Review of In Due Season: Australian Literary Studies: A Personal Memoir, by Harry Heseltine

Abstract

Harry Heseltine was a formative influence in a period of rapid growth in the field of Australian literary studies, from 1960 to the 1990s. He reached out to the wider community through his reviewing in the leading journals Quadrant and Meanjin; his critical books; and through the editions of standard works, such as The Penguin Book of Australian Short Stories (1976), The Penguin Book of Australian Verse (1972) and The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Verse (1981 ). Heseltine was also a friend and encourager of writers, linking 'town and gown'. He wrote seminal essays about the literary heritage as well as about individual authors, including Henry Lawson, Vance Palmer, Francis Webb, Patrick White and Dal Stivens. A graduate of the University of Western Australia, Heseltine did not undertake postgraduate studies at Oxbridge, the usual destination, but in the United States at the Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, from 1953 to 1956. Here he was influenced by American literary criticism and American literature, to which he was no stranger.