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- Title
THE "GREAT LITERARY WITCH-HUNT" REVISITED: POLITICS, PERSONALITY AND PIQUE AT THE CLF, 1952.
- Authors
Moore, Andrew
- Abstract
Under the mentorship of L. J. Louis, in recent years Australian labor historians have made great strides in reinterpreting the Cold War. This article sheds new light on a well-known episode in Australian cultural life during that period. The 1952 controversy over left-wing writers receiving funding from the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF) has been described by Allan Ashbolt as "the great literary witch-hunt of 1952." Rather than belonging exclusively to the domain of Cold War politics, however, the dispute also reflected the private machinations of a particular individual. This was journalist and historian Malcolm H. Ellis (1890-1969), an anti-Communist par excellence who conducted an unrelenting campaign against writers like Marjorie Barnard and James Normington Rawling, who did not share his reactionary views. In a dispute that saw the political sympathies of Australia's writers closely scrutinized for funding purposes, both human agency and the broad impersonal forces of the Cold War played a part.
- Publication
Labour History, 2002, Issue 82, p81
- ISSN
0023-6942
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/27516843