| Summary |
MS 8973 comprises personal, publishers' and general correspondence; financial papers; travel diaries; notebooks relating to Harold Stewart's works and his interest in Asian history and culture; typescripts and other papers relating to his published works A chime of windbells, Tannisho, and By the old walls of Kyoto; manuscripts and typescripts of his unpublished works Over the vermilion bridge, New phoenix wings, and Autumn landscape roll; essays and other papers. Major correspondents include the Australia Council, Carmen Blacker, Tess van Sommers d'Alpuget, Dorothy Green, Michael Heyward (author of The Ern Malley affair), Henry Horwege, Stewart's patron Heinz Karrer, Peter Kelly, the potter Milton Moon, Ruth Niland (Park), Peter Talbot Wilcox, and John Weatherhill Inc. (32 boxes).
The Acc07.056 instalment comprises the aerogramme from Harold Stewart to T. Graham Fisher, 22 May 1983 (1 item).
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| Biography/History |
Poet and oriental scholar. Harold Frederick Stewart was born in Drummoyne, New South Wales in 1916. He grew up in Sydney and in 1936 attended the University of Sydney but did not complete a degree. In 1943 Stewart and James McAuley perpetrated the Ern Malley hoax against Max Harris, the editor of modernist literary magazine Angry penguins. While Stewart's early writings were in the European classic tradition, his later works reflected his interest in Chinese and Japanese history and culture. His first book of poems, Phoenix wings was published by Angus & Robertson in 1948. Later publications included A net of fireflies (1960), A chime of windbells (1969), The exiled immortal (1980), Tannisho (1980) and By the old walls of Kyoto (1981). He visited Japan in 1961 and 1963 and in 1966 moved to Kyoto. In 1987 Stewart was awarded the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Christopher Brennan Award. In the year before his death, he completed his largest work Autumn landscape roll. Stewart died in Kyoto in 1995.
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