The darkening ecliptic

MALLEY, Ern, pseud. of James McAuley and Harold Stewart

Published by Reed & Harris, Melbourne, 1944

About this Item

Small quarto, with frontispiece in black and white after a painting by Sidney Nolan, and facsimile of a handwritten letter by 'Ethel Malley'; pp. 45. Cardboard wrappers, white lettering to upper. Bookseller's small label on inside front wrapper; signature of Guy Springthorpe, dated 1944, on half-title and his two-stanza poem, entitled 'Bird-Line (lines on first reading the Darkening Ecliptic)' on blank at rear, in pencil written over in ink; wrappers agreeably mellowed an even tone, front and back; a very nice copy.

Soldiers McAuley and Stewart contrived 'meaningless' poems and passed them off as the work of the late 'Ern Malley': their aim was to send up the supposedly arbitrary nature of modernist poetry. The victims of the hoax, publishers of the 'Angry Penguins' literary journal, printed the poems (together with the letter they received from Malley's 'sister' and the statement the hoaxers had concocted as a kind of literary manifesto) as this book, 'The darkening ecliptic', after the prank had been revealed. One of the publishers, Max Harris, was made to defend the poems in court against charges of obscenity and forced to explain them line-by-line; he was fined five pounds for his trouble.

Guy Springthorpe (1897-1984), was a noted psychiatrist and the son of the eminent physician, John William Springthorpe.

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Seller Inventory # ABE-1767922328866

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The darkening ecliptic
• Publisher: Reed & Harris, Melbourne
• Publication Date: 1944
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dimensions: 6W x 8H x 0.15D inches 6 inches width by 8 inches height by 0.15 inches depth
• Weight: 0.1 kilograms
• Seller catalogs:
  • Literature
  • Society & Culture
  • Poetry