Literary Series: (TALK) Melb Rare Books introduces Joseph Furphy

​Following on from the Melbourne Rare Book Week festival, Frances Devlin-Glass, a Life Member of the Celtic Club, will join us once again to give a talk at Celtic Club @ The Wild Geese.

​Frances will give a talk to introduce Irish-Australian author Joseph Furphy to a general reader.

​This event, first mounted in late July, was interrupted unexpectedly, and the speaker is in good health and delighted to have the opportunity to talk again about a proud Irish-Australian, and thanks the Club and Rare Book Week, for hosting again. 

​*This is a free event - Registration required.
(The Bistro opens from 5pm if you wish to dine beforehand, reservations via here.)

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​ABOUT JOSEPH FURPHY
Furphy is best known for his classic novel "Such is Life" (published under the pseudonym, Tom Collins). It is one of the two outstanding novels of c19 Australia. This talk  draws on the troubled publication history of the novel, Furphy's published novels, and the variety of outlets used by Furphy to become established as a writer (in particular, his apprenticeship as a ‘pars’ writer: he wrote short-form interactive contributions for the Bulletin). 

​Entitled ‘Joseph Furphy on Settler Violence’, the talk also  focuses on Joe Furphy as an amateur ethnologist and ethnographer (of Irish Australia and well as Indigenous Australia). He is not usually invoked in relation to Indigenous history and the paper uncovers his lifelong curiosity about Indigenous culture and settler violence, and the multiple and sophisticated ways in which he resisted very popular and racist views of the Bulletin. It examines the Furphy family’s context as first settlers in the Yarra Valley, Joe's admiration for Indigenous individuals, as well as his anxiety about, and subtle resistance to, Social Darwinism. It also canvasses the many genres he deployed in resisting the culture of such hyper-nationalist and racist enterprises as the so-called science of his day.