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Winter Issue 2002-LITERATURE then and now

Classics: then and now

By Stella Lees

Australian classics include Ethel Turner's Seven Little Australians (1894), Ethel Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo (1899), Mary Grant Bruce's A Little Bush Maid (1910), perhaps Ida Rentoul Outhwaite's Elves and Fairies (1916), Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918), May Gibbs's Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918), Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill, the Quaint Little Australian (1933) – stories and pictures which have stood the test of time and continue to attract the attention of publishers, and, in the twentieth century, filmmakers.

What is it about these books that enable them to resonate still, to remain passwords to cultural life? Teachers, librarians, critics have read them either in childhood or as adults and have found them satisfying at many levels: as stories, as signposts to being Australian, as representations of childhood, as experiences to pass on to the next generation. They become part of the canon – approved by the gatekeepers of the written word. They are available at all good bookshops, the illustrations are generally recognised, and they are frequently reprinted. Whether children read them is another matter. Children may have seen versions of Dot on television or screen, been introduced to Blinky Bill at a parade, or seen a stage play of the Puddin', but read the originals? I doubt it. Perhaps the occasional avid reader may puzzle over Ginger Meggs (who first appeared in 1921), now likely to be included under the classics label since popular culture has become more acceptable. The classics I have mentioned seem very remote from the life of young people today. Generally the nineteenth and early twentieth century literary community preferred characters in children's books to be accepting of the status quo, and for life to be seen as offering endless opportunities for advancement. The rebellious Judy, albeit loveable, would not be likely to make a polite Victorian/Edwardian housewife, and is killed off 'to slow music', as Turner noted in her diary. The Puddin' Thieves were finally defeated, and Dot was returned to her land-taking parents.

On the basis of that, considering what are likely to become twenty-first century classics becomes quite complex. Books are part of the historical moment, the society in which we live, and often fade into obscurity when times change dramatically. Who would read A Mother's Offering to Her Children (1841) now, unless they were researching the 1840s? Times changed dramatically in the final third of the twentieth century. The optimism of the 1950s was replaced with a less confident society, troubled by unemployment, a proliferation of drugs, an increase in youth suicide, a prevailing uncertainty about the future, and a sharper polarisation in wealth. It is not surprising that more recent books reflect a darker view than the happy outdoor life Mary Grant Bruce wrote about in the 1940s, or the united and loving family depicted in Patricia Wrightson's The Crooked Snake (1955). Few books now present life as a series of delightful adventures. Characters may lead dangerous lives: not adventuring into wild places as they once did, but into a world where just being alive brings its dangers.

Recently David Malouf (Australian Bookseller and Publisher, April 2002) was quoted as saying 'virtually all the classic texts of our literature, collected poems and virtually all our best poets, most of the earlier works of living and still published novelists, are out of print’. The demands of shelf space mean booksellers stock what's hot off the press, unlike earlier times, when there were often many reprintings of a particular title. Turner, Bruce, Wall and Gibbs are still being republished, but the now extinct Fuzzy, Wuzzy and Buzzy, by Annie Osborn, which began life in1918, was in print until after 1954. By February 1939 there had been 46,627 copies sold, a number far beyond the hope of most contemporary writers. Fuzzy, Wuzzy and Buzzy doesn't warrant resuscitation, but not many of today's bestsellers will last the 30 or 40 years it did.

School use has a big affect on what stays in print. It's a terrific story, but its acceptance in the schools has probably kept Frank Dalby Davison's Man-Shy going – over thirty re-publishings up to 1961. Books that deal with large ideas offer opportunities for discussion in the classroom. Garry Disher's The Bamboo Flute (1993) and Brian Caswell and David Phu An Chiem's Only the Heart (1997) are still alive, and on reading lists, after nine or five years. Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks's John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat (1977), Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow (1980), Nadia Wheatley's Five Times Dizzy (1982) and Dancing in the Anzac Deli (1984), Robin Klein's Hating Alison Ashley (1984) are older still, but continue to find favour with students and teachers alike. And Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins's My Place (1988) is still a useful resource for budding historians.

Creating novels that develop interesting characters means that books like Tim Winton's Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo (1990) remain on the shelves after twelve years. What happens to Lockie this year is likely to keep his first appearance taking up space, and I suspect he'll be with us for a long time. Catherine Jinks's Pagan's Crusade (1993), or Emily Rodda's Rowan of Rin (1994) are in a similar category.

