FALS: Colin Roderick Lecture 1993: Helen Thomson

Bio-fictions: Brian Matthews, Drusilla Modjeska and Elizabeth Jolly by Helen Thomson, 1993

The Colin Roderick Lectures, sponsored by the Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, are delivered annually by a distinguished Australian writer or academic at James Cook University, and subsequently published by the Foundation. The series is named for Emeritus Professor Colin Roderick, Foundation Professor of English at James Cook University and distinguished Lawson scholar. 

Helen Thomson is a Senior Lecturer in the EnglishDepartment at Monash University. She has edited three novels by Catherine Helen Spence, Handfasted (Penguin 1984), Mr Hogarth's Will (Penguin 1988) and Clara Morison, along with a selection of Spence's other writing, in Catherine Spence (UQP 1987). She has published a number of essays on Australian women's writing and is currently writing a book on female madness in Australian literature, The Madwomen in the Bush. Her teaching interests include women's writing, Eighteenth-century literature, particularly that written by women, drama, and Australian literature. She has been the Melbourne drama critic for The Australian newspaper for many years.

Professor A.J. Hassall
Executive Director