Talk:Charles Bean

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Two assertions here seem a bit POV and maybe not quite the right picture.

In the lead it states: "Bean wrote Volumes I to VI himself...". I believe he did have a staff, certainly at least for the first two volumes which were written at Tuggeranong Homestead in the ACT.[1]

Secondly, at the end of the article, it states: "this [Anzac to Amiens] was the only book to which he owned the copyright and received royalties." I assume before-hand he was a government employee. As such, of course, work that you do while receiving a salary belongs to your employer, and that includes copyright.

I am loathe to "Sofixit" without discussion as this is obviously a well and thoughtfully developed article. --A Y Arktos 20:12, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

1). Looking at my copy of "The Story of Anzac Vol. I" the title page says "by C.E.W. Bean". I am aware he had a staff of assistants doing research and collating material and so forth but I was under the impression that the text was written by Bean, hence "Bean wrote...". Perhaps "Bean was the author of..." is more neutral.

2). From the AWM bio, "The only copyright he held was for ANZAC to Amiens, and it sold very slowly."

Geoff/Gsl 21:04, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

A couple of addition by me. Firstly Bean writing the first six volumes. He did have a staff, a cartographer, a typist, and at least one or two researchers. Bean, however, essentially wrote the first six volumes in his own hand. We have manuscript copies, and having read the Army series (six volumes) three times in the last twenty years I can say the style is perfectly consistent (and quirky in Bean's way of doing things). The sections in the history which are translations from the German are verbatim, I believe the translater is acknowledged somewhere (I'll dig up the names of the entire team). The copyright issue is exactly as stated, Bean didn't have copyright over the official history as he was essentially contracted to do it for the Australian Government. Copyright still belongs to the Australian War Memorial as far as I can see, although the histories were republished under some arrangement in the 1980's. Original copies go for silly prices, I had two sets, gave one to a Canadian history buff, and sold the other (reluctantly) in a period of relative impoverishment.

I've made some observation's about Bean's 'style' of war history. It's significant in that most later Australian war historians acknowledged a debt to Bean, and in it's impact (along with the Australian War Memorial) in creating a particular view of history - essentially that big events are made from the actions of 'big' and 'little' people, and that 'character' plays a much bigger role in events than history usually records, and that it is a worthwhile subject for the historian.

I'll add two more things which illustrate Bean's uniqueness (at the time) when I get a chance to get down to the library to read their copy and quote the original source. Firstly Bean discussed the killing of prisoners on the battlefield, in a way that was surprising (in that it was acknowledged) and in that he treated it fairly levelly - taking neither a jingoistic approach nor entirely condemming the practice 'in the circumstances'. He also worked fairly hard to disprove the notion that Turks were mutilating Australians killed and subsequently recovered from behind enemy lines, noting that these were the effects of modern rifled bullets. In both these instances his writing may have been as unpallatable to the Australian Government as was almost his entire history to the British. And, let me add, Bean was a staunch British Empire man, and restricted his criticism to those that he felt deserved it, particularly Haigh, Gough, and a fairly large collection of British commanders. Bean expressed considerable admiration (and reported that it was a view held by the Australians) for Scottish and Welsh regiments, noting that the best of the English army had been destroyed in 1914 and 1915. Tban 02:41, 12 July 2006 (UTC)