Historical information

Janet Gertrude (Nettie) Palmer (1885-1964), writer and critic, was born on 18 August 1885 at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Victoria. Nettie's education began at home with her mother and continued at Miss Rudd's Seminary at Malvern. In 1900-04 she attended Presbyterian Ladies' College. n 1905 Nettie enrolled at the University of Melbourne (B.A., 1909; M.A., 1912). She was awarded the exhibition and first-class honours in first-year English and gained honours in modern languages. The Palmers returned to Melbourne in 1915 and moved to Katharine Prichard's cottage at Emerald. Between 1918-19 she lived with her aunt Ina Higgins, returning to Emerald living at Rose Charman Cottage in the early 1920s. Nettie emerged as possibly the most important literary critic in Australia. After the publication of Modern Australian Literature 1900-1923 (1924), a landmark in criticism which won the Lothian essay prize, she had many more regular outlets, notably her weekly literary causerie in the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail (212 articles in 5½ years), the Brisbane Courier, All About Books and the Bulletin Red Page. Nettie was committed to the development of a national literature as a means of achieving a more enlightened community. Much of her writing dealt with the themes, subjects and idiom of Australian writers, notably Henry Handel Richardson. She played a seminal role in establishing the canons of Australian literary criticism but she also wrote widely on world literature. Some of her essays were published in Talking it Over (1932); her 1928 anthology, An Australian Story-Book, set standards for the short story. Nettie's lively correspondence from Caloundra, and from 1929 from Melbourne, established a network of contact and encouragement between many Australian and overseas writers and intellectuals, and especially for young women writers such as Marjorie Barnard and Eleanor Dark for whom she provided an anchor. In 1931 she published her biography, Henry Bournes Higgins, and in 1934 she co-edited The Centenary Gift Book. Active in the Australian Literature Society, the Verse-Speaking Association, and later the Fellowship of Australian Writers, she lectured and broadcasted.

Significance

The book is socially, artistically and historically significant as it is an account of the gradual settlement of the Dandenongs, and Nettie Palmer was a significant figure in Australian art circles

Physical description

Red hard cover book with buff dust jacket, dust jacket protected with plastic cover.

Inscriptions & markings

$4.95 (crosses out), 200,$1707 263