DOI: 10.26193/mccuxl
title: Werner Senn Letters
title: Correspondence from icons in Australian Literature

description: Emeritus Professor Werner Senn (born 1942) studied English and German language, literature and civilisation at the Universities of Berne, Vienna and Liverpool. He qualified as a teacher in 1968 and received his doctorate in Berne in 1972. Werner earned his lectureship at the University of Berne in 1978 and was appointed to the position of Professor of Modern English Literature in 1984, a position he held until his retirement in 2007. Throughout his appointment, Professor Senn taught not only modern English but also postcolonial literatures, in particular Australian literature. 

Werner’s special interest in Australian literature led him to travel to Australia in March-April 1983 on what was called a familiarisation tour, at the invitation of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the trip was to allow Werner to familiarise himself with Australian literary studies as practised at the various universities Werner visited (more than a dozen of them), from Perth to Brisbane. The input from this trip proved decisive for Werner’s subsequent engagement in furthering Australian studies in Switzerland and Europe. He was one of the founding members in 1989 of the European Association for Studies of Australia (EASA), which in later years he served both as secretary and chairperson.

Werner’s professional works span numerous anthologies, articles and books on a wide range of topics and authors in English, American and Australian literature. He has edited and co-edited several collections of essays on Australian literature and culture, among them The Making of a Pluralist Australia, 1950-1990. This volume was co-edited by Giovanna Capone, the first chairperson of the EASA. It contains the papers given at the inaugural conference of the Association at the University of Berne in 1991.
description: Provided by Werner Senn
description: <b>ACCESS NOTE:</b> All letters are embargoed by Copyright unless consent has been received from authors (writers) for their correspondence to be published by Werner Senn. Some authors are now deceased, so while consent is being pursued it will be more difficult to obtain. Consent has been received from: Andrew Taylor, Jan Owen.
During his visit to Australia, Werner formed relationships with several prominent Australian writers, which led to ongoing written relationships spanning multiple decades. Professor Senn has kindly provided the ANU Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) with a generous list of invaluable handwritten correspondence, to be donated for the benefit of the scholarly community. These items have been archived in the Australian Data Archive (ADA) and include correspondence between Werner and significant figures in Australian literature, including Rosemary Dobson Bolton, Chester Eagle, C.J Koch, Les Murray, Jan Owen and Andrew Taylor.

More on the writers;

<b>- Rosemary Dobson Bolton</b>

Rosemary Dobson Bolton was born in Sydney in 1920. She was educated at the Frensham School in Mittagong and the University of Sydney where she studied English literature as a non-degree student before commencing employment with publishers Angus and Robertson in her early twenties. Through her work there, Dobson established friendships and working relationships with many of Australia's most significant writers, including Douglas Stewart, Norman Lindsay, Francis Webb and Nan McDonald. She also worked with Beatrice Davis, one of Australian literature's most influential editors. 

Dobson met Alec Bolton in 1950 when he joined Angus & Robertson as an editor, and they married the following year and had three children. They spent five years in London in the late 60s, before moving to Canberra in 1971, where Alec Bolton was the first Director of Publications at the National Library of Australia. Alec Bolton established the Brindabella Press in 1972, which deepened the couple's ties with Australian literary production. Dobson remained in Canberra after her husband's death in 1996, continuing an astonishingly long poetic career, until her peaceful passing in 2012, nine days after her 92nd birthday. 

Regarded as one of Australia's most important poets, Dobson published 16 books of poetry, beginning with In a Convex Mirror (1944), and finishing with Collected (2012), which celebrates the work of her long and distinguished career, and was published just a month before her death. There can be few poets of any nation who have published over an almost 70-year period. Her work was recognised with multiple awards, including the Patrick White Award in 1984, an Order of Australia in 1987, and the Age Book of the Year Award in 2001.

<b> - Chester Eagle </b>

Chester Eagle was born in Bendigo in 1933. He was educated at Melbourne Grammar and the University of Melbourne. He worked as a teacher and administrator in Victorian colleges of Technical and Further Education until his retirement in 1988.

