A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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When no relief resulted from this activity by Brady on behalf of his fellow-writers, he
did not cease to press for the ends he considered just and necessary. He became
president of the Australian Authors’ and Writers’ Guild (Vance Palmer was Secretary)
in 1916 and in this capacity wrote a letter to his friend, W.M. Hughes, asking for his
support in the matter. 1 The attempts of the Guild however, were no more successful
than others had been. Brady complained later, caustically, that “The Guild did
nothing. I went home to Mallacoota and Vance Palmer went to the way. None of the
others seemed sufficiently interested to keep the organisation going.” 2 Or, as Palmer
wrote about the situation to Brady: “Australian Writers and Artists won’t hang
together, or do any other damn thing unless you lead them to it with a halter.” 3
Perhaps Stephens was right!
Brady continued to fight throughout the years, albeit in rather desultory fashion. But
he was not alone in the fight by any means. Norman Lilley, who had signed his
petition, and who ran a regular page in The Worker, wrote articles in support of
Protection. He was quick to slate a proposal put forth in the Melbourne Age that the
blocks of certain English magazines be sent regularly by mail for printing in
Australia, thereby reducing the amount of work for local printers as well as writers.
He urged the Labor movement to give strong support to the intellectual workers 4 in
the community as well as to the industrial and manual. 1
Randolph Bedford also made a plea for changes in the Copyright Act to give
Australian writers more protection, again with no noticeable effect. 5 Brady referred to
this article with approval when he wrote again on the topic, berating the popularity of
Lawrence, the “unconvincing Galsworthy” and the “salacious-clever” Compton
Mackenzie at what he considered to be the expense of indigenous fiction. “But as
long as mob-psychology, controlled by a colonial press is as it is, as long as the
bourgeois daily newspapers of Australia are permitted by public inaction to poison the
young of Australia”. He ranted, “so long will the native patriotic poetic thought and
ideal be without honor in its own country.” 6
When in January 1922 The Australian Journalist published a “Proposed Federal
Platform for Australian Authors”, Brady support the idea enthusiastically. He pointed
out that his children, who attended Mallacoota State School, brought home in their
Victorian School Papers (their School Magazine), stories and articles mostly from
foreign sources, “aimed at the destruction of Australian culture”. He blamed the
universities (“only Australian in name”) for their lack of contribution to Australian
literature and decried the fact that no poets or writers had been invited to the opening
of the Federal Capital. In characteristic vein he deplored the fact that as a body they
took this insult “lying down” and added: “and while they continue in that humble and
apologetic position, all the fatted, glutted, foolish, feeble-minded claquers of this socalled
democratic system, will put the hobnails into their recumbent and prostrate
persons.” 7
1
Brady to W.M. Hughes, 11.8.1916, in National Library.
2
Brady’s handwritten comments on a book of newspaper cuttings re the Guild in National Library.
3 th
Vance Palmer to Brady, dated only Nov. 28 , in National Library.
4
“No ‘New Protection’ For Writers or Artists”, The Worker, 4.4.1912. The Age article was
28.12.1911.
5 “Imports of Foreign Fiction”, The Bulletin, 15.9.1921. Red Page
6 “Australian Production – E.J. Brady Blows Off”, undated manuscript among Australian Arts and
Letters section of Brady’s papers in National Library.
7 “Up Guards and At ‘Em”, The Australian Journalist, 15.2.1922, p.45.