Dora Birtles

Dora Birtles (née Toll; 1904[1]–1992), was an Australian novelist, short-story writer, poet and travel writer.[2] She was the daughter of Albert Toll, founder of Toll Holdings, Australia's largest logistics company.[3]

Dora Birtles
Dora Birtles, c.1946
BornDora Eileen Toll
(1903-04-02)2 April 1903
Wickham, New South Wales
Died28 January 1992(1992-01-28) (aged 88)
Cobar, New South Wales
Occupationnovelist, short-story writer, poet and travel writer
NationalityAustralian
EducationUniversity of Sydney
Children2 sons

Life

Dora Toll was born in 1903 in Wickham, New South Wales, a suburb of Newcastle, the sixth daughter of Albert Frederick Toll and Hannah (née Roberts).[4] She was ahead of her time in studying at the University of Sydney in a period when few women received a tertiary education. However, she was suspended in 1923 for a poem appearing in the literary magazine Hermes, which describes post-coital bliss. Her future husband poet and journalist Bert Birtles was expelled for a still more explicit poem describing their tryst on the roof of the university quadrangle.[5][6]

Birtles returned to Sydney University to take a degree in Oriental history and a diploma of education,[4] and then taught in Newcastle, New South Wales for a short time before travelling to Europe. Before the Second World War she was a member of the International Women's League Against War and Fascism and reported for the Newcastle Sun.[7]

Crew of the "Gullmarn", King's Wharf, Newcastle, NSW, 29 April 1932. From left to right - Hedley Metcalf (captain), Miss Saxby, Mr. Nicholson (navigator), Mrs. Bert Birtles, Mrs. Metcalf and Mr. Moore.

Dora Birtles died on 28 January 1992 aged 88.[8]

Works

Birtles' first novel, Pioneer Shack was for children. It had been written in the 1930s but did not appear until 1947, after the publication of a novel for adults, The Overlanders (1946), which was based on the 1946 film of the same name for which she had been a researcher.[9] Birtles wrote an account of a sea voyage from Newcastle to Singapore, North-West by North (1935) which became one of her most popular works. She also wrote another children's novel, Bonza the Bull (1949). Her work has been the subject of feminist literary criticism.[10][11]

Birtles was the subject of a finalist portrait for the Archibald Prize of 1947, by Dora Toovey.[12]

Source materials
  • Moore, Deirdre (1996) Survivors of Beauty: memoirs of Dora and Bert Birtles (Croydon, NSW : Book Collectors' Society of Australia).
  • Birtles, Bert (1938) Exiles in the Aegean (London: Victor Gollancz). Experiences in pre-war Greece.

References
  1. William Henry Wilde; Joy W. Hooton; B. G. Andrews (1985). The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-19-554233-2.
  2. Spender, Dale (1988), Writing A New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, p. 301.
  3. Kirkwood, Ian (2015-02-18). "Toll Holdings' Newcastle roots". Newcastle Herald. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  4. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, eds Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 95.
  5. Barcan, Alan (2002) Radical Students: The Old Left at Sydney University, Melbourne University Press; Carlton South, pp. 27-28.
  6. Bert Birtles, Beauty, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/beauty-432/
  7. Sage, Lorna. (1999), The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English(New York; Cambridge University Press), p. 62.
  8. IMDb biography. Retrieved 4 May 2015.
  9. "Book inspired by film made here". Australian Women's Weekly (1933 - 1982). 1946-08-17. p. 28. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  10. Mills, Sara. (2003), Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism, London; Taylor & Francis.
  11. Cooper, J. E. (1987). Shaping meaning: Women's diaries, journals, and letters—The old and the new. In Women's studies international forum (Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 95-99). Pergamon.
  12. "Archibald Prize 1947 finalist: Dora Birtles by Dora Toovey". Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
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