Biography Series
The National Centre for Biography in the History Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University hosts the Biography Series. The National Centre was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally. Books that appear in the Biography Series are lively, engaging and provocative, intended to appeal to the current popular and scholarly interest in biography, memoir and autobiography. They recount interesting and telling life stories and engage critically with issues and problems in historiography and life writing.
Please note: The following list of titles is sorted by publication date, with the most recent first.
Displaying results 1 to 18 of 18.
Dictionary of World Biography »
Tenth edition
Authored by: Barry Jones
Publication date: January 2025
Jones, Barry Owen (1932– ). Australian politician, writer and lawyer, born in Geelong. Educated at Melbourne High School and Melbourne University, he was a public servant, high school teacher, television and radio performer, university lecturer and lawyer before serving as a Labor MP in the Victorian Parliament 1972–77 and the Australian House of Representatives 1977–98. He took a leading role in reviving the Australian film industry and abolishing the death penalty in Australia, and was the first politician to raise public awareness of global warming, the ‘post‑industrial’ society, the IT revolution, biotechnology, the rise of ‘the Third Age’ and the need to preserve Antarctica as a wilderness. In the Hawke Government, he was Minister for Science 1983–90, Prices and Consumer Affairs 1987, Small Business 1987–90 and Customs 1988–90. He became a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Paris 1991–95 and National President of the Australian Labor Party 1992–2000, 2005–06. He was Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Convention 1998. His books include Decades of Decision 1860– (1965), Joseph II (1968), Age of Apocalypse (1975) and Knowledge Courage Leadership: Insights & Reflections (2016), and he edited The Penalty Is Death (1968, revised and expanded 2022). His bestseller, Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work (1982, Fourth edition published in 1995) has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish and braille.
He received a DSc in 1988 for his services to science and a DLitt in 1993 for his work on information theory. Elected FTSE (1992), FAHA (1993), FAA (1996) and FASSA (2003), he is the only person to have become a Fellow of four of Australia’s five learned Academies. Awarded an AO in 1993, named as one of Australia’s 100 ‘living national treasures’ in 1997, he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1999. His autobiography, A Thinking Reed, was published in 2006 and The Shock of Recognition, about music and literature, in 2016. In 2014 he received an AC for services ‘as a leading intellectual in Australian public life’. What Is to Be Done was published in 2020.
Format: Hardback
‘My own sort of heaven’ »
A life of Rosalie Gascoigne
Authored by: Nicola Francis
Publication date: October 2024
Widely regarded as a major Australian artist, Rosalie Gascoigne first exhibited in 1974 at the age of fifty-seven. She rapidly achieved critical acclaim for her assemblages which were her response to the Monaro landscape surrounding Canberra. The great blonde paddocks, vast skies and big raucous birds contrasted with the familiar lush green harbour city of Auckland she had left behind. Her medium: weathered discards from the landscape. By her death in 1999, her work had been purchased for major public art collections in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and New York, and had been exhibited across Europe and Asia.
Gascoigne’s story is often cast in simple terms—an inspirational tale of an older woman ‘finding herself’ later in life and gaining artistic acclaim. But the reality is much more complex and contingent. This biography explores Gascoigne’s achievement of her ‘own sort of heaven’ through the frame of the narrative she told once she had gained fame, using a series of interviews she gave from 1980 to 1998. It revolves around her frequently stated sense of feeling an outsider, her belief that artists are born not made, and other factors central to the development and impact of her work. Migrating to Australia from New Zealand in 1943, Gascoigne experienced the dramatic social changes of the 1960s and 1970s and benefited from the growth of cultural life in Canberra, a developing Australian art industry, and changing conceptions of aesthetic beauty.
‘Order, Order!’ »
A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives
Edited by: Stephen Wilks
Publication date: May 2023
‘Order, Order!’: A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives shines a first-ever historical light on the remarkable men and women who have served in these national offices since Federation.
The Speakers include Frederick Holder, whose campaign to embed a Westminster-style Speakership died with him when he collapsed dramatically in the parliament; the much-loved Joan Child, Australia’s first female Speaker, whose struggles as a widow with five children fostered her commitment to social justice and made her, in the words of another Speaker, Anna Burke, ‘pretty fierce’; and Ian Sinclair, a warhorse of a parliamentarian who seemed to prove the poacher-turned-gamekeeper principle. The Deputy Speakers, a particularly eclectic assortment, include the strange and bleakly serious James Fowler, who once hopefully mailed a film synopsis to the American director Cecil B. DeMille and who ended his days warning of the perils of democracy. Amongst the Clerks are Frank Green, who, at the height of the Cold War, indiscreetly befriended members of the Communist Party, and the popular Jack Pettifer—a true child of parliament—who grew up in an apartment in the building.
