'Private Lives Revealed: Letters, Diaries, History'
23 March 1996
The National Library of Australia's Manuscript Collection is a rich resource containing many collections of private and personal papers of prominent Australians. The 'Private Lives Revealed' seminar was presented to explore the use of, and ethical considerations of using, private or personal papers in researching history and biography. (The Library has published a number of volumes based on private papers held in its collections. For more information return to the Private Lives Revealed summary page.)
Five of the articles in the Autumn 1997 issue of Voices were based on presentations given at the seminar held on 23 March 1996 at the National Library of Australia. The seminar explored the use of private papers, such as letters and diaries, in researching history and biography. A sixth article, by Katie Holmes, examined women's diary writing, and was presented at the Library's 18 November 1995 seminar Women Writing: Views and Prospects 1975-1995.
Chris Tiffin, lecturer in history at the University of Queensland and, in 1996, a Harold White Fellow at the National Library, examined issues of audience, 'textual voyeurism' and plagiarism in the context of private and personal papers used in historical research. His observations on the value of these documents to historians (or 'fortunate voyeurs') were illustrated with extracts from letters of Nora Murray-Prior to Rosa Praed, the contents of which are worked into Praed's early writing.
Letters and diaries were central features of many Western women's lives in the nineteenth century. Although not always easy to locate or use, and usually written by middle- or upper-class women, such documents have proved invaluable to journalist and editor Patricia Clarke who has written extensively on the often hidden roles of women in colonial Australia. Coincidently, Clarke, also a past Harold White Fellow, is completing a biography on novelist Rosa Praed. Her article especially highlights the challenges in unearthing a representative range of letters and diaries and bridging 'patchy' collections to gain a full picture of the 'rich details of women's lives'.
Nevertheless, there are many letters and private writings in Australian libraries, archives and other public and private sources. The National Library's John Thompson, and co-author Brenda Niall, face challenges in limiting their selection to 300 letters for inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary of Australian Letters. Again, in this situation where it is intended to present a chronological selection of letters depicting aspects of Australian history, ingenuity and instinct will play a role in selection. Not only are the source materials personal, but so is the compilation process. Thompson's article represents a case study in using correspondence to create a 'kind of personal, oblique history' of Australia.
While Thompson and Niall's task is to create an Australian history based exclusively on letters, historian Katie Holmes's mission of fashioning a feminist history is based on the study of Australian women's sense of self as expressed in their diaries. These writings serve to lessen the separation of public and private lives, of collective and individual experience in the weaving of history.
Collections of personal and private writings can go beyond letters and diaries to unpublished literary works. Peter Read, a Research Fellow in the History Department at the Australian National University, argued that these private literary works portray personal experiences in an excruciatingly intense way rarely seen in published works. He draws particularly on unpublished verse by Australians anguished at the loss of particular loved places. It is this particularity, of locality and individuality, that is conveyed in the private verse quoted by Read, and which informs his work on how non-aboriginal Australians 'belong' to the country.
The revelations of private writings for public history can be immensely valuable, but this benefit is not always without a cost. The authors of personal documents, their associates and families can suffer loss of privacy, embarrassment or even trauma from allowing public use of their private documents. Hence the frequent temporal embargoes on many publicly held collections. However, writer and broadcaster David Marr argues that, except in rare instances where real pain could be the result of publicising private communications, it is only the really private material that can put flesh on the bones of history. Ethical considerations should be few.
All six of these papers provide important and provocative insights into the creation of Australian history and biography.
To read a paper select the author.
Note that the individual authors hold copyright for their papers. The views expressed in those papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Library of Australia.
Speakers:
| Chris Tiffin Keynote address: Private Lives and the Fortunate Voyeur |
[Portrait] | ![]() |
Patricia Clarke Life Lines - 19th Century Women's Diaries and Letters |
| John Thompson Windows onto Australia: Steps in Constructing The Oxford Book of Australian Letters |
![]() |
![]() |
Peter Read Private Papers and a Sense of Place |
| David Marr Only What's Private Matters |
![]() |
||
| See also The Trunk in the Attic: the Biographer and the Bundle of Letters / by Brenda Niall, a paper from the 1996 'Documenting a Life' seminar on biography |
|||
Online Discussion
All visitors to the online Private Lives Revealed seminar are encouraged to offer comments, to ask questions, to contribute to ongoing discussion, to offer their own experiences and insights, and to suggest links to other Internet sites. Moderated contributions will be archived online below. Email your contributions to Michelle Hetherington, Education Officer at the National Library of Australia - mhetheri@nla.gov.au
Discussion archive coming soon!
Return to NLA Seminars or Online Seminars
| About This Site | Copyright | Privacy | Accessibility | Site Map | Site Search | Content A-Z | Contact Us |



