Nathan Hobby

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake."
Wallace Stevens, born on this day in 1879

The SLV is digitising thousands of photos of streetscapes around Victoria created by the Committee for Urban Action in the 1970s. Here's some from Fitzroy: https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/discovery/search?query=series,exact,Committee%20for%20Urban%20Action%20Collection.%20Photographic%20survey […]

Picture shows a book cover for Dangers of Youth

I'm honoured to be speaking to @petermcphee.bsky.social on Mon 6 Oct at 1pm AEDT about my book Dangers of Youth: Age, Criminality, and Juvenile Justice Reform in Third Republic France at an online event hosted by the George Rudé Society. Please register here: uni-sydney.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Wonderful!

Good work!

I'll be speaking at this event: The 80th anniversary of World War II & the formation of the #UN United Nations. What have we learnt and what may the next 80 years hold? Join us at
@curtinuniversity.bsky.social tomorrow evening, brought to you by the Faculty of Humanities and #GlobalFutures Curtin.

Depressing news. Meanjin hardly posed a significant call on the University of Melbourne's finances: its annual budget was no more than a third of the VC's salary. To shut it down diminishes the University of Melbourne and leaves a large hole in Australia's already threadbare cultural landscape

The Egg, a cricket trophy awarded to the winners of Overland vs Meanjin matches, alongside a copy of Jim Davidson's Emperor in Lilliput, the book about magazine founding editors Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith.

Since our very first issue Meanjin and Overland have been comrades, mates, rivals, and drinking buddies. The UMP board’s decision is a shockingly myopic act of cultural vandalism which will grievously harm the Australian literary community.

Dr Samson Lim (Monash U) is giving the next seminar of the Historians of Southeast Asia Network (HiSEAs) on the 'feral territories' of Eastern Bangkok, Thailand. Intrigued? Join us on Thu 11 September, 4.00 pm AEST on Zoom:
anu.zoom.us/j/8293727404....
Meeting ID: 829 3727 4043/ Passcode:491526.

Anyone out there in #genealogy , #LocalHistory or #FamilyHistory land know of any collections that should be identified?

I've just had confirmation that Newcastle Writers Festival's partnership with Port Waratah Coal Services has ended. I'm pleased to hear this and hope this is an ongoing alignment of NWF's values with their actions. Fossil fuels are the villains and we don't need them to tell stories

Living in the secret pandemic I’ve found myself muted for three years now, unable to say as much as I used to. It’s partly because of my health and partly because of the great silence around the secret pandemic: I f…

nathanhobby.com/2025/08/06/l...

New rule. A parent may only propose removing a book from the school library only after reading it in its entirety and delivering a book report to the librarian. Until then no discussion shall be entered into.

There's differences of perception, but there are also subjects who are actually paradoxical. How to depict these things biographically? Perhaps: a composite portrait, recognising limits of any one perception. A provisionality to judgements & traits.

Variation on the theme in Martin McKenzie-Murray's profile on Richard Marles in yesterday's The Saturday Paper: 'in the funhouse mirrors of politics there’s no single prevailing view of anyone'.

Hazel Rowley once said, 'The opposite is also true' about anything she could write about her biographical subject, Christina Stead.

Will use this opportunity again to mention my list of online and open access radical historical collections. Nearly 1000 listed from across the world.

hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/radical-onli...

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
Annie Proulx, born on this day in 1935

This podcast series is now in its 3rd season. I'm grateful to Gabriella for her commitment to biographers and her talents in drawing out insights about biographical choices, which extends the work she did in her PhD thesis and her own biography, Breaking Through the Pain Barrier.

My interview with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Red Witch and the art of biography has just been released on the Biographers in Conversation podcast.
www.biographersinconversation.com/s03e05-natha...

'The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard' Biographers in Conversation interview with Nathan Hobby

'The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard'
open.substack.com/pub/gabriell...

@nathanhobby.bsky.social

2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlist The 2025 PM’s Literary Awards shortlists were announced today. Fiction Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, abandoned Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13, see Kim’s review at Reading Matters) …

PM's Lit Award shortlists: anzlitlovers.com/2025/08/12/2...

Passing Strangers, by Felix Riesenberg (1932). This is such a radical book. Economic exploitation, a terrorist bombing in Wall Street, breakdown of the established order. Felix Riesenberg was 53 and on his fifth career when he wrote it. Amazing book, amazing writer.


neglectedbooks.com/?...

The deaths of John Curtin: his biographers’ accounts of his last days Prime Minister John Curtin died 80 years ago on 5 July 1945 in an upstairs bedroom at the Lodge. He’d been taken up to the bedroom by stretcher on 22 May after leaving a small private hospita…

Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the death of John Curtin, Australian prime minister from 1941 to 1945. I wrote about the depictions of his death by his biographers and some aspects of their biographical methodology.
nathanhobby.com/2025/07/04/t...

Our book is out! The surprising history of masks worn by plague doctors, factory workers, trench soldier, hospital nurses, and the rest of us.

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

@yalepress.bsky.social
@yalebooks.bsky.socuial

Exactly this!

Which is why I've created this purely online conference!

Book Challenges and Bans Part 3: Comics Censorship in 1950s Australia

A fascinating trip down the historical censorship of comics in Australia from @iurgi.com - well worth your time to read #Libraries #AusLibChat www.iurgi.com/2025/06/book...

The Mysterious Cities of Gold Over several months, I rewatched The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982) with my kids. It was my favourite show when I was nine; it is even stranger than I remember. In a quest for the seven cities of…

New on my blog - revisiting The Mysterious Cities of Gold 35 years later. Any other fans?
nathanhobby.com/2025/06/22/t...

1945: The Price of Peace exhibition For many weeks, my son asked me each day what I was doing at work, and each day the answer was the same: the exhibition! His anticipation built and I was relieved when I could finally tell him it w…

An exhibition I've been working on - '1945: The Price of Peace', commemorating 80 years since the death of John Curtin and the end of the Second World War.
nathanhobby.com/2025/06/21/1...

A Katharine Susannah Prichard treasure from Ebay I’m only missing a few Katharine Susannah Prichard books from my collection and so these days filling in a gap is rare – and often expensive. I wasn’t expecting to come across a c…

A new post on my blog nathanhobby.com/2025/06/10/a...