Charmian Clift - Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift

CHARMIAN CLIFT was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, she joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus newspaper, and in 1947 married fellow journalist George Johnston. The next year, the couples collaborative novel High Valley won the Sydney Morning Herald prize.

Fleeing the political claustrophobia of Australia under the Menzies government, in 1952 Charmian and George headed to London. Two years later, they escaped even further, to the Greek islands, where over the next decade they raised three children and created a legend. During this period, Clift wrote the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honours Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens.

After the family returned to Australia in 1964, Charmian Clift began writing a weekly column that appeared in the Melbourne Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald. In these sneaky little revolutions, as Clift once called her essays, she supported the rights of women and migrants, called for social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, opposed conscription and the war in Vietnam, acknowledged Australias role in Asia, fought censorship, called for a local film industry and much more.

Although Charmian Clift died in 1969, her message of liberation was so far ahead of her time that her sneaky little revolutions continue to win new readers.

NADIA WHEATLEY is the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as one of the greatest Australian biographies, this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premiers Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatleys other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mothers Daughter. Her most recent book, Radicals Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann, was published by NewSouth in 2021.

When I first stumbled on Clifts essays, twenty or more years
ago, these trashy essays written for a disposable occasion
seemed to me to have more lightning and quicksilver, more
brilliance and more skill of execution, than any Australian
writing other than the great novels of Patrick White and
Christina Stead.

Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald

Reading these essays, its easy to see why Clift became a
cult figure. The chatty, charming and sometimes slightly
dippy persona distracts attention just enough from the steely
intelligence, the sophisticated sentence structure and the
passion for causes that characterise these pieces but might
otherwise rather have alarmed her readers In an era that
hadnt yet thought too much about these things, her columns
demonstrated that a woman could and should be an active
citizen of the world.

Kerryn Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review

From the womens pages of the Sydney Morning Herald,
among advertisements for wrinkle cream and mini-skirts
Clift challenged a complacent society, fashioned a sly and
elegant sedition: opposing Vietnam, unmasking materialism,
championing equality for women.

Mark Tredinnick, The Book Bulletin

My regard for Charmian Clift veers uncomfortably close to
veneration, which appals me. The figure of Clift as a messy
morality tale about what happens when you run off to be
a writer comes at the expense of the work she produced,
which is to the contrary searing in its clarity. This collection
is a reminder of the work behind the legend: her bent,
her conviction, and her cool. And the sentences! Clifts essays evince
an ardent attention to life in all its vagaries, which is really the
most a person can give.

Ellena Savage, author of Blueberries

Charmian Clift was ahead of her time and yet also
representative of them. Her essays are a fascinating, thoughtful
sometimes judgemental, sometimes lyrical window into an
Australia on the brink of change. Whether you always agree
with her opinions or not, she writes like a dream and her voice
is wry, insightful and self-aware. It is lovely to see her gaining
the recognition she has long deserved.

Jane Caro, Walkley Award winning columnist and author

Also by Charmian Clift

Novels

High Valley (with George Johnston), 1949

The Big Chariot (with Johnston), 1953

The Sponge Divers (with Johnston), 1955

Walk to the Paradise Gardens, 1960

Honours Mimic, 1964

Memoirs

Mermaid Singing, 1956

Peel Me a Lotus, 1959

Essay collections

Images in Aspic, 1965

The World of Charmian Clift, 1970

Trouble in Lotus Land, 1990

Being Alone with Oneself, 1991

Charmian Clift: Selected Essays, 2001 (first edition by HarperCollins Australia)

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

https://unsw.press/

in the essays: Estate of Charmian Clift 2001

in the selection, introduction and notes: Nadia Wheatley 2022

First published by HarperCollins Australia in 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

Internal design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Alissa Dinallo

Cover image Newspix

Printer Griffin Press, part of Ovato

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Imagine Australia in August 1964

It is a place where there is no internet, no email, no social media. People read their news printed on paper. They communicate with each other by what is now called snail mail. Yes, there is television (black and white, naturally) but Australian shows are limited to news and current affairs. There is no local film industry, and live theatre is dominated by plays from Britain and America. Censorship laws are draconian. Pubs and cinemas are closed on Sundays. There is so little concept of architectural conservation that building sites in Sydney and Melbourne proudly bear the demolition companys sign: Whelan the Wrecker Was Here.