Annear, Robyn 1960-

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Annear, Robyn 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born 1960, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; married; children: a daughter.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia. Office—State Library of Victoria, 328 Swanston St., Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia; fax: +61-03-9639-4737.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, curator. Has worked as a library assistant, a bookshop assistant, and an exhibition curator. Also appointed to the Library Board of Victoria, 2006; curator the State Library of Victoria's 2006 exhibition titled Naked Democracy: Governing Victoria 1856-2006.

AWARDS, HONORS:

A.A. Philips Prize for Australian Studies, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, 1995, for Bearbrass; State Library of Victoria Creative Fellow, 2003-04.

WRITINGS:

Names for Your Baby, Text Publishing (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1992.

Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne, Mandarin (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1995, revised edition, Black (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2005.

(Wi th Robyn Ballinger) There Are Not Many Votes in Books: A History of the Castlemaine Library, 1855-1996, Friends of the Castlemaine (Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia), 1996.

Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852, Text Publishing (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1999.

The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant, Text Publishing (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2002.

Fly a Rebel Flag: The Battle at Eureka, Black Dog (Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia), 2004, also published as Fly a Rebel Flag: The Eureka Stockade, 2007.

A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne, Black (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2005.

(With John Hirst) Naked Democracy: Governing Victoria 1856-2006, State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2006.

Also assisted in the writing of The Burra Smelting Works: A Survey of Its History and Archaeology, by David Bannear, The Council (Burra, South Australia, Australia), 1990.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robyn Annear is an Australian historian and writer who gathers inspiration for her historical books from her hometown of Melbourne, Australia, and the surrounding area. She has written about such key historical events and phenomena as the Australian Eureka Stockade and the gold rush. Annear's first historical book, Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne, received a Victorian Premier's Literary Award. The book reveals the history of the village that was early Melbourne, from the time that white settlers arrived in 1835 until the gold rush began in the area less than two decades later. Jeff Sparrow, writing in Arena Magazine, noted: "Bearbrass is unashamedly nostalgic, yearning for a wilder, more dangerous city lurking beneath sedate modernity."

In her 1999 book Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852, the author delves into the lives of those who sought gold in Australia after it was discovered in the state of Victoria in the mid-nineteenth century. The author covers all aspects of the gold diggers' lives, from the dirty business of dealing with the winter mud and summer dust to the lives of the women and children who lived in shanties along with their husbands who were caught up in the mania of gold mining. The author pays special attention to the struggling lives of the women and families, often relying on women's diaries to tell their stories. "Annear's lively sketch of 1852 brings the era to smelly, noisy, uncomfortable and exciting life, a bubbly narrative based on good historical research," wrote Anne Beggs Sunter on the Labour History Web site. Robert Murray, writing in Quadrant, noted that the author "get[s] into the detail of the time—the mud, dust, discomfort, disease, premature death and disappointment, but also the adventure, the colourful characters, the occasional big success and frequent small but welcome gold from cradling and panning the pay dirt."

The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant tells the story of a butcher working in Wagga Wagga, Australia. Named Arthur Orton, the man came to prominence when he claimed to be the long-lost heir to the English Tichborne title and Doughty-Tichborne estates. The heir to the estate, Sir Roger, supposedly drowned at sea in 1854 near South America. However, Sir Roger's mother refused to accept that her son had died and advertised in several newspapers, including newspapers in Australia, seeking information on her son's whereabouts. Most thought Sir Roger's mother to be mad, but Orton soon stepped forth claiming that he was Sir Roger.

Despite being virtually illiterate, Orton made a good show of passing himself off as a well-educated man with an aristocratic manner. Lady Tichborne said that Orton was her son and many of the estate's servants supported his claim, some seeing a facial resemblance between Orton and Sir Roger and others perhaps seeking to benefit from his ruse themselves. As the story unfolds, readers learn that Orton may have been coached by a former Tichborne employee who was living in Sydney. Many members of the Tichborne family, however, did not share Lady Tichborne's enthusiasm for Orton and soon began an investigation, leading first to a voyage to South America which Orton also traveled on and then to a high-profile law case tried in Chancery Court that went on for more than three months and garnered the fascinated attention of the public. Orton lost his case and was sent to prison for perjury. After his release a decade later, he performed a music hall act.

"The story itself is but the scaffolding of a good book, and a bad writer could cause it to collapse into tedium," wrote Brian Masters in the London Spectator. "Robyn Annear is a very good writer indeed. She treats the material with panache, vigour, a sense of fun, and that warmth of humour which it richly merits." Referring to the book as "fascinating," Journal of Australian Studies contributor Strephyn Mappin went on to write in his review: "What Annear has done with this exquisitely researched book is write fact in such a way that it reads almost like fiction."

In her 2005 book A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne, the author takes a look at the changing face of Melbourne and a demolition company based in Melbourne that rose to infamy in the 1960s and 1980s for its destruction of many of the city's stately old Victorian buildings, especially along the Collins Street's "golden mile." In their place, the company built car lots and other modern buildings. Much of the author's research for the book is drawn from the extensive archives kept by the Whelan construction company over several decades. Arena magazine contributor Jeff Sparrow commented that the book "nicely complements Bearbrass, even as it develops a more nuanced attitude to development." Sparrow added later in the same review that the book "is as much about transformation as destruction."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bouras, Gillian, The Man Who Lost Himself by Robyn Annear: Notes, Centre for Adult Education (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2002.

PERIODICALS

Arena Magazine, April 1, 2006, Jeff Sparrow, "Re-Imagining Melbourne," reviews of Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne and A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne, p. 55.

Journal of Australian Studies, March, 2003, Strephyn Mappin, review of The Man Who Lost Himself: The Unbelievable Story of the Tichborne Claimant, p. 151.

Law Institute Journal, June, 1995, Kym Ortenburg, review of Bearbrass, p. 594.

Quadrant, September, 1999, Robert Murray, review of Nothing but Gold: The Diggers of 1852, p. 86.

Spectator (London, England), November 22, 2003, Brian Masters, "The Prank That Grew to Giant Proportions," review of The Man Who Lost Himself, p. 61.