This book includes analysis of what sorts of individuals typically filled these vital parliamentary positions, and the appearance of an Australian model of the Speakership based on pragmatic compromise. All three offices are typically more than just creatures of political parties—something that Australians should be prepared to defend against the remorseless encroachment of political partisanship.
Format: Hardback
Persons of Interest »
An Intimate Account of Cecily and John Burton
Authored by: Pamela Burton, Meredith Edwards
Publication date: April 2022
A world in upheaval; two lives lived under stress … This story is set in the social and political landscape of pre– and post–World War II. It tells two vastly different tales of Cecily and John’s lives in Australia and overseas, as nations clashed, and governments and international organisations tried to remake the world.
Cecily Nixon knew that marrying John Burton would be bad for her. But she loved him and, impressed with this handsome, sullen young man and his belief that he could change the world for the better, saw her role in life as to serve the world through John.
Cecily’s story is a deeply personal and psychological one of love, duty and betrayal that explores the complexities of relationships. In a world that overwhelmed her, Cecily searched for ‘wholeness’ and delved deep into her psyche to find herself and emerge from John’s shadow.
John has been known as an influential and controversial young head of Australia’s Department of External Affairs – and as a would-be politician. It is less known that he was also an innovative farmer, bookseller, entrepreneur, arts patron and writer. He received international acclaim for his later work in conflict analysis and resolution.
These combined stories of courage and achievement unfold amid political intrigue and psychological trauma. ASIO surveillance, love triangles, loyalty, infidelity and tragedy all play their part in the Burtons’ lives.
'A remarkable memoir of a remarkable couple, exploring the fraught dynamic between the personal and political facets of their lives, the perspective lying at the core of modern feminism. Pamela Burton’s own insights are those of their youngest child, on whom the disruptions of the 1960s and 1970s had a heavy impact, but also that of her maturity, bringing her sharp forensic skills to the project. Assisted by Meredith Edwards, her eldest sister, Burton has given us an unflinchingly honest and utterly gripping record of our lives and times.'
— Sara Dowse, author of West Block and Sapphires
A Bridge Between »
Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in Australia
Authored by: Katharine Massam
Publication date: October 2020
This sensitive account of Spanish Benedictine women at an Aboriginal mission in Western Australia is poignant and disturbing. Notable for its ecumenical spirit, depth of research and deep engagement with the subject, A Bridge Between is a model of how religious history, in its broader bearings, can be written.
— Graeme Davison, Monash University
With great insight and care, A Bridge Between presents a sympathetic but not uncritical history of the lives of individuals who have often been invisible. The story of the nuns at New Norcia is a timely contribution to Australia’s religious history. Given the findings of the Royal Commission, it will be widely read both within and beyond the academy. History is, here, a spiritual discipline, and an exercise in hope and reconciliation.
— Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University
A Bridge Between is the first account of the Benedictine women who worked at New Norcia and the first book-length exploration of twentieth-century life in the Western Australian mission town. From the founding of a grand school intended for ‘nativas’, through links to Mexico and Paraguay then Ireland, India and Belgium, as well as to their house in the Kimberley, and a network of villages near Burgos in the north of Spain, this is a complex international history. A Bridge Between gathers a powerful, fragmented story from the margins of the archive, recalling the Aboriginal women who joined the community in the 1950s and the compelling reunion of missionaries and former students in 2001. By tracing the all-but-forgotten story of the community of Benedictine women who were central to the experience of the mission for many Aboriginal families in the twentieth century, this book lays a foundation for further work.
People and Place »
The West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in History and Literature
Authored by: Len Richardson
Publication date: May 2020
This book traces the enduring relationship between history, people and place that has shaped the character of a single region in a manner perhaps unique within the New Zealand experience. It explores the evolution of a distinctive regional literature that both shaped and was shaped by the physical and historical environment that inspired it. Looking westwards towards Australia and long shut off within New Zealand by the South Island’s rugged Southern Alps, the West Coast was a land of gold, coal and timber. In the 1950s and 1960s, it nurtured a literature that embodied a sense of belonging to an Australasian world and captured the aspirations of New Zealand’s emergent radical nationalism. More recent West Coast writers, observing the hollowing out of their communities, saw in miniature and in advance the growing gulf between city and regional economies aligned to an older economic order losing its relevance. Were they chronicling the last hurrah of a retreating age or crafting a literature of regional resistance?