There are other reasons for survival. The best reason of all, sheer popularity, means Lee Harding's Displaced Person (1979), and Graeme Base's Animalia (1986) are still in print, that Paul Jennings's Uncanny! (1989), lives on as a tattered twenty-three year old volume, or recently spruced up in a new collection, and that Morris Gleitzman's Two Weeks with the Queen (1990) has also fought off the book bin at the local fete. Robin Klein and Ann James's Penny Pollard's Diary (1983) and Mem Fox and Julie Vivas's Possum Magic (1983) are examples of books that have always hit the spot, and sixteen years doesn't seem to have damaged the enthusiasm for Gillian Rubinstein's Space Demons (1986). The horse-mad continue to love the late Elyne Mitchell's work, even if The Silver Brumby (1958) is over forty.

A quick survey of the best of the nineties shows that the librarians are still buying Diana Kidd's Onion Tears (1990), Gary Crew's Strange Objects (1991), John Marsden's Letters from the Inside (1992), Isobelle Carmody's The Gathering (1993), Allan Baillie's Songman (1994), Sonya Hartnett's Sleeping Dogs (1995), Wendy Orr's Peeling the Onion (1996) Matt Zurbo's Idiot Pride (1997), Phillip Gwynne's Deadly, Unna? (1998) and Helen Barnes's Killing Aurora (1999), as well as other gems from the decade. These are still in print, but there are some that are still about, although unlikely to be available from your friendly bookseller, unless she has a very large storeroom or a second-hand licence. Margaret Barbalet and Jane Tanner's The Wolf (1991), Margo Lanagan's The Best Thing (1995), Peter McFarlane's The Enemy You Killed (1996) or Celeste Walters's The Killing of Mudeye (1997), despite their relative recency are rarely seen. Sometimes even a film made of the novel can't keep the book at the booksellers. Robin Klein's Came Back to Show You I Could Fly (1989) and Colin Thiele's Storm Boy (1963) are examples of that. I would have thought Storm Boy would survive for a hundred years.

Certainly, if you look at the decades before the 90s, there are many fine books that have disappeared from the booksellers' shelves, if not from the libraries of our schools. Keeping space for Eleanor Spence's The October Child (1976), Gabrielle Carey and Cathy Lette's Puberty Blues (1979) William Mayne's Salt River Times (1980) and Frank Willmott's Breaking Up (1983) is worth doing because these are books which broke new ground and besides being great to read, like all texts, give insights into their time.

Publishers are aware of the short shelf lives of their books, and, to their credit, make efforts to recognise valued favourites. HarperCollins has recently republished a number of titles under the Modern Classics label, and Mitchell's The Silver Brumby is there, standing beside such luminaries as Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, Alan Garner's The Owl Service and TH White's The Sword in the Stone. Here in Australia in 2001 Pan Macmillan made an effort to resuscitate four older novels with recommendations by John Marsden, no doubt hoping that such an imprimatur would draw young readers. Mary Grant Bruce's Peter and Co. (1940), Nan Chauncy's Tiger in the Bush (1957), Joan Phipson's Good Luck to the Rider (1953) and Ivan Southall's Seventeen Seconds (1973) were the titles chosen. Being republished gives these four books a chance of longevity which they may have otherwise been denied.

Other titles which warrant a return to their rightful in print status include Colin Thiele's The Sun on the Stubble (1961) and The Fire in the Stone (1973), Randolph Stowe's Midnite (1967), JM Couper's The Thundering Good Today (1970) and Erica Hale's Catch the Sun (1984). Perhaps the television series on Shackleton will bring back Frank Hurley's Shackleton's Argonauts: a saga of the Antarctic Ice-packs (1948), and even Max Dann's Adventures of my Worst Best Friend (1982), with a television version likely to be produced, may reappear on the shelves.

Twenty years ago I would have said that Patricia Wrightson's trilogy about the Aboriginal hero, Wirrun, which began with The Ice is Coming (1977), would be seen as a classic fifty years from now. But it is now out of print, despite that first book and The Dark Bright Water (1978) and Behind the Wind (1981) being republished as The Book of Wirrun in 1985. Libraries will still hold it, perhaps hoping for a resurgence in its popularity. A faint hope, I fear. (Sic transit gloria!) I could think of many titles that demand republication, other novels and picture books that I believe will be read well into this century. Perhaps print-on-demand, and e-book formats will enable the reader to order a book from a catalogue and pick it up a few minutes later from the production company or on the internet, but that's not for the average reader yet. And whether this will be an option for casual readers rather than researchers is a matter for the accountants. But in the end, it is readers themselves who decide which books are relegated to the special collections for researchers, dusty (or electronic) reminders of what life was like twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago. And it is the book they want to read for a second or third time that is most likely to become a classic, the book that continues to have meaning to another generation. Where there's a demand, publishers respond.

Stella Lees is Associate Editor of the journal Viewpoint: on books for young adults and contributed a chapter entitled 'Reading our culture: classic books for young readers' to Back to Books: creating a focus on fiction published by SLAV in 1999. With Pam Macintyre she wrote the Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature published in 1993. In a former life she was a lecturer in the Librarianship Department of Melbourne State College.