjorie Barnard
Marjorie Faith Barnard AO was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian - and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian...
with whom she later formed a writing collaboration, under the name M. Barnard Eldershaw
M. Barnard Eldershaw
M. Barnard Eldershaw was the pseudonym used by the twentieth century Australian literary collaborators Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw...
. She worked as a teacher, first at Cremorne Church of England Grammar
SCECGS Redlands
Redlands, is an independent, co-educational, day school, located in Cremorne, New South Wales, Australia.The school is non-selective and currently caters for approximately 1700 students from pre-school to year 12....
and then, from 1923, at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Croydon
Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney
The Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for girls in Croydon, an inner-western suburb of Sydney, Australia...
, where she became senior English mistress and head of the boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
. According to Dever, her Catholic education precluded her becoming headmistress. In 1941, she moved to Canberra to take up a government position, transferring to Melbourne in 1943 where she worked for the Department of Labour and National Service. In 1948 she started working as a private consultant in industrial matters such as women's legal rights and equal pay, and extending her interests into the welfare of Aboriginal and migrant women.
Like many women writers of the time, she had to work to support her writing activities. Like them too, she faced difficulties about where to live. For a time she lived as a resident mistress at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, but came to hate the restrictions this entailed. Barnard, herself living under the restrictions of home, described Eldershaw's situation as 'untenable'. In 1936 Eldershaw and Barnard rented a small flat in Potts Point
Potts Point, New South Wales
Potts Point is a small, densely-populated suburb of inner-city Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Potts Point is located 3 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district and is part of the local government area of the City of Sydney....
where they could give small dinner parties and to which they could retreat from school and home. In 1938 she moved out of school completely into a better flat in King's Cross. During this time, these flats operated as something like a literary salon, as it was here that Eldershaw and Barnard were able to entertain many of their literary peers.
Like Marjorie Barnard, she never married. As her health failed due to "years of overwork and financial worries", she went to her sister's place in 1955. Ironically, she was granted one of the literary pensions she had fought hard to establish a decade earlier. She died in hospital of a cerebral thrombosis in 1956.
Literary career
Eldershaw was a leading figure in Sydney literary circles, becoming, in 1935, the first woman president of the Fellowship of Australian WritersFellowship of Australian Writers
The Fellowship of Australian Writers, also known as FAW, was established in Sydney in 1928. Its aim is to bring writers together and promote their interests...
(FAW), a position she held again in 1943. As Dever writes, "With Barnard
Marjorie Barnard
Marjorie Faith Barnard AO was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian - and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian...
and Frank Dalby Davison
Frank Dalby Davison
Frank Dalby Davison , also known as F.D. Davison and Freddie Davison, was an Australian novelist and short story writer...
, she developed policies on political and cultural issues, and helped to transform the F.A.W. into a vocal and sometimes controversial lobby group". Through the late 1930s, these three were known as "the triumvirate". Besides these two, her literary associates included Vance and Nettie Palmer
Vance and Nettie Palmer
Vance and Nettie Palmer were two of Australia's best-known literary figures from the 1920s to the 1950s. Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer was a novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer was a poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic...
, Katharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.-Biography:...
, Judah Waten
Judah Waten
Judah Leon Waten AM was an Australian novelist who was at one time seen as the voice of Australian migrant writing....
and Tom Inglis Moore.
It is well recognised that during the interwar years in Australia "women represented a significant section of the writing community", that, in fact, this concentration "could be said to be one of the major distinguishing features of the then Australian literary landscape". Women, including Eldershaw, were significant in the reviewing community, held office in major literary societies, judged literary competitions and edited anthologies.
Eldershaw actively promoted the needs of writers and in 1938 helped persuade the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF) to include grants and pensions for writers, and funding for university lectures on Australian literature. She was a member of the CLF from 1939 to 1953. In much of this more political, advocacy work she was often the only woman present. She was known to Australian politicians like H. V. Evatt
H. V. Evatt
Herbert Vere Evatt, QC KStJ , was an Australian jurist, politician and writer. He was President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1948–49 and helped draft the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, Ben Chifley
Ben Chifley
Joseph Benedict Chifley , Australian politician, was the 16th Prime Minister of Australia. He took over the Australian Labor Party leadership and Prime Ministership after the death of John Curtin in 1945, and went on to retain government at the 1946 election, before being defeated at the 1949...
and Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
. Dever writes that Vance Palmer admired Eldershaw for "what he saw as her ability to neutralise conventional masculine expectation of the threat posed by women in 'public life'", though she suggests that he failed to recognise that she often achieved this by playing on men's expectations.
Collaboration
Her major fiction output was produced in collaboration with Marjorie BarnardMarjorie Barnard
Marjorie Faith Barnard AO was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian - and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian...
. Their first novel, A House is Built (1929) shared first prize, with Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo, in the Bulletin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...
novel competition. They wrote four other novels, the last being the censored utopian novel, published in 1947 as Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and reissued in its entirety in 1983 under its original title, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947).
The collaboration, which lasted two decades, also produced histories, critical essays and lectures, and radio drama.
Public Service career
Eldershaw left teaching, disillusioned, and obtained employment with the Department of Labour and National Service. She worked first in the Division of Post-War Reconstruction and then in the Division of Industrial Welfare. She developed some of Australia's first policies on industrial welfare and undertook comprehensive research into personnel practice in government munitions factories and private industry.However, being unable to obtain permanent employment in the Public Service for health reasons, she found work as a private management consultant. This was to prove disastrous financially as her employer often didn't pay her.
Politics
Politics was always an important aspect of her work. Realising that "to be involved in writing was to be involved in politics", she, Barnard and Davison, worked hard through the Fellowship of Australian Writers to protect writers and the freedom of expression. She lobbied for writers to receive Federal government subsidies. The "salon" she and Barnard held in Sydney in the late 1930s hosted not only writers but also peace activists such as Lewis Rodd and Lloyd Ross.During the war years, Eldershaw documented cases in which police raids on individuals and left-wing organisations resulted in the confiscation of property, arguing that writers must have "in their libraries all shades of opinion as tools of the trade". She strongly supported the FAW's pro-Soviet stance and, with Katharine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin
Miles Franklin
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901...
and Frank Dalby Davison, was invited to speak at the Cultural Conference of the NSW Aid Russia Committee. As FAW President in 1943, she conveyed a message of support for Soviet writers to the Soviet Consul in Canberra.
Dever quotes Melbourne writer John Morrison as saying that Eldershaw was "socially and politically inclined to the left" and says that her pro-Soviet position and involvement in the Peace Movement
Peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...
resulted in her having "a slim if predictable ASIO
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is Australia's national security service, which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically-motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and...
file".
As M. Barnard Eldershaw
- A House is Built (1929)
- Green Memory (1931)
- The Glasshouse (1936)
- Plaque with Laurel (1937)
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1945)
- The Watch on the Headland (published in Australian Radio Plays, 1946)
As Flora Eldershaw
- Contemporary Australian Women Writers (1931)
- Australian Literary Society Medallists (1935)
- Australian Writers' Annual (1936, ed.)
- The Peaceful Army: A Memorial to the Pioneer Women of Australia, 1788-1938 (1938)
As M. Barnard Eldershaw
- Phillip of Australia: An Account of the Settlement of Sydney Cove, 1788-92 (1938)
- Essays in Australian Fiction (1938)
- The Life and Times of Captain George Piper (1939)
- My Australia (1939)