‘True Biographies of Nations?’ »
The Cultural Journeys of Dictionaries of National Biography
Edited by: Karen Fox
Publication date: April 2019
Dictionaries of national biography are a long-established and significant genre of biographical and historical writing, existing in many forms across the globe. This book brings together practitioners from around the English‑speaking world to reflect on national biographical dictionary projects’ recent cultural journeys, and the challenges presented to them by such developments as the transition to a digital environment, a new alertness to the need to represent diversity, and the rise of transnationalism. Exploring their paths forward, the chapters of this book collectively make a powerful argument for the continued value and importance of large‑scale collaborative biographical dictionary research.
Clio’s Lives »
Biographies and Autobiographies of Historians
Edited by: Doug Munro, John G. Reid
Publication date: October 2017
Including contributions from leading scholars in the field from both Australia and North America, this collection explores diverse approaches to writing the lives of historians and ways of assessing the importance of doing so. Beginning with the writing of autobiographies by historians, the volume then turns to biographical studies, both of historians whose writings were in some sense nation-defining and those who may be regarded as having had a major influence on defining the discipline of history. The final section explores elements of collective biography, linking these to the formation of historical networks. A concluding essay by Barbara Caine offers a critical appraisal of the study of historians’ biographies and autobiographies to date, and maps out likely new directions for future work.
Clio’s Lives is a very good scholarly collection that advances the study of autobiography and biography within the writing of history itself, taking theoretical questions in significant new directions. The contributors are well known and highly respected in the history profession and write with an insight and intellectual energy that will ensure the book has considerable impact. They examine cutting-edge issues about the writing of history at the personal level through autobiography and biography in diverse and innovative ways. Together the writers have provided reflective chapters that will be widely read for their impressive theoretical advances as well as being inspirational for new entrants to the disciplinary area.
— Patricia Grimshaw, University of Melbourne
Clio’s Lives brings together a most interesting and varied cast of contributors. Its chapters contain sophisticated and well-penned ruminations on the uses of biography and autobiography among historians. These are clearly connected with the general themes of the volume. This delightfully mixed bag makes very good reading and, as well, will serve as a substantial contribution to the study of the biography and autobiography.
— Eric Richards, Flinders University
The Histories of Raphael Samuel »
A portrait of a people's historian
Authored by: Sophie Scott-Brown
Publication date: May 2017
In the first integrated biographical study of his work, this book situates British historian Raphael Samuel (1934–1996) in relation to his distinctive form of activist politics as they developed from youthful Cold War communism to the first British New Left, 1960s radicalism to the 1980s history wars.
As the catalyst behind the History Workshop movement, Samuel championed the democratisation of history-making and practised an eclectic form of people’s history in his own work. His unique approach was controversial, drawing impassioned responses from across the ideological spectrum, the most sustained critique often coming from his left-wing contemporaries. It is argued here that this compelling figure has been unjustly neglected and that he continues to offer important insights into the politics of history-making in a post-Marxist world.
Family Experiments »
Middle-class, professional families in Australia and New Zealand c. 1880–1920
Authored by: Shelley Richardson
Publication date: November 2016
Family Experiments explores the forms and undertakings of ‘family’ that prevailed among British professionals who migrated to Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth century. Their attempts to establish and define ‘family’ in Australasian, suburban environments reveal how the Victorian theory of ‘separate spheres’ could take a variety of forms in the new world setting.
The attitudes and assumptions that shaped these family experiments may be placed on a continuum that extends from John Ruskin’s concept of evangelical motherhood to John Stuart Mill’s rational secularism. Central to their thinking was a belief in the power of education to produce civilised and humane individuals who, as useful citizens, would individually and in concert nurture a better society.
Such ideas pushed them to the forefront of colonial liberalism. The pursuit of higher education for their daughters merged with and, in some respects, influenced first-wave colonial feminism. They became the first generation of colonial, middle-class parents to grapple not only with the problem of shaping careers for their sons but also, and more frustratingly, what graduate daughters might do next.
Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm »
An Australian Tragedy
Authored by: Cameron Hazlehurst
Publication date: August 2015
‘In the whole history of government in Australia, this was the most devastating tragedy.’
Three decades after what he called ‘a dreadful air crash, almost within sight of my windows’ Robert Menzies wrote ‘I shall never forget that terrible hour; I felt that for me the end of the world had come…’
Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm tells the lives of the ten men who perished in Duncan Cameron’s Canberra property on 13 August 1940: three Cabinet ministers, the Chief of the General Staff, two senior staff members, and the RAAF crew of four. The inquiries into the accident, and the aftermath for the Air Force, government, and bereaved families are examined. Controversial allegations are probed: did the pilot F/Lt Bob Hitchcock cause the crash or was the Minister for Air Jim Fairbairn at the controls?
