Book Review: The Shelf Life of Zora Cross by Cathy Perkins. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2020

In the basement of the Mitchell Library in NSW, a collection of letters led researcher Cathy Perkins to the author of the enormously popular Songs of Love and Life, published in 1917. By contrast Perkins, when she found a reference to Songs of Love and Life in the basement among the letters of Georg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature : JASAL 2020, Vol.20 (1), p.1-4
Main Author:	White, Jessica
Format:	Review
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Allusion Authorship Biographies Children & youth Consciousness Families & family life Literary devices Literary history Motion picture criticism Poetry Poets Publishing Publishing industry Short stories Songs Women Writers Writing
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	In the basement of the Mitchell Library in NSW, a collection of letters led researcher Cathy Perkins to the author of the enormously popular Songs of Love and Life, published in 1917. By contrast Perkins, when she found a reference to Songs of Love and Life in the basement among the letters of George Robertson, publisher at Angus and Robertson, she was captivated. While poetry prompted an intense relationship between publisher and author, it also facilitated an actual love affair between Cross and writer David McKee Wright, editor of the Red Page at the Bulletin. Wright read Cross's submissions of poetry to the magazine and his responses prompted Cross, then on her performance tour in Queensland in 1916, to produce another set of 'messy letters written on tropical nights to powerful literary men' (149).
ISSN:	1447-8986 1833-6027