Papers of Vincent Buckley
MSS 229
Collection Title
Papers of Vincent BuckleyCollection Identifier
MSS 229Inclusive date(s)
1937 to 1992Extent and Medium
Creator(s)
Category
Subject: Terms(s)
Subject: Person(s)
Collection Description
This collection comprises manuscript papers and related material by Vincent Buckley.
Administrative / Biographical history
Vincent Thomas Buckley was born 8 July 1925 in Romsey, Victoria and died 12 November 1988. He was educated at St. Patrick's College, 1938-1942 and the University of Melbourne, where he received a B.A., 1949 and M.A., 1953, before undertaking further study at Cambridge University, 1955-1957. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War and worked as a public servant before joining the teaching staff at Melbourne University in 1951. He was the inaugural Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing, 1958-1960, Senior Lecturer, 1961-1963, Reader, 1964-1967, held the Personal Chair in Poetry until his early retirement, 1967-1987 and was a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Buckley was a poet, academic, editor and critic of Australian and Irish literature. In the 1950s and 1960s, he had considerable intellectual and literary influence in Melbourne through his writing and teaching. He published eight volumes of poetry and several critical studies, and edited several anthologies of verse and the magazines Prospect (1958-1963) and was poetry editor of the Bulletin (1961-1963). In 1969, he founded the Committee for Civil Rights in Ireland, and throughout his later life he visited and lived in Ireland.
Buckley was the recipient of several awards, including:
Festival Awards for Literature (SA), John Bray Award for Poetry, 1992, winner for Last poems
Northern Territory Literary Awards, Red Earth Poetry Award, Open Section, 1984, winner for 'Synchrony'
FAW Christopher Brennan Award, 1982, winner
Dublin Prize, 1977, winner
Myer Award for Australian Poetry, 1967, winner for Arcady and other places : poems
Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, 1962, winner for Masters in Israel
The Quadrant Prize for Contributions to Issue Numbers 23-26, 1962 - 1963, winner for 'Parents'
Australian Literature Society Medal, 1959
The Borestone Mountain Poetry Award, 1951
Buckley's publications include:
The world's flesh (1954)
Essays in poetry : mainly Australian (1957)
Australian poetry (editor, 1958)
Poetry and morality : studies on the criticism of Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis (1959)
Henry Handel Richardson (1961, 2nd ed. 1970)
Masters in Israel (1961)
The Campion paintings, by Leonard French; introduction and annotation of plates by Buckley (1962)
Eight by eight (editor, 1963)
Arcady and other places (1966)
Poetry and the sacred (1968)
Ulster : why?, compiled by Vincent Buckley (1973)
Golden builders and other poems (1976)
Late-winter child (1979)
The pattern (1979)
Selected poems (1981)
Cutting green hay : friendships, movements and cultural conflicts in Australia's great decades (1983)
Memory Ireland : insights into the contemporary Irish condition (1985)
Last poems (edited, with a foreword by Penelope Buckley, 1991; published posthumously)
The Faber book of modern Australian verse (editor, 1991; published posthumously).
The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize instituted in memory of Buckley, and which alternates between Australian and Irish poets, was awarded for the first time in 1993; the recipient was Lisa Gorton, for a poem sequence entitled 'Tidings'.
References:
The Oxford companion to Australian literature, 2nd ed. (1994)
The bibliography of Australian literature. A-E (2001)
AustLit Australian Literature Gateway database, 2003
Ozlit: Australian Literature Resources on the Net, Books & Writers Database, 2003
Acquisition Details
Scope and Content
The papers of Vincent Buckley include correspondence, notebooks, manuscript and typescript drafts, variant versions, page proofs, book reviews, author's legal agreement, newspaper clippings and lecture notes.
System of arrangement
Special Collections staff has imposed the series arrangement of this collection to describe and preserve context and relationships.
Access Restrictions
Other
This collection is available for research.Reproduction Restrictions
Existence and Location of Orginals
Related and Separated Materials
Further papers of Vincent Buckley are held by the National Library, in the Vincent Buckley Papers, at MS 7289.
Disclaimer
This collection contains a variety of copyright material. Copyright is held by the creator of each item. Specific conditions for this collection are listed above. If no conditions are stipulated then the standard terms of the Copyright Act apply for published and unpublished items. Digitised material from manuscript collections is provided to clients by UNSW Canberra in good faith for private study and research only, and may not be published or re-purposed without the express and written permission of the individual legal holder of that copyright. Refer also to the UNSW copyright, disclaimer and takedown policy.