‘Cameron Hazlehurst is a story-teller, one of the all-too rare breed who can write scholarly works which speak to a wider audience. In the most substantial, original, and authoritative account of the Canberra aircraft accident of August 1940 he provides unique insights into a critical, poignant moment in Australian history. Hazlehurst’s account is touched with irony and quirks, set within a framework of political, social, and military history, distinctions of class, education, and rank, and the machinations of parliamentary and service politics and of the ‘official mind’. The research is meticulous and wide-ranging, the analysis is always balanced, and the writing at once skilful and compelling. This is a work of an exceptional historian.’
— Ian Hancock (author of Nick Greiner: A Political Biography, John Gorton: He Did It His Way, and National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia)
‘Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm is a monumental work of historical research pegged on a single, lethal moment at the apex of government at an extraordinarily sensitive time in Australia’s history. The book embodies top drawer scholarship, deep sensitivity to antipodean class structures and sensibilities, and a nuanced understanding of both democratic and bureaucratic politics.’
— Christine Wallace (author of Germaine Greer Untamed Shrew and The Private Don: the man behind the legend of Don Bradman)
The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins »
Australian Government Administration in the Post-War Reconstruction Era
Edited by: Samuel Furphy
Publication date: July 2015
In the history and folklore of Australia’s Commonwealth Public Service, the idea of the ‘Seven Dwarfs’ has been remarkably persistent. Originally a witty epithet applied to a powerful group of senior public servants, the term has come to represent the professionalisation of Australian government administration during the Second World War and post-war reconstruction era, and into the following two decades of expansion. This was a period when, for the first time, talented university graduates entered the public service, rose to senior levels, and exerted great influence over the affairs of the Commonwealth. With the secure tenure of being permanent heads of departments, they defined the age of the public service mandarin.
This book explores the lives and influence of the Seven Dwarfs and their colleagues, bringing together the leading researchers on post-war Australian administration. Featuring four thematic chapters and ten biographical portraits, it offers a fascinating insight into the workings of the Commonwealth Public Service during a critical period in its history.
Ngapartji Ngapartji »
In turn, in turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia
Publication date: November 2014
In this innovative collection, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars from Australia and Europe reflect on how their life histories have impacted on their research in Indigenous Australian Studies. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s concept of ego-histoire as an analytical tool to ask historians to apply their methods to themselves, contributors lay open their paths, personal commitments and passion involved in their research. Why are we researching in Indigenous Studies, what has driven our motivations? How have our biographical experiences influenced our research? And how has our research influenced us in our political and individual understanding as scholars and human beings? This collection tries to answer many of these complex questions, seeing them not as merely personal issues but highly relevant to the practice of Indigenous Studies.
I think this rich collection will become a landmark text and a favourite within Australian scholarship. I am keen to see it published so that I can recommend it to others
— Professor Emerita Margaret Allen, Gender Studies and Social Analysis, University of Adelaide
The idea was to explain the link between the history you have made and the history that has made you
— Pierre Nora
Henry Prinsep's Empire »
Framing a distant colony
Authored by: Malcolm Allbrook
Publication date: September 2014
Henry Prinsep is known as Western Australia’s first Chief Protector of Aborigines in the colonial government of Sir John Forrest, a period which saw the introduction of oppressive laws that dominated the lives of Aboriginal people for most of the 20th century.
But he was also an artist, horse-trader, member of a prominent East India Company family, and everyday citizen, whose identity was formed during his colonial upbringing in India and England. As a creator of Imperial culture, he supported the great men and women of history while he painted, wrote about and photographed the scenes around him. In terms of naked power he was a middle man, perhaps even a small man. His empire is an intensely personal place, a vast network of family and friends from every quarter of the British imperial world, engaged in the common tasks of making a home and a career, while framing new identities, new imaginings and new relationships with each other, Indigenous peoples and fellow colonists. This book traces Henry Prinsep’s life from India to Western Australia and shows how these texts and images illuminate not only Prinsep the man, but the affectionate bonds that endured despite the geographic bounds of empire, and the historical, social, geographic and economic origins of Aboriginal and colonial relationships which are important to this day.
