Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen-Murray Smith of Overland

Abstract

Party days whom Davidson presents in a rather unflattering light, was a favourite. Curtin famously quoted from O’Dowd’s “Dawnward?” in the New Year’s message published in the Melbourne Herald late in 1941, an article that would be inflated into his famous appeal to America. He read Zora Cross and was a friend and correspondent of Mary Gilmore, who wrote verse in praise of Curtin when he was prime minister. It was not all high-minded. While Curtin told the press in 1941 that he had for 20 years maintained a Sunday night ritual of at least an hour of reading poetry, Davidson also records that he read westerns, detective thrillers, romance novels and other light fiction to relax. Davidson writes with verve and only rare and trivial factual slips. He has been meticulous in reconstructing Curtin’s reading—not only what he read, but what he did with it in his private and public life. He has also had to engage in some serious detective work and stylistic analysis in tying pseudonymous literary commentary to Curtin, even while uncertainties of identification remain in some instances. This most interesting and innovative study will be indispensable to anyone serious about understanding Curtin, and the milieux, culture and society that produced him.