[Rarebooks] FS - Ern Malley/Angry Penguins

[GREENFIELD BOOKS]

*"Ern Malley" [James McAuley and Hal Stewart], /The Darkening Ecliptic 
[The "Ern Malley" Poems] / ANGRY PENGUINS 1944 Autumn Number to 
Commemorate the Australian Poet Ern Malley./*

/Angry Penguins/ was an Australian literary and avant-garde magazine 
edited by a young Adelaide poet named Max Harris. It had been funded by 
the wealthy Melbourne art patron John Reed to showcase new writing, 
particularly of the surreal or "modernistic" kind.

James McAuley and Hal Stewart were two Australian poets and/ enfants 
terrible, /who held Harris's journal in contempt, believing that its 
pages contained nothing but drivel. As Stewart commented on Harris and 
his coterie: "Isn't it fine to be a Forward-lookin, and a progressive 
and a Vital New Poet - you know alert and sensitive and Aware - stuff 
like that! Kinda giving the folks the lowdown on what a reely Vibrant 
mind feels when confronted with the terrific Complexities of the Modern 
World." (/Brick, /winter 2002, p. 144)

"Ern Malley", or Ernest Lallor Malley, was a concoction of McCauley and 
Stewart -  a mythical young man who emigrated from Britain in the 1920s 
with his parents, lived alone in Sydney, and worked as an insurance 
salesman, before his untimely "death" in 1943. He was also a poet, and 
during his brief life composed 16 poems, known together as "The 
Darkening Ecliptic". After his death these were gathered together by 
Malley's "sister" and sent to Harris, who pounced on them as one would a 
treasure trove. Harris proclaimed Ern Malley one of the greatest new 
Australian poets of the twentieth century and devoted the next issue the 
/Angry Penguins/ to Malley's life and poems.

In fact, McAuley and Stewart had put together these 16 poems one 
afternoon and evening while doing national service at an Australian 
military camp. "Their guiding principle was that there would be no 
coherent theme and that any meaning would be confused at best" (/Brick, 
op cit). /They drew their "inspiration" from rhyming dictionaries, army 
field manuals, and some old poems of McAuley's.

The publication, in 1945 (a year late due to war-time restrictions), 
caused quite a stir. The noted British literary critic, Herbert Read, 
compared Ern Malley's poems to the better T.S. Eliot. However, as was to 
be expected, news of the literary hoax leaked out and eventually McAuley 
and Stewart gave an interview to one of Australia's leading papers, in 
which they acknowledged perpetrating the hoax, but only to demonstrate 
that there was no validity to the claim that writing "modern" poetry was 
an art, or even a craft, and that anyone could throw together the sort 
of tripe that often appeared in the /Angry Penguins/.

The denouement makes fascinating reading but is beyond the purview of 
this offering, which is the famous issue of the /Angry Penguins/, in the 
original decorated wrappers with the cover illustration drawn by Sydney 
Nolan. It is complete, and includes the somewhat fawning Introduction by 
Harris, as well as Malley's Preface and Statement. This copy now bound 
in half polished calf over cloth boards, with the armorial bookplate of 
Bernard Gore Brett on the front pastedown. Tipped-in towards the end of 
the book is a newspaper clipping of the time: "Modern Verse Hoax by 
Sydney Poets".  The boards are slightly rubbed, and the front cover of 
the magazine is somewhat creased and soiled, with an old repaired tear 
at the top right; otherwise, in very good condition.

All in all, a very nice copy of Australia's most celebrated literary hoax.

Price: $750.00

Terms of sale - the price is in US funds. Payment by check or credit 
card. Postage and packing charges included. Returnable within seven days 
of receipt if not as described.

 
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