Xavier herbert biography
•
Xavier Herbert
This groundbreaking first biography explores the contradictions at the core of Xavier Herbert's turbulent life and career (). Charting his lifelong quest to discover the reality of his existence and to forge a larger-than-life identity, it highlights Herbert's compulsion to write and illuminates his abiding themes. Labelled at various times "ratbag" and "mug genius" as well as "master writer", Xavier Herbert led a life characterised by controversy and contradiction. His signature books, Capricornia () and Poor Fellow My Country (), were to change the face of Australian novel writing.
"Beautifully balanced, dispassionate and exhaustively researched a revelation An enthralling read."
Laurie Clancy, ABR
"Nancy Mitford once described her husband as suffering from 'galloping mythomania'. All of Xavier Herbert is in those words he was a monster."
Randolph Stow, Times Literary Supplement
•
Brief Biography
Xavier Herbert was born Alfred Jackson in Geraldton, Western Australia, in Herbert and his family moved to Fremantle when he was twelve. At the age of fourteen he started work in a chemist shop, while continuing at school, with the aim of becoming a pharmacist. He later moved to Melbourne after the First World War and studied medicine there.
He commenced his writing career while in Melbourne and published his first story in the Australian Journal in under the pseudonym 'Herbert Astor'. He then left Melbourne for Sydney and then Darwin where he worked as a railway fettler in the Rum Jungle area. He travelled to London in where he meet Sadie Norden who was later to become his wife. In the two years he spent there he wrote the first draft of Capricornia which, for a number of reasons, did not see print until
In the years that followed he wrote a lot but published little until the end of the s. His major novel from this period, Poor Fellow M
•
- Bib ID:
- Format:
- Book
- Author:
- De Groen, Frances
- Description:
- St Lucia, Qld. : University of Queensland Press,
- xiii, p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
- ISBN:
- (paperback)
- Summary:
"Labeled at various times "ratbag" and "mug genius" as well as "master writer" Xavier Herbert led a life characterised by controversy and contradiction. His signature books, Capricornia () and Poor Fellow My Country (), were to change the face of Australian novel writing. For more than sixty years he entertained, hectored and, as often as not, offended his wide readership with provocatively polemical narratives and public appearances."--BOOK JACKET. "Born out of wedlock, lied to about the circumstances of his birth and ancestry, and reared in working class surroundings, Herbert grew up amidst secrecy and duplicity, uncertain of who he really was."--BOOK JACKET. "This first biography of Xavier Herbert () explores the contradictions at the core of his turbulent life and career. It cha