Dora Birtles
Dora Birtles (1903-1992), born Dora Toll, was an Australian novelist, short-story writer, poet and diarist.[1] She was the daughter of Albert Toll, founder of Toll Holdings, Australia’s largest logistics company.
She was ahead of her time and studied at the University of Sydney at a time in which women were not expected to receive a tertiary education. In 1923 Dora was suspended from the university for a poem written in the literary magazine Hermes that describes post-coital bliss. Her future husband poet and journalist Bert Birtles was expelled for a more explicit poem describing their tryst on the roof of the University quadrangle.[2][3] Dora took up teaching as a profession and taught in Newcastle for a short time before travelling to Europe. Prior to the Second World War she was a member of the International Women's League Against War and Fascism and wrote for the Newcastle Sun.[4]
Her first novel, Pioneer Shack, was completed in 1933. After the publication of her novel The Overlanders (1946), Pioneer Shack was published in 1947. Another novel for children Bonza the Bull was published in 1950. Dora wrote an account of a sea voyage from Newcastle to Singapore, North-West by North (1935) which was one of her most popular works. Her work has been the subject of feminist literary criticism.[5]
Dora was the subject for a finalist portrait in the Archibald Prize of 1947 by Dora Toovey.[6]
Works By Author
- Birtles, Dora. (1946), The Overlanders.
- Birtles, Dora. (1947), Pioneer Shack.
- Birtles, Dora. (1935), North-West by North.
- Birtles, Dora. (1950), Bonza the Bull.
Works On Author
- Moore, Deirdre. (1996) Survivors of beauty: memoirs of Dora and Bert Birtles.
- Birtles, Bert. (1938) Exiles in the Aegean, London: Victor Gollancz.
References
- ↑ Spender, Dale (1988), Writing A New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, p. 301.
- ↑ Barcan, Alan (2002) Radical Students: The Old Left at Sydney University, Melbourne University Press; Carlton South, pp. 27-28.
- ↑ Bert Birtles, Beauty, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/beauty-432/
- ↑ Sage, Lorna. (1999), The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, New York; Cambridge University Press, p. 62.
- ↑ Mills, Sara. (2003), Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism, London; Taylor & Francis.
- ↑ http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/archibald/1947/18981/