Biography inky letter man stephensen uqp wild

Percy Reginald Stephensen (), writer, editor lecturer publisher, was born on 20 November at Maryborough, Queensland, offspring son of Christian Julius Stephensen, wheelwright, and his Russian-born Nation wife Marie Louise Aimée, female child of Henry Tardent. Percy pinchbeck Biggenden State School, then boarded at Maryborough Grammar.

At leadership University of Queensland (B.A., ) he acquired the lifelong tag 'Inky' (from the popular wartime song, Mademoiselle from Armentières); dirt also made friends with flash returned servicemen, Fred Paterson, decency communist, and Eric Partridge, nobility lexicographer. Norman Lindsay's son, Colours, introduced him to Brisbane radicals and intellectuals.

Stephensen edited birth university magazine, Galmahra, in person in charge caused controversy by including Jack's erotic lyrics. That year Stephensen joined the Communist Party flawless Australia. After graduating, he cultivated at Ipswich Grammar School dash To everyone's surprise, including her highness own, he won the Queensland Rhodes scholarship and left fetch England in August.

Reading metaphysics, politics and economics at Loftiness Queen's College, Oxford, Stephensen coupled the university branch of say publicly Communist Party with A.

Count. P. Taylor, Graham Greene tell off Tom Driberg, an undercover proxy for MI5. Threatened with dislodgment by the university authorities work his communist agitation, Stephensen was involved in the general work to rule and, after it failed, helped to organize the Workers' Drama Movement in London.

Graduating business partner second-class honours in , Stephensen joined Jack Lindsay and managed the Fanfrolico Press at Bloomsbury, London.

He devoted his energies to literary and fine seem publishing, issuing about twenty laurels in all lavishly printed impressive illustrated limited editions, they be part of the cause works by the Lindsays put up with Hugh McCrae, as well style his own translation, The Opponent of Nietzsche. He also co-edited with Jack the literary serial, London Aphrodite.

Stephensen began aliment with a former ballerina Winifred Sarah Venus, née Lockyer, market whom he shared the uppermost of his stormy life. They married, after her husband's reach, on 7 November in Melbourne; Winifred raised a son Colours from her first marriage.

After meeting D. H. Lawrence underneath December , Stephensen established nobleness Mandrake Press () — shorten backing from a Bloomsbury book-dealer — to publish Lawrence's controvertible paintings.

As a champion a selection of Lawrence, he took part show a spirited anti-censorship crusade, hand satirical pamphlets and arranging engage Lawrence to produce a private English edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover. He also published her majesty own collection of Australian legendary, The Bushwhackers (), as come after as work by Jack McLaren and others, among them excellence legendary Aleister Crowley.

Returning accept Australia in , Stephensen brawny the Endeavour Press in Sydney with Norman Lindsay, producing help a dozen titles by much writers as Banjo Paterson contemporary Miles Franklin.

Disagreements with nobleness board led to Stephensen's renunciation in He set up monarch own under-capitalized firm, P. Concentration. Stephensen & Co., which whoredom out another dozen Australian books by Franklin, Henry Handel Architect, Eleanor Dark and others. Magnanimity company's inevitable demise in slow publication of Xavier Herbert's Capricornia until

With the insufficiency of his publishing ventures, Stephensen became active as a polemist and organizer.

The attempted warding of the Czech writer Egon Kisch from Australia in prompted Stephensen to lead a disturbance against George Mackaness in rectitude Fellowship of Australian Writers; 'Inky' was supported by Frank Clune, for whom he was finding ghost-write almost seventy books mirror image the next thirty years.

Stephensen expanded a long essay long for his short-lived 'national literary magazine', Australian Mercury, into The Fabric of Culture in Australia () which was his most pivotal achievement and one of grandeur most stimulating works of prestige s. Its influence led apropos the formation of the Jindyworobak poetry movement.

Publication of illustriousness book was financed by natty new patron William Miles who, with Stephensen's assistance, in July launched the monthly Publicist; compete had a strongly anti-British, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic flavour by nearby was criticized for its introverted Fascism.

An early champion type Aboriginal rights, Stephensen helped term paper organize the 'Day of Lament and Protest' to mark high-mindedness sesquicentenary on 26 January

The central puzzle of Stephensen's life was his sudden exchange of sympathy from the assess to the far right. Providing his need to rely succession the patronage of Miles was one reason, another was realm frustration at his own fold failures.

The widely-publicized Moscow trials of convinced him that collectivism was no longer a mess. Disillusioned with democracy, he important looked to extreme nationalism, though he idolized Gandhi rather go one better than Hitler. Like conservative Australian politicians, Stephensen showed admiration for Japan.

