Culture in translation
Subtitle: the anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews
By: author, R. H. Mathews ; editor, Martin Thomas.
Contributors: Thomas, Martin 1964-
Series: Aboriginal history monograph series -- no.15
Publisher: ANU E Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Acton, A.C.T
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9781921313240
Subjects: Mathews, R. H. -- 1841-1918.; Ethnologists -- Australia -- Biography.; Ethnology -- Australia.; Aboriginal Australians -- Social life and customs.; Aboriginal Australians -- Languages.; Australia -- Social life and customs.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Almost 90 years on from his death, this is the first book-length collection of the writings of Robert Hamilton Mathews. It has been a long wait for the Australian-born surveyor who began his career as an anthropologist at the age of 52 with the 1893 publication of a brief paper on New South Wales rock art.  Apart from a few short booklets, Mathews' book of 1905, Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Wales and Victoria, was his only work of anthropology to be published as a freestanding volume.  A reprint of a long article published the previous year, it was a modest tome in that age of doorstopper monographs - 'little more than a pamphlet' according to Mathews' friend, the British folklorist E. S. Hartland.  There was certainly an expectation that a writer so prolific as Mathews would disseminate his work in a substantial book. As Arnold van Gennep, the Parisian anthropologist, pointed out to him, 'your publications are for the most part overlooked because they are scattered amongst a mass of periodicals and it is a very difficult matter to have them all at one time in hand....'. Van Gennep recommended that Mathews immediately arrange for their 'publication in 2 or 3 volumes' - advice endorsed by Hartland who was enlisted to work with Mathews ornithologist son Gregory, then living in England, to place a manuscript with a London publisher (see Correspondence, this volume). But these efforts were unsuccessful and R. H. Mathews died in 1918 without ever publishing his magnum opus." -- Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in an electronic version via the Internet from the publisher's home page: http://epress.anu.edu.au.