Guide to the Papers of Barry Oakley, 1952-2011

 

Collection context

Summary

Collection number:
MS 6094
Creator:
Barry Oakley
Extent:
1.77 metres and (11 boxes + 2 folios)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Barry Oakley, National Library of Australia, MS 6094, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Availability:
Available
Access conditions:
Part available for research; part requires permission for research. Not for loan.

Background

Content Summary:

The main components of the collection are drafts of plays, novels and short stories, and diaries (originals, photocopies and extracts compiled for Minitudes), but there are also letters, postcards, greeting cards and press cuttings.

The drafts include 'A wild ass of a man', 'A salute to the great McCarthy', 'Lets hear it for Prendergast', 'The feet of Daniel Mannix', 'Marsupials', 'The ship's whistle', 'Bedfellows and 'The great god Mogadan'.

Correspondents include David Allen, Thea Astley, Murray Bail, Graeme Blundell, A.T. Bolton, Katharine Brisbane, Vincent Buckley, Jack Carmody, Barry Dickens, Bob Ellis, Bill Hannan, Jack Hibberd, A.D. Hope, Richard Hughes, David Ireland, Susan Kurosawa, Morris Lurie, David Martin, Craig McGregor, Frank Moorhouse, Gerald Murnane, Desmond O'Grady, A.G. Serle, Michael Sharkey, David Williamson, Amy Witting and Fay Zwicky.

Biographical Note:

The playwright and novelist Barry Kingham Oakley was born in Melbourne in 1931. He began his career as a secondary school teacher in central and northern Victoria, as well as Melbourne. In 1963 he lectured in humanities at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, worked as an advertising copywriter in 1964-65 and as a copywriter for the Commonwealth Department of Trade and Industry from 1966 to 1973. Oakley later became literary editor for the Australian.

His plays include Witzenhausen, where are you? (1967), A lesson in English (1968), The feet of Daniel Mannix (1975), Bedfellows (1975), The ship's whistle (1979), The great god Mogadon (1980), The hollow tombola (1980) and Beware of imitations (1985). He is well known for his novels A wild ass of a man (1967), A salute to the great McCarthy (1970), Let's hear it for Prendergast (1970), The craziplane (1989) and Don't leave me (2002). He has also written short stories, reminiscences, reviews and children's stories.

Oakley was awarded a literary fellowship in 1974 and was joint winner of the 1970 Captain Cook Bicentenary Award forhis novel Let's hear it for Prendergast.

In 2000 he published excerpts from his diaries as Minitudes: diaries 1974-1997. The original diaries from which he drew these excerpts are a major feature of Oakley's personal papers. He began keeping a diary in 1974. At first the entries were sporadic, but within a few years he was writing it up virtually every day. He maintained it without a break through the 1980s, but after 1991 blank pages begin to appear. The last volume covers 1997. Oakley wrote frankly about his own feelings, relationships and work. He set down succinct criticisms of plays and books, he meditated on politics and the arts in Australia, and he recorded his encounters with thousands of Australians, ranging from PrimeMinisters to obscure actors. Opening nights of plays, previews of exhibitions, gatherings of writers at literary festivals, long boozy lunches with fellow-journalists, and even longer dinners and parties are described with relish. In the early years Oakley was living in Melbourne and then Sydney, but he travelled widely and there are amusing vignettes of the literary communities in Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and elsewhere.

References: The Oxford companion to Australian literature (Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1994); Powell, Graeme.'The Barry Oakley diaries' in Gateways, December 1999.

Immediate Source of Acquisition:

One File containing a duplicated typescript copy of Bedfellows was transferred from the National Film and Sound Archive in 1979. The remaining papers were purchased in several instalments in 1980, 1999 and 2001.

Arrangement:

Manuscript staff have arranged the papers into series, but within the series Oakley's own files have been maintained.

Indexed terms

Names:
Barry Oakley

Access and use

Conditions Governing Access:
Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2834209).
Conditions Governing Use:
Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.
Preferred citation:
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Barry Oakley, National Library of Australia, MS 6094, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Location of this collection:
Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
Contact: