A lost eighteenth-century harp method rediscovered, Michel Corrette’s Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe (1774): A new acquisition for Rare Music

Published in Paris in 1774, Michel Corrette’s Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe [New method for learning to play the harp] is an exciting new addition to the Rare Music collection. Until recently it was considered to be a ‘lost’ eighteenth-century harp method since scholars were unable to locate any reference to this rare edition in the major European bibliographies or at auction.Michel Corrette (b Rouen, 1707; d Paris, 1795) is well known among musicians and scholars of eighteenth-century French music for his work as an organist, teacher, prolific composer-arranger with works spanning 75 years, and as an author of pedagogical methods for various instruments and voice. These methods are clearly written and well-structured, offering valuable insight into aspects of eighteenth-century French performance practice. For example, the pieces included in his violin method L’école d’Orphée (1738), which illustrate the French and Italian styles, help us to further understand the complex discourse of national styles in this period and its musical application.

The subtitle of Corrette’s harp method, Avec des leçons faciles pour les commençans, des menuets allemands et italiens et autres jolis airs; et la partition pour l’accorder avec les pédales et sans les pédales [with easy lessons for beginners, German and Italian minuets and other pretty airs; and a section for tuning pedal and non-pedal harps] indicates a similar clarity of structure to his other pedagogical works. The work begins with a brief history of the harp. This is followed by fourteen chapters on chords, fingering on the harp, arpeggios, and the use of the pedals. Other eighteenth-century French harp methods from 1763 onwards address similar aspects of history, technique and musical execution for the instrument and most are aimed at beginners, demonstrating that Corrette’s method could be considered representative of the approach to pedagogy for the harp in this period.

The harp which is the focus of this method, is known today as the ‘single-action harp’ and in late-eighteenth century Paris as ‘harpe organisée’ or ‘harpe à pédales’. This instrument was revolutionary at the time in being the first harp with a mechanism that allowed the player to alter the pitch of the strings by pressing pedals with their feet. The seven pedals attached to rods in the harp’s column, which in turn engaged a mechanism in the instrument’s neck, could raise the pitch of each string by one semitone (hence the term ‘single-action), thus leaving both hands free for playing continuous scales and arpeggio figures whilst modulating to various keys. For harps of earlier periods, chromaticism was achieved by various means such as shortening the pitch of the string with a finger whilst playing with the opposing hand, adjusting the pitch of individual strings with a tuning key, increasing the single row of strings to two or three ranks which included a chromatic row, and hooks attached to the neck of the harp which could be turned with one hand to shorten the string. The first harp with pedals is attributed to a German luthier Jacob Hochbrucker as early as 1697 but it was not until 1749 that there is the first documented performance on this instrument in France at the ‘Concert Spirituel’ season in Paris. By the time the first pedal harps by Parisian maker Salomon were available for sale in 1760 the single-action harp had become a wildly popular commodity as described in an oft-quoted letter from Charles-Simon Favart to the Count Durazzo on May 1, 1761.

“La harpe est aujourd’hui l’instrument à la mode; toutes nos dames on la fureur d’en jouer.”1

[Today the harp is the instrument à la mode; all our ladies are mad to play it.]

Attuned to the musical and social zeitgeist, Corrette’s method reflects this trend for learning the harp as a popular accomplishment among young aristocratic women, one which would undoubtedly render them more marriageable as it was both beautiful to play and to look at and could only serve to highlight the beauty and charm of the player! The frontispiece of the method features an engraving of a young woman playing a harp accompanied by the following suitably amourous quatrain:

“La Harpe entre vos mains Silvie,
Ne laisse rien à désirer.
De vos beaux yeux l’ame est ravie,
Peut-on vous voir sans vous aimer!”2

[The harp in your hands Silvie,
Leaves nothing to be desired.
A glance at your eyes thrills me
How could you not be admired!]

Corrette neatly sets the text of this poem to music at the end of his harp method in a section containing settings of various popular airs with harp accompaniment. The single-action harp along with the harpsichord and later the fortepiano became one of the most popular instruments to accompany the voice in France in the second half of the eighteenth-century.

The acquisition of this fascinating harp method is directly linked to an Australian Research Council Discovery Project initiated by University of Melbourne Senior Lecturer in Music Dr Erin Helyard, musicologist, historical keyboard specialist and acclaimed performer and conductor. Titled ‘Performing Transdisciplinarity’, this research project is a cross-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration between ANU (Glenn Roe and Robert Wellington), The University of Melbourne (Erin Helyard), The University of Sydney (Mark Ledbury), and Oxford University (Nicholas Cronk).

This team will undertake a groundbreaking study of the eighteenth-century songbook by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, Choix de Chansons (1773). Using a research methodology drawn from art history, French literature, musicology and the digital humanities, this study will engage with and enact the complex transdisciplinary and transmedial nature of this text and of eighteenth-century print culture in general whilst also mirroring the multimedia experience of the eighteenth-century consumer with the creation of a digital edition, which weaves together image, text and music. The music in Laborde’s Choix de Chansons features harp and harpsichord accompaniment and Corrette’s harp method, also published in Paris only one year later, will provide important musicological insight into performance practice for the harp at this time and a deeper understanding of how Laborde’s chansons can be meaningfully interpreted.

Hannah Lane, Research Assistant to Dr Erin Helyard

1 Charles-Simon Favart, Mémoires et correspondance littéraires: dramatiques et anecdotiques, de C. S. Favart, ed. Henri Françoi Dumolard, vol. 1 (L. Collin, Paris, 1808), 147.
2 Michel Corrette, Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe, (s.n., Paris, 1774).

Wyverns, gryphons and acorns amidst the foliage: two rare early 16th century bindings by Nicholas Spierinck uncovered in the Rare Books Collection

What makes working with rare books so intriguing is the opportunity it delivers to follow a trail of clues – Sherlock Holmes-like – to trace an object’s origin and story through time.  Two excised bindings recently located in the Rare Book Room, have inspired one such stimulating pursuit…

An intact Spierinck binding

In 2008 the Baillieu Library was excited to purchase a rare original intact binding by the early Cambridge stationer Nicholas Spierinck, generously funded by the Ivy May Pendlebury Bequest.  The beautifully tanned calfskin cover encases a 1512 Paris edition of the works of 3rd-century Christian theologian, Origen Adamantius (b.184/185 – d.253/254), entitled Origenis Adamantii Operum tomi duo priores… .  At the time of the book’s acquisition, it was (and remains) the only known example of a complete Spierinck binding held in an Australian institution, bearing his personal binder’s mark, and incorporating his signature decorative schema of wyverns, gryphons and acorns.  A former Baillieu Library Rare Books Curator, Pam Pryde, described this unique acquisition and binding in her December 2008 Collections magazine article.  An animated 3D view of the binding, providing close inspection of Spierinck’s monogram and decorative devices is available here.

 

Two dis-bound Spierinck cover panels

In a recent intriguing twist to the tale, an uncatalogued box of bindings in the Rare Books Collection has been found to contain a pair of rare dis-bound Spierinck covers, together with 13 binding fragments from other provenances and time periods.  It appears that the samples were amassed by an unidentified donor, as a study collection for research and teaching.  The envelopes containing the two Spierinck bindings are clearly marked with his name in a 20th century hand; this attribution is conclusively confirmed by the presence of Spierinck’s distinctive stamp on both panels, which match exactly with those on the intact Origenis binding.

At first inspection, it is unclear whether the two dis-bound panels came from the same or different books, as one has been cut down in size and is 15mm smaller on each side than the other.  A shared provenance, however, seems very likely as both specimens bear pin holes at the same points, where the clasp and straps used to latch the panels would have once been attached to the covers, front and back.

16th century Cambridge book trade

In the early 16th century, the inland port of Cambridge was well placed to service its university’s growing appetite for books, being situated on an established river trading route, 40 miles from the Channel.  At this time, the majority of foreign language books (including the bulk of scholarly works which were written in Latin) were printed on the continent, and imported into England in loose form for binding and sale.  The burgeoning print market attracted foreign traders who set up mixed commercial enterprises as stationers, variously dealing in the importation, sale and binding of books.[i]  Many of these European artisans had migrated from the major book production centres of Paris, Basel and the lower Rhine, bringing their craft skills and ornamental influences with them.[ii] The first University of Cambridge printer, John Siberch (c1476–1554), was an established member of the German book trade before settling in the English town, where he operated from 1520-1522.[iii]

Nicholas Spierinck, fl. 1505-d.1545-6

With the passing of the centuries the names of most early English binders have passed into obscurity.  These anonymous ghosts are known today by their evocative decorative devices, such as ‘the fruit and flower binder’, ‘the fishtail binder’, ‘the half stamp binder’, ‘the huntsman binder’, ‘the octagonal rose binder’,  ‘the blank book binder’, and – my favourite – ‘the bat binder’.[iv] The historical record is much clearer for Nicholas Spierinck, as his appointment on 20th July 1534, as one of three official stationers (with Garrett Godfrey and Segar Nicholson) to the University of Cambridge, ensured that his name was inscribed in the official registers for posterity.[v]

Nicholas Spierinck, a member of a Netherlandish family of stationers, arrived in Cambridge sometime between 1503 and 1506, a binder of the same name having worked for Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy between 1469 and 1475.  By 1516 Spierinck held the office of warden at St Mary’s Church in the centre of Cambridge, and his will (dated 20th August 1545) confirms that he became a successful merchant and a citizen of some standing.  He bequeathed a brewery at Cross Keys to his grandson Nycholas (which was still in operation in 1915), silver and coral beads to his wife Agnes and  ‘Kateryn’ (probably his daughter) and the residue of his estate to his son, ‘William Spyrynke’, who had by that time taken charge of the family book binding operations.[vi]

Blind stamped binding

An expanding English book trade, injected with an influx of skilled foreign labour, could not help but be influenced by continental fashions in binding and manufacture.  The outmoded medieval technique of decorating covers with hand-tooled patterns, gave way to the more efficient ‘blind stamping’ method (blind referring to the absence of gold).  This system used heated metal block plates, commonly bearing pictorial designs, to impress decorations on the moistened leather panels.[vii]

The commercial potential of binding books in a ‘house style’ was exploited by binders and booksellers as an early form of corporate branding and advertising.  Hence the practice adopted by different stationers to apply their trade mark panel to books sold from their premises.  Blind stamped panel bindings were typically employed as pairs, with the same coupling used by binders on many books in their ‘stable’.[viii]  There were an estimated 200 such panels in use in various combinations between 1485 and 1555.[ix]

The two newly-located Spierinck covers are examples of the two most commonly used panels associated with his workshop, which is known to have produced as many as 35 pressings of the upper panel (depicting The Annunciation).[x]   As evidenced by all extant examples, it was always used by Spierinck in combination with the lower panel (depicting the legend of St Nicholas), illustrating the three boys who were cut up and pickled by an innkeeper and then restored to life by the passing saint.   A black and white image of an intact Spierinck binding using this pairing of panels is reproduced in Gray’s The earlier Cambridge stationers & bookbinders and the first Cambridge printer.[xi]

In tandem with blind stamping, cylindrical hand rolls were used as labour-saving devices, to imprint decorative bands across the leather, often incorporating a binder’s or bookseller’s distinctive ornamental motif or signature.[xii]  We are very fortunate to have a splendid example of Spierinck’s principal hand roll (he had six) in the decoration of the Origenis binding, which can be compared with the border patterns used on the blind cover panels.

Further investigation and analysis

As with many historical conundrums, some questions about the panels remain unanswered, and the fragments recently uncovered in the Rare Books Collection will benefit from further conservation and investigation.  Both pieces of leather binding were removed from their original boards and pasted onto parchment mountings, sometime in the early 20th century.  This has obscured the reverse of each panel and evidence of how the leather was cut and placed over the boards.  Middleton notes in his history of English bookbinding techniques that Spierinck was one of the last binders to use corner-mitring to achieve a precise meeting of the turned leather edges at the inside corners.  This technique involved the cutting of a ‘tongue’ which was incised after the leather had been turned over from the front of the board.  The outstanding finish achieved using the method is evident in the Origenis binding, and it would be interesting to find evidence about how the corners of the dis-bound panel fragments were treated. [xiii]

Until this research can be undertaken, how curious it is to ponder that these three Spierinck examples, which emanated from the same workshop in 16th century Cambridge, should be reunited after travelling separate paths, and be housed several shelves away from each other at the University of Melbourne, some 500 years later.

Susan Thomas, Rare Books Curator

Endnotes

[i] Weale, p. xxix

[ii] McKitterick, p. x

[iii] Venn, p. 73.  Incidentally, Siberch was a great friend of Erasmus, to whom he introduced Spierinck.

[iv] Oldham, 1952, p. x

[v] Weale, p. xxvii

[vi] Gray & Palmer, pp. 31-32

[vii] Middleton, pp. 168-9

[viii] Pearson, p. 50

[ix] Hobson, pp. [89]-90

[x] Oldham, pp. 19, 42

[xi] Gray, Plate XVI – Evangelia, 1508.

[xii] Harthan, p. 11

[xiii] Middleton, p. 151

Bibliography & further reading

British Library. Database of bookbindings. Accessed 10 March 2017 http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/bookbindings/

Gray, George & William Palmer.  Abstracts from the wills and testamentary documents of printers, binders and stationers of Cambridge, from 1504-1699. London: Bibliographical Society, 1915.

Gray, George. The earlier Cambridge stationers & bookbinders and the first Cambridge printer.  Oxford: Bibliographical Society, 1904.

Hobson, G.D. Blind-stamped panels in the English book-trade, c. 1485-1555. London; Bibliographical Society, 1944

McKitterick, David. A history of the Cambridge University Press. Volume 1. Printing and the book trade in Cambridge, 1534-1698. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c1992.

Oldham, J. Basil. Blind panels of English binders.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.

Oldham, J. Basil. English blind-stamped bindings.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952.

Pearson, David. English bookbinding styles 1450-1800: a handbook. London: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 2005.

Pryde, Pam.  ‘A recent purchase for Special Collections in the Baillieu Library’, University of Melbourne Collections, Issue 3, December 2008. Accessed 10 March 2017 http://museumsandcollections.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1378827/pryde.pdf

Sims, Liam. ‘An early Cambridge binding by Nicholas Spierinck’.  Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog post, 3 April 2015. Accessed 10 March 2017 https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=7461

Venn, John & J.A. Venn.  Alumni Cantabridgienses: a biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of officeat the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927.

Weale, W.H. James.  Bookbindings and rubbings of bindings in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Holland Press, 1962.

 

Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists

8 March 2017 (International Women’s Day 2017)
Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

By Rachel Tropea, Senior Research Archivist, Digital Scholarship (University of Melbourne), and Acting Deputy Archivist, University of Melbourne Archives

Germaine Greer and Katrina Dean at The Mills, 2014. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

‘When people want to talk to me about me, I’m bored’ – Germaine Greer. ‘Once I am gone,  I am yours to reinterpret’. #greerarchive #IWD2017 (the first tweet of the night by Nikki Henningham)

500 people crowded into the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, ahead of the 400 people on the waiting list, for Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists – the launch of the Germaine Greer Archive hosted by the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA).  Earlier that day, Greer had arrived from the UK, headed to UMA where she had dropped off  more records and held a ‘pre-match’ with the Greer archival team.  This is an archive still being ‘created’.

To say most of us in the audience were excited is an understatement – we burst into applause, cheering and nearly out of our seats as the official proceedings began.  UMA staff had been preparing for this, and I had been around all day to witness their nerves and excitement.

Members of the audience at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

Never before has a collection at UMA generated this much public interest and anticipation. After an introduction by Professor Julie Willis,  the ‘Greer Gang’ Rachel Buchanan (Curator), and archivists Sarah Brown, Kate Hodgetts, Lachlan Glanville, and Millie Weber each spoke, setting the tone for the night and framing the conversation between themselves, the archivists ‘processing’ the collection, and, the first ‘keeper’ of the records (as Greer referred to herself). “We have met many versions of Germaine and now Germaine can meet us” said Rachel Buchanan. They talked particularly of the series they had each painstakingly worked on with deep intelligence, humour and insight to an enthralled audience. It is clearly a labour of love for them.

Germaine Greer, and Christopher [her cat], have gazed down on me from our office noticeboard for the months I have spent with the archives of Professor Greer’s “Major Works”…the series reveals the interweaving of Germaine Greer’s work and her life; constantly working but with the energy and aesthetic to create environments of beauty and practicality in houses in London, rural England, Italy – even in Tulsa, Oklahoma – and returning at last to save a Queensland rainforest at Cave Creek. (Sarah Brown)

Left to right: Kate Hodgetts, Lachlan Glanville, Millie Weber and Sarah Brown at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitspatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

I feel deep admiration and a little jealousy over their efforts in archiving this collection – Kate listened to 150 hours of audio material, Sarah paged through 600 files about Greer’s publications, and Lachlan read 40,000 letters,

many of which are fairly routine…But interspersed are some remarkable items that drop you out of time, such as this playboy reader’s letter. Seeing the trace of a blue collar guy from Philomath Oregon, perhaps reading Playboy in his lunch break at the cannery, picking up the closest piece of paper to hand to share his thoughts on the social-sexual melodrama of male female relations to arch feminist Germaine Greer feels like an extraordinary gift. (Lachlan Granville)

Millie who worked on the Women and Publications series described how “The blank backs of meeting minutes showcase sketches and shopping lists that…are a kind of found poetry”.

Shopping List on the reverse of meeting minutes, c. 1972, Germaine Greer Collection, The University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0007.00042. Photo: Kate Hodgetts

How often do we as archivists get to ‘read’ each individual item in a collection? I never have. Who has worked directly with the original keeper of the records? Not many of us. And how many people, outside of the profession, wear an archivist’s hat through their career? Greer kept the archive, very consciously from early on, referring to it in recordings:

Over the years Greer has been fully aware that she was building an archive, it was done very much with intention and there is evidence of this throughout the archive itself…At one point in an audio diary Greer gives the date and states on the recording that it will make it ‘easier for whoever gets her paws on this tape’. Being the person with ‘her paws on the tape’ I appreciate that gesture. (Kate Hodgetts)

Later that night, Greer spoke of her motivation for keeping records, as evidence to counter the ‘falsification of real events… but already in an unthinking way, I’d begun to keep things. One of the most interesting things about the second wave of feminism is that it coincided with terrific creativity from young women…they were producing these little fanzines, these little magazines, that were drawn, that were photocopied, that were stapled, and I thought they were amazing’.

Cassettes from the Germaine Greer Collection, The University of Melbourne Archives, 2014.0040 (Audio Series). Photo: Kate Hodgetts

Greer maintains that her archive is ‘a portrait of a time…a lot of the letters that you’ll see in the archive; and to me, it touches my heart that they are entrusting me with this evidence of their feelings and their confusion and their despair very often. I suppose I think in a way that the archive is sacred, that it’s a sacred trust, and so my job was to find people that would take care of it, who would treat it with the gentleness that it deserves’.

And Greer remains consciously involved. The process of collaborating, negotiating, and the dynamics of the relationship between Greer, the Greer Gang, and the UMA Archive with its inbuilt systems and policies are complicated and occasionally fraught. Greer admitted to having mixed feelings handing over this collection, her life’s work; and, working with someone of Greer’s stature while rewarding and stimulating must be daunting at times. We archivists are most often working with the records of ‘dead’ people.

Germaine Greer and Rachel Buchanan at Germaine Greer Meets the Archivists, 8 March 2017, Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture Theatre, The University of Melbourne

The Greer Gang shared star-billing with Germaine Greer and they are the inspiration for this post. For those of you who were not there, I am sure you will be delighted and moved by their exceptional speeches, and I encourage you to watch the recording of the night’s proceedings available online at http://events.unimelb.edu.au/recordings/1590-germaine-greer-meets-the-archivists.

I continue to be impressed by the way the Greer Gang and Germaine Greer narrated the story of the records, revering the archival process and in turn the profession, and imbued that into the audience of largely non-archivists. They showed us that the Archive is not a static thing, but rather that it can evolve; that it is not where records go to die, but a place where they can be brought to life:

I look at this wall of boxes and see a mausoleum. Or morgue. Or jail…Everything locked down and sealed off, sanitised…But if I tilt my head sideways, I see a skyscraper tipped on its side. Every box a window into a different room and each room is bursting with life’. (Rachel Buchanan)

Rachel Buchanan described the night on twitter as “an unusual, dynamic, challenging event”. An audience member wrote that it was “the most affirming and most amazing archival experience I have ever had”. The night, the speeches, the experience of this archive from various perspectives, are all part of the fascinating story of these records.

Record of the tweets about the night gathered via the hashtag #greerarchive:


New Holland’s position upon the globe

One of the thought-provoking themes included in the latest exhibition in the Noel Shaw Gallery, Plotting the island: dreams, discovery and disaster, is the Dutch encounter with Australia in the 17th century. The Dutch are viewed as having added the coastline of Australia to the world’s map through their landings on the continent from 1606 until 1644 and their subsequent issuing of printed maps. For example, the world map reissued by Daniel Stopendael shows New Holland’s position on the globe, yet its outline is incomplete and inaccurate and there was and is still much to learn about its bounds and character.

It was the lucrative spice trade that brought the Dutch to establish their (VOC) trading port in Batavia (now Jakarta) and on to Australia, sometimes purposefully, other times by fateful accident. Early landings encountered inhospitable shores and then in 1629 the ship Batavia lost course and was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos islands off the coast of Western Australia. The astounding mutiny and massacre that transpired amongst the survivors is a grisly chapter of Australian history. [1.] Melchisédech Thévenot’s book, Relations de divers voyages curieux … (Account of diverse and curious voyages) (1663-1672), compiles many travel stories, including the harrowing shipwreck of Batavia. It also features an important map of New Holland showing its outline as it was understood in 1644. Sections of this coastline, which incorporates Tasmania and New Zealand, were charted by Abel Tasman (1603-1659) during two separate voyages in 1642 and 1644. This map was published in three states (versions) and the Baillieu’s copy has the addition of a wind rose at right. [2.] As Martin Woods notes in the exhibition catalogue, this map has dual Dutch and French labels, with the unexplored section headed Terra Australis suggesting the way forward for French navigational ambitions. [3.] Yet to the French of the 17th century the South Land was also ‘Gonneville Land’, a utopia of gold.

Tasman was commissioned by Anthony Van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company, to explore the Great South Land. The combination of Van Diemen’s death in 1645, savage coasts and unpromising trade prospects saw the Dutch abandon New Holland, and it was not until the 18th century that exploration to the South Land was again continued by the English and the French. Thévenot’s book was a model which inspired Enlightenment writers who followed in the 18th century.

The set of Dutch books De mensch, zoo als hij voorkomt op den bekenden aardbol (Man as he appears on the familiar globe) (1802) is an example produced from Enlightenment ideals. It brings together information from many published sources, with order and classification. It is a book of anthropological geography based on voyages of exploration, locating its subjects in the paradigm of the Noble Savage. Its illustrator Jacques Kuyper (1761–1808) was a director of Amsterdam’s drawing academy and his artistic style was Neoclassical, a hallmark of the Enlightenment. The images are regarded by scholars as derivative to the voyages as they were made in response to them rather than from direct experience, nevertheless they offer rich waters for researchers, particularly so as the Baillieu Library holds the majority of the preparatory drawings for the book, in which can be seen additional information such as inscriptions and differences between the planned images and the printed versions.

The image Niew-Hollanders [3.] is featured in volume three; this text and image draws heavily from the published accounts of Cook and Sydney Parkinson. The position of the image in the third volume is rather unusual as the preceding volume contains South Sea Islanders and includes New Zealanders and Van Diemen Landers (Tasmanians). A result is that Tasmania and mainland Australia have been separated; additionally New Hollanders have been grouped with first-nation peoples of North America including such distant locales as Alaska. It calls to mind those early Dutch experiences with the South Land and the three distinct landmasses and peoples they briefly encountered; at that moment in history Europeans could not have had a well-developed understanding of the relationships and individual complexities of these lands and peoples.

Australia straddles two oceans: the Indian and the Pacific. Each of these regions has quite distinctive environments and customs. So, does it belong with the islands of the East Indies, or the Pacific, or, as it has sometimes been perceived, as an extension of the Americas? While Australia’s coastlines became more defined, its identity is not so readily classified and its position on the globe more than merely its longitude and latitude. For its Indigenous people, and for different citizens of the world, Australia each has different meaning.

Kerrianne Stone (Curator, Prints)

References and further reading

[1.] See the full account in Mike Dash, Batavia’s graveyard, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002
[2.] Robert Clancy, The mapping of Terra Australis, Macquarie Park, N.S.W.: Universal Press, 1995 p. 82
[3.] Martin Woods, ‘New Holland dreams and misgivings’ in Plotting the island: dreams, discovery and disaster, University of Melbourne, 2017, p. 28
[4.] The much needed conservation of this drawing was funded by Miegunyah.

Women’s Liberation and Feminist Sources at UMA

Sue Fairbanks, Acting University Archivist

Women's Liberation: March on March
Women’s Liberation: March on March. Folders 1 & 3, Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives Collection 2010.0011, University of Melbourne Archives.

