Vance Palmer

Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer (28 August 1885 – 15 July 1959) was an Australian novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic.

Early life Vance Palmer was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, on 28 August 1885 and attended the Ipswich Grammar School. With no university in Queensland, he studied contemporary Australian writing at the intellectual hub in Brisbane at the time, the School of Arts, following the work of A. G. Stephens. Working in various jobs, he took a position as a tutor at Abbieglassie cattle station, west of Brisbane in the 'back of beyond'. He also worked as a manager: at that time there was a large Aboriginal population with whom he both worked and celebrated, attending their frequent corroborrees. Later that year, they returned to Australia and settled in Melbourne. Their second daughter, Helen, was born there in 1917. Vance and Nettie campaigned against the Hughes government's attempt to introduce conscription into Australia. In 1918, Palmer enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force and was sent back to Europe, but the war ended before he saw service. He was discharged from the army late in 1919. Vance and Nettie's last years were clouded by their own ill health and by worry about their daughter Aileen, who suffered a mental breakdown in 1948 and became an alcoholic. A member of the advisory board for the early Australia Council Palmer was attacked as a Communist "fellow traveler" (which to some extent he was) during the McCarthyist period of the 1950s, but his integrity was recognised by the deeply conservative Prime Minister of that era, Sir Robert Menzies. The Black Horse (1937) Telling Mrs Barker (1937) The Sea Hawk (1938) The Dingo (1940) The Interloper (1940) Ancestors (1943) Hail Tomorrow (1947) Christine (1948) Two Worlds (1952)

Non-fiction National Portraits (1940) A.G. Stephens : His Life and Work by A. G. Stephens (1941) edited by Vance Palmer Louis Esson and the Australian Theatre by Louis Esson, edited by Vance Palmer (1948) The Legend of the Nineties (1954) Intimate Portraits and Other Pieces : Essays and Articles (1969) compiled by Harry Payne Heseltine Letters of Vance and Nettie Palmer 1915-1963 (1977). Edited by Vivian Smith.

Selected list of poems TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected in "The Farmer Remembers the Somme" 1920 Birth : A Little Journal of Australian Poetry April 1920 The Camp, Sydney J. Endacott, 1920, pp. 25