The ADB's Story »
Edited by: Melanie Nolan, Christine Fernon
Publication date: October 2013
‘The Australian Dictionary of Biography captures the life and times and culture of this country in an absolutely distinctive and irreplaceable way. It is the indispensable record of who we are, and of the characters who have made us what we are. I could not be prouder of ANU’s continuing role as custodian of this crucial part of our national legacy.’
— Professor the Hon. Gareth Evans AC QC, Chancellor, The Australian National University
‘A mature nation needs a literary pantheon of inspiring and instructive life histories, a gallery of all the possibilities of being Australian. The Australian Dictionary of Biography responds to that vital need in our culture. It is a stunning collaborative achievement and I feel so proud that we have such an activity here in Australia—to a great extent it describes and defines Australia.’
— Professor Fiona Stanley AC, Australian of the Year, 2003
‘The Australian Dictionary of Biography is our greatest collective research project in the humanities and a national triumph. We have much to learn from it. The project is continuing to change as we mature nationally, with deeper understanding about the impacts of gender, race, environment, religion, education, language, culture, politics, region and war on what we are and what we may become.’
— The Hon. Dr Barry Jones AO
‘Australia is very fortunate to have a national biographical dictionary that is democratic as well as distinguished, one that represents the rich variety of Australian culture. The Australian Dictionary of Biography gathers together the stories of people from all walks of life, from the outback to the city and from the bush to the parliament. It is a monument of scholarship—and it is for everyone.’
— Dr Dawn Casey PSM
‘Few things are more illuminating than taking a random stroll through a volume of the Australian Dictionary of Biography—new insights into our greatest men and women, chance encounters with people whose exploits are all too often unpardonably overlooked. I first read the ADB with my mother, Coral Lansbury, who wrote four entries. One of her mentors, Bede Nairn, was a prodigious contributor. The Australian story is a story of Australians, no better told than in the ADB.’
— The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP
‘I find it difficult to bring to mind more than a handful of comparable enterprises in the fields of biography, history, philology or the social sciences more broadly—anywhere in the world. The status and appeal of the Australian Dictionary of Biography do not lie only in its scale and size. They reside also in the meticulous research, the erudition and scholarship, and the sweat and possibly tears involved in the editorial and publishing process. Its constituent dramatis personae are an eclectic mix of the noble and the notorious, the famous and the largely unsung. The underlying theme of the mosaic is quite clear: nothing less than the making and remaking of Australia.’
— Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley AC, Governor of Queensland
Scholars at War »
Australasian Social Scientists, 1939–1945
Edited by: Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro, Christine Winter
Publication date: January 2012
Scholars at War is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use, and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider examinations of the role of intellectuals in war.
Scholars at War is structured around historical portraits of individual Australasian social scientists. They are not a tight group; rather a cohort of scholars serendipitously involved in and affected by war who share a point of origin. Analyzing practitioners of the social sciences during war brings to the fore specific networks, beliefs and institutions that transcend politically defined spaces. Individual lives help us to make sense of the historical process, helping us illuminate particular events and the larger cultural, social and even political processes of a moment in time.
Contributors include Peter Hempenstall, JD Legge, Jock Phillips, John Pomeroy, Cassandra Pybus, David Wetherell, Janet Wilson.
Māori and Aboriginal Women in the Public Eye »
Representing Difference, 1950–2000
Authored by: Karen Fox
Publication date: December 2011
From 1950, increasing numbers of Aboriginal and Māori women became nationally or internationally renowned. Few reached the heights of international fame accorded Evonne Goolagong or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, and few remained household names for any length of time. But their growing numbers and visibility reflected the dramatic social, cultural and political changes taking place in Australia and New Zealand in the second half of the twentieth century.
This book is the first in-depth study of media portrayals of well-known Indigenous women in Australia and New Zealand, including Goolagong, Te Kanawa, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Dame Whina Cooper. The power of the media in shaping the lives of individuals and communities, for good or ill, is widely acknowledged. In these pages, Karen Fox examines an especially fascinating and revealing aspect of the media and its history — how prominent Māori and Aboriginal women were depicted for the readers of popular media in the past.
Transnational Ties »
Australian Lives in the World
Edited by: Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, Angela Woollacott
Publication date: December 2008
Australian lives are intricately enmeshed with the world, bound by ties of allegiance and affinity, intellect and imagination. In Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World, an eclectic mix of scholars—historians, literary critics, and museologists—trace the flow of people that helped shape Australia’s distinctive character and the flow of ideas that connected Australians to a global community of thought. It shows how biography, and the study of life stories, can contribute greatly to our understanding of such patterns of connection and explores how transnationalism can test biography’s limits as an intellectual, professional and commercial practice.