On Fortune’s Cap

History Seminar Series

School of Humanities and Social Science
The University of Newcastle

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Common)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

Friday 2 November 2012, 10:00am, followed by morning tea

Malcolm St Hill (PhD Candidate, University of Newcastle)

‘On Fortune’s Cap: The Legacy of the Almost Forgotten Australian, Frederic Manning’

Ernest Hemingway read Australian Frederic Manning’s The Middle Parts of Fortune each year to ‘remember how things really were’ in the Great War. He labelled it the ‘finest and noblest book of war’ that he’d ever read.

What is it that caused Hemingway and other giants of Twentieth Century literature to label this novel (and its sanitised twin, Her Privates We) as one of the best books about war ever written?

Manning, who served in the ranks of the British Army, is barely recognised in his own country. With the re-publication of The Middle Parts of Fortune by Text Classics will Manning surface within the Australian literary and national consciousness?

Malcolm St Hill will read from Manning’s novel and discuss its legacy.

All welcome!