The Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust and the Papers of Ray Mathew (1929–2002)
In 2002 the National Library learned that it was to be the recipient of a generous bequest from Mrs Eva Kollsman from New York. Mrs Kollsman wished to commemorate her close friend, Ray Mathew, an Australian writer who had lived with her and her husband Paul in their Manhattan apartment for a number of decades until his death in 2002. The Library’s Manuscripts Collection already housed a substantial collection of Mathew’s papers from the period 1945 to 1963, and more arrived from Mrs Kollsman between 2002 and her death in 2005. Before she died, Mrs Kollsman made available part of the amount she’d set aside for the Library as a grant to fund a fellowship and a small publication. Her estate was settled and the major bequest used to establish a trust early in 2007. Part of the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust is now used to make accessible to researchers the papers of Australian literary figures, with the Papers of Ray Mathew (MS 8264) the first of these to be completed.
Ray Mathew, considered a promising Australian writer in the 1950s and 1960s, left Australia in 1960, never to return. After spending some time in England and Italy, he moved to the United States in 1968 in pursuit of an ultimately unsuccessful publishing opportunity. Mathew’s total body of published works includes anthologies of poetry, plays, short stories, non-fiction and fiction, and until this year his most recent work was a novel, The Joys of Possession, which was published in 1967. The National Library has now released Tense Little Lives, a collection of Mathew’s prose collated and edited by Thomas Shapcott and drawing on original literary manuscripts from the Ray Mathew Papers. Professor Shapcott took up a Harold White Fellowship in 2005 to delve into the Mathew Papers for this purpose.
The papers recently added to the collection bring the documentary record of Mathew’s life to 2002, charting his creative output from the time he left Australia until his demise. During this period Mathew maintained connections with Australia through correspondence with family members and arts and literary friends and colleagues. Notable amongst the latter were Pixie O’Harris, Charles and Barbara Blackman, Nancy Cato and Nancy Keesing, with a smattering of letters from well-known figures including Hal Porter, Miles Franklin, Mary Gilmore and Patrick White. A significant period of Mathew’s personal life is laid bare in a long run of correspondence between Mathew and his English lover, Tony Hippisley, who committed suicide in 1967.
The early Mathew Papers shine a light on Australia’s artistic life of the 1950s and 1960s, when the writer played a significant role, particularly in theatre. Of his later life Mathew himself said he was living, rather than writing, his novels, and indeed his papers could be a rich source for a biographer, art historian or novelist. The revised Guide to the Papers of Ray Mathew is now available online at http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms8264.
Donna Vaughan
Kollsman Archivist, Manuscripts Branch