Chester is most-admired for his autobiographies Mapping the Paddocks (1984) which won the Age Book of the Year for non-fiction, and Play Together, Dark Blue Twenty (1986). The former recounts his rural boyhood and a search for meaning, ending with the bombing of Hiroshima. The latter describes his experiences at Melbourne Grammar from 1946 to 1951. These autobiographies add to his earlier memoir Hail and Farewell! (1971), an account of his twelve years in Gippsland.

Eagle also published several collections of short stories and a number of novels. In the 1970s he published Who Could Love the Nightingale (1973) and Four Faces, Wobbly Mirror (1976). In the 1990s he completed two novels, and a collection of stories. He also edited Didgeridoo: Some Histories (1999).

Chester passed away in early 2021 at the age of 87. 

<b>- C.J Koch</b>

Christopher John Koch was born in Hobart in 1932. He was educated in Hobart at the University of Tasmania and worked for the Australian Broadcasting Commission as a radio producer before devoting himself to writing in 1972. 

His most famous and acclaimed novel, The Year of Living Dangerously (1978) was adapted into a Hollywood film in 1982, starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. Koch wrote the screenplay for the film which was directed by Australian director Peter Weir.

Over the course of a 55-year career, Koch wrote eight novels, often exploring Australia's relationship with its Asian neighbours. Two later novels, The Doubleman (1985) and Highways to a War (1996), won him Australia's prestigious Miles Franklin Award.

Despite moving around for much of his life, Koch eventually settled back in Tasmania, in the town of Richmond. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 81.

<b>- Les Murray</b>

Les Murray was born in 1938 and was a leading Australian poet of his generation. He grew up in poverty on his grandparents’ farm in Bunyah, New South Wales, a district he moved back to with his own family in 1985. 

Les won numerous prestigious awards for his poetry, including the Grace Levin Prize for Poetry, the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the UK Poetry Society Choice. Among his many works of note was his courageous account of his struggle with depression, titled Killing the Black Dog: A Memoir of Depression (2011). In 2012, the National Trust of Australia named him one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures.

Recurrent subjects in Murray’s work are the history and landscape of Australia, white settlers, indigenous life, family, and the rural landscape. Murray’s work has been translated into 10 languages, and he was awarded the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry.

Murray died in 2019 at the age of 80.

<b>- Jan Owen</b>

Jan Owen, born in Adelaide in 1940, is a contemporary Australian poet. She studied arts at the University of Adelaide, where she earned her BA in 1963 and MA Qualifying in 1974. She worked intermittently as a librarian 1961-1984, and in 1970 attained her Registration Certificate and Associateship of the Library Association of Australia, tutoring in the South Australian Institute of Technology Library Studies Department from 1980-1983.

Jan began writing poetry in her thirties and her first collection, Boy with Telescope (1986), won the Anne Elder Award and the Mary Gilmore Award. Her later poetry won multiple prestigious awards including the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. In 2007 she won the Max Harris Poetry Award for her poem, Scent, Comb, Spoon. 

In 2016, Owen was awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Excellence in Literature. She has also received the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize, the Max Harris Award, and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Her translations of Baudelaire’s poetry were long-listed for the 2016 National Translation Award in the United States. She has travelled widely, having had several writer's residencies throughout Australia, as well as internationally in Italy, France, Malaysia and Scotland.

<b>- Andrew Taylor</b>

Andrew Taylor was born in Victoria in 1940. He is an Australian poet and academic, and a co-founder of Friendly Street Poets in Adelaide, South Australia. He was educated at the University of Melbourne, where he was Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing.

Andrew is the author of more than seventeen books of poetry, the most recent being Collected Poems (2004), The Unhaunting (2009), which was short listed for the 2009 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and Impossible Preludes (2016). He has published much literary criticism, and written the libretti for two operas, as well as translating poetry from German and Italian, including the work of the Italian Nobel Laureate Eugenio Montale. 

He has taught in universities in Australia, Germany and China, is Professor Emeritus at Edith Cowan University, Perth, and is a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the arts.