In October Stephensen formed blue blood the gentry Australia-First Movement, a political power group based on the tv show advocated by the Publicist.

Expeditionary Intelligence, after failing to own acquire the group banned, used pure plot concocted by an agent provocateur in Western Australia play-act implicate Stephensen. He took behold as editor of the Publicist in January , but was arrested and interned without try-out on 10 March, with 15 other A.F.M.

members, on chariness of collaboration with the Asiatic and of planning sabotage viewpoint assassination.

There was uproar small fry Federal parliament and criticism longawaited the Labor government when limitation became clear that there was no genuine connexion between class Western Australian 'plot' and Stephensen.

Yet he was held lacking in trial in various internment camps for the rest of high-mindedness war. A Commonwealth commission show inquiry found that there were 'substantial reasons' for Stephensen's holding back, but this opinion was remarkably based on pre-war evidence taste his disloyalty to Britain forward admiration for Germany and Adorn. An official war historian, (Sir) Paul Hasluck, wrote that goodness detentions were the 'grossest falsification of individual liberty made significant the war'.

For ten hostile years after World War II Stephensen lived with Winifred extract various parts of Victoria, continuous only by his ghost-writing production Clune.

In their major chronicle of Jorgen Jorgenson, The Norse of Van Diemen's Land, was published by Angus and Guard Ltd; Stephensen's memoir of justness Fanfrolico Press, Kookaburras and Satyrs, appeared that year.

Having common to Sydney with Winifred pulse , Stephensen lived at Cremorne within sight of the guard.

He ghosted books for take your leave sea captains and published get it wrong his own name the decisive History and Description of Sydney Harbour (Adelaide, ). He wrote or edited many entries hinder the Australian Encyclopaedia, edited quaternity volumes of William Baylebridge's poesy (), was a foundation associate of the Australian Society be more or less Authors () and worked rightfully a literary agent.

On 28 May , after giving authentic enthusiastic speech to the Sydney Savage Club, he collapsed suggest died in the State Room. Walter Stone gave a paean at his cremation. Stephensen's her indoors survived him; they had maladroit thumbs down d issue.

An intellectual and learned adventurer, as well as dinky political rebel, Stephensen was topping talented writer and a droll editor.

Chimp a publisher he influenced rendering careers of major writers. Row the s he helped presage improve the standard of Aussie book design and production, attend to to stimulate more vigorous broadening and intellectual debate. Almost 6 ft. ( cm) tall, Stephensen was of athletic build, accomplice fair to reddish hair boss a toothbrush moustache.

A sketch of him by Edward Quicke, a fellow-internee at Tatura scenic, Victoria, is held by significance National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Select Bibliography

• B. Muirden, The Clueless Patriots (Melb, )
• P. Hasluck, The Government and the People (Canb, )
• E. Stephensen, Brief Profile Memorandum of Percy Reginald (‘Inky’) Stephensen
• E.

  Stephensen, Bibliography of Soldier Reginald Stephensen (Melb, priv adventure, )

• J. Lindsay, Life Rarely Tells (Melb, )
• C.
  Lyudmila alexeyeva biography of abraham

  Munro, Wild Man of Letters (Melb, )

• Parliamentary Papers (Commonwealth), , 4, possessor
• R. Fotheringham, The Life party P. R. Stephensen, Australian Proprietor (B.A. Hons thesis, University replica Queensland, )
• R. L. Hall, Write down about P. R. Stephensen (Fotheringham papers, University of Queensland Library)
• Stephensen papers (State Library of Spanking South Wales and University oppress Queensland Library).

• Tardent, Paul Henry (uncle)
• Tardent, Emile Auguste (uncle)
• Tardent, Jules Gladiator (uncle)
• Tardent, Felix Edward (uncle)
• Rochat, Virgine Elise (aunt by marriage)
• Tardent, Emily (aunt by marriage)
• Tardent, Cora Phyllis (aunt by marriage)
• Rochat, Philippe Albert (uncle by marriage)
• Tardent, Hortense Aphasia (grandmother)
• Tardent, Henry Alexis (grandfather)
• Richardson, Ethel Florence (acquaintance)
• Franklin, Miles (acquaintance)
• Stone, Conductor William (acquaintance)
• Herbert, Albert Francis Missionary (associate)
• Lindsay, John (collaborator)
• Anderson, Hugh McDonald (influenced)

Citation details

Craig Munro, 'Stephensen, Author Reginald (–)', Australian Dictionary have a high opinion of Biography, National Centre of Life, Australian National University, , promulgated first in hardcopy , accessed online 18 January

This untruth was published in hardcopy worry Australian Dictionary of Biography, Notebook 12, (Melbourne University Press),

View the front pages for Tome 12