When Germaine Greer visited Australia in 1971 to see her family and promote the paperback edition of The Female Eunuch, the Australian women’s movement was gearing up for one of its most important interventions in Australian politics. The Women’s Electoral Lobby, convened by Beatrice Faust, was formed to survey all candidates in the December 1972 Federal election on issues of interest to women, and to produce a form guide for voters. The election was won by the Labor Party under Gough Whitlam with its platform of progressive reform.

Papers from WEL in Victoria were the first from the second wave of Australian feminism deposited in the University of Melbourne Archives in 1974. They were followed by records from the Women’s Liberation Movement, Working Women’s Centre, Abortion Law Reform Association and from women involved in the fight for institutional equality and legal reform:  Zelda D’Aprano, Jan Harper, Alva Geikie, Dulcie Bethune, Alma Morton and Joyce Nicholson.

'Lesbians are everywhere' by the Australian Union of Students
“Lesbians are Everywhere”, produced by the Australian Union of Students Media for the Lesbian Political Action Group, c1970s. Women’s Liberation Switchboard, reference no. 2000.0163, Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives No. 17, listed in VWLLFA Poster Collection, 2010.0011, University of Melbourne Archives.

Not all women’s liberationists were beating a path to UMA’s door however. In 1982 a women’s liberation reading group was formed to study the movement’s history but members soon realised that documents were disappearing and that a concerted effort was needed to protect and archive them. The Women’s Liberation Archives had its first meeting on 1 March 1983 and met regularly for the next ten years while collecting, preserving and making material available for research. Its premises moved several times until the 1992 closure of the Women’s Liberation Building in Fitzroy meant the Archive was relocated to a private home. It was renamed the Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Archives to acknowledge the participation of lesbian feminists and separatist feminists in the women’s movement.

In 2000, a new collective was formed to find a permanent home for the Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Archives, and it registered as the Victorian Women’s Liberation and Lesbian Feminist Archives Inc. (VWLLFA). After exploring the options, a mutual decision was made to move the collection to the UMA.

From UMA’s point of view, the acquisition of the initial 126 collections making up the VWLLFA more than doubled, and significantly broadened, our holdings on the women’s movement. It increased the number of collections from women’s liberation organisations such as the Women’s Liberation Switchboard and the Women’s Liberation Centre. Uniquely, the acquisition provided an insight into lesbian feminist and separatist politics and their rich community life in Melbourne and Victoria. Lesbian publications such as Labrys, Lesbiana and Lesbian News joined Melbourne Women’s Liberation Newsletter and Vashti’s Voice on the Archives’ shelves. Collections such as the Lesbian and Women’s Community Theatre papers and the Performing Older Women’s Circus scripts join the records of more fundamental concerns such as the Matrix Guild addressing the issues facing older lesbians, particularly in the areas of health and housing, and the records of women’s refuges.

UMA has continued to collect records from the women’s movement in our own right as well as with the VWLLFA, and has developed several strengths intertwined with those discussed already. Women and publishing and women’s movement memorabilia are just two examples.

Women's Liberation, printed by Comment Publishing, c1970s
“Women’s Liberation, Come, March, March Eleventh” printed by Comment Publishing, Sydney, c1970s. Sue Jackson, collection 2000.0199, University of Melbourne Archives.

The UMA holds the records of McPhee Gribble Pty Ltd, a major publishing company run by Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble from 1975 to 1989, as well as of the feminist publishing venture, Sisters Publishing Ltd, from 1979 to 1984. Sugar & Snails Press began life as the Women’s Movement Children’s’ Literature Co-operative Ltd in 1974 by women who were concerned about sexism in children’s literature and began to publish and write their own books. Lesbian feminist publishing is represented by the Lesbian Newsletter and its successors already mentioned. UMA also holds the papers of Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein, publishers of Spinifex Press; and of the 6th International Feminist Book Fair held in Melbourne in 1994.

The VWLLFA collected and transferred to UMA a vast number of posters from women’s movement events from the 1970s on; as well as related t-shirts, banners and photographs. Collections of women’s alternative music on vinyl recordings are also held, although they are not yet available for access.

Finally, the union and labour movement records held at UMA document the long history of the struggle for the rights of women as workers. They include company and union records on the 1907 family wage decision, the many campaigns for equal pay, the establishment of female-only unions and many other industrial campaigns and issues.

The feminist holdings of UMA doubled again with the acquisition of the papers of Germaine Greer in 2014, making the UMA one of the larger Australian holders of second wave feminist and lesbian feminist archives alongside:

And international archives:

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