Hilliard, Chris 1972- (Christopher Hilliard)

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Hilliard, Chris 1972- (Christopher Hilliard)

PERSONAL:

Born 1972, in Auckland, New Zealand. Education: University of Auckland, B.A., M.A.; Harvard University, A.M., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, University of Sydney, Rm. 817, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and historian. University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, began as lecturer, became senior lecturer in modern European history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Max Crawford Medal for outstanding achievement in the humanities in Australia, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2006; Australian Research Council grant.

WRITINGS:

The Bookmen's Dominion: Cultural Life in New Zealand, 1920-1950, Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 2006.

(As Christopher Hilliard) To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Fragments: New Zealand Social and Cultural History, Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 2000; and Going Public: The Changing Face of New Zealand History, Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 2001. Contributor to periodicals, including Australian Journal of Politics and History, Journal of Modern History, Historical Journal, and New Zealand Journal of History.

SIDELIGHTS:

Historian and educator Chris Hilliard is the author of To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain, "an important and gripping book that substantially revises our understanding of popular intellectual life in twentieth-century Britain," observed Mark Hampton in an H-Net Online review. In the work, Hilliard demonstrates how writers' clubs, correspondence schools, and magazines such as Seven encouraged individuals from the working class and lower middle class to pursue literary endeavors, a movement which transformed the British publishing industry. According to Ian Samson, critiquing To Exercise Our Talents in the London Guardian, the author "has put together a veritable treasure trove of information about amateur and aspiring authors in the 20th century and the ways in which they sought encouragement, solidarity, mutual benefit, money and fame. Opening up the book is like unlocking a trunk—or perhaps a cardboard suitcase—of broken dreams." The author's "analysis is balanced and intelligently complicated," wrote Jonathan Rose in the Times Literary Supplement. "Drawing on numerous previously unexamined local archives (among many other sources)," Hampton noted, "Hilliard evocatively captures a popular enthusiasm for writing that will be of great interest to historians of leisure, consumerism, literature, and journalism, as well as class relations and popular culture more generally."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), September 2, 2006, Ian Sansom, "Us and Them," review of To Exercise Our Talents: The Democratization of Writing in Britain.

Times Literary Supplement, October 20, 2006, Jonathan Rose, "A Coop of One's Own," review of To Exercise Our Talents.