In view of the fact that among the many interesting ingredients that go to make up that rich confection, the New Zealand Centennial Celebrations, are the various literary competitions open to your native writers, some particulars of, and comments upon, the series of similar competitions arranged by the Literary Committee of Australia's 150th Anniversary Celebrations Council, may be of interest. Of that committee I, as President of the Sydney branch of the P.E.N. Club, had the honour to be the Government's nominee as chairman; and, as such, was largely concerned in the establishment and conduct of the competitions, to say nothing of the other work of the committee. For we had many other activities to control in addition to the competitions — the most important being the Exhibition of Australian literature which was held in the magnificent hall of the Fisher Library, Sydney University. At this Exhibition every variety of Australian Literature was shown, arranged in accordance with date and subject, with the result that the Exhibition as a whole presented a complete review of Australian letters in every field and of every period. It proved to be an extraordinarily interesting feature of the Celebrations and, despite the distance of the Fisher Library from the centre of the city, it was visited during the fortnight of its currency, by a very large number of persons, who were by no means confined to literary experts and book-lovers. But this is by the way. My real theme is the Literary Competitions.

The Committee.

The Committee associated with me consisted of Dame Mary Gilmore, Australia's leading poetess (and I'm not sure that I could not rightly drop the feminine suffix); the Misses F'ora Eldershaw and Marjorie Barnard—the two young women writers whose skilful collaboration has produced “A House Is Built,” “Green Memories,” “The Glass House,” and other novels which have moved the critics, both of Australasia and the Homeland, to general laudation; “Harry” Green, the Librarian of the Fisher and himself a notable literary critic, and the writer of excellent verse; Frank Dalby Davison, the author of that unique study, “Man Shy,” a book which won the Gold Medal of the Australian Literary Society and has already become a classic; the Hon. T. D. Mutch, ex-Minister for Education in the first Lang Ministry and now the Government representative of Coogee in the N.S.W. Assembly; J. D. Clyne, M.L.A., the representative of the city constituency of King—a Labour stronghold—who, almost alone in this regard, insisted during the passage of the authorising Bill through the N.S.W. Parliament upon the necessity of introducing some literary activities into the Celebrations' scheme; and W. E. FitzHenry, a member of the literary staff of the Sydney Bulletin, whose long experience with the various competitions arranged by that journal, and as Hon. Secretary of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, made him the ideal man to take the Honorary Secretaryship of the Committee to which position he was accordingly appointed with enthusiasm. That he filled it with credit to himself and advantage to the Committee goes without saying, and I am glad to take this opportunity of testifying to his varied and indefatigable efforts to make the Committee's work a success.

Ways and Means.

At the very first meeting of the Committee it was decided to institute a series of literary competitions; but before we could decide upon their exact nature it was necessary to find out how much money we were to be allotted by the N.S.W. Government. It was decided, after careful consideration, that we should ask for £1,200. We received £500! But further pressure added £150 for expenses, so that the initial grant could be preserved intact for the prize money. In view of this lack of funds—and also, I may add, of time, for it was half way through 1937 before we were constituted as a committee—it was decided not to include a full length novel among the subjects for competition. The £500 was, therefore, eventually allotted as follows:—

Short Story: 1st prize, £80; 2nd, £20.

Short Poem: 1st prize, £50; 2nd, £10.

Short Essay: 1st prize, £50; 2nd, £10.

Long Essay: 1st prize, £100; 2nd, pound;30.

Full Length Play: 1st prize, pound;125; 2nd, £25.

A few days later, however, we were notified that the Commonwealth Government had decided to allot our Committee the sum of £250 to be awarded as a special Commonwealth Prize in such manner as we might think fit. Considerable discussion resulted in the decision to offer the whole amount as a prize for the best novel “published or accepted by a publisher,” during 1937. This particular limitation was decided upon firstly because it was clear that if the entries

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page 28 page 29 were limited to such novels as were actually published during 1937, considerable injustice might be done to those writers who were able to complete their M.S., and have them accepted by the end of 1937, but who had not had time actually to publish them; and, secondly, because it was even clearer that the shortage of time made it absolutely impossible for us to read and judge the flood of novels in M.S. that would assuredly engulf us if we left the competition open and unconditioned.

Rules and Conditions.

It was also decided that the meaning and effect of the terms “Long and Short” as used in the various classifications should be left entirely to the judges to interpret. For it was felt that if any arbitrary length were prescribed an excellent entry might have to be disregarded simply because it had a few words or lines too many. Also, and in particular, it seemed to us to be too difficult to define a “short” poem with any exactitude. For instance a poem of the length of Milton's L'Allegro might well be deemed short and thus eligible for the prize if its merits otherwise were sufficient. As a matter of fact, the winning poem just filled the colmun of the Sydney Morning Herald, when published by that journal after the announcement of the prizes. So that it will be seen that the term “short” was given a very elastic interpretation by the judges. It was also decided that the “Australian” authors from whom entries were invited should, for the purposes of the competitions, mean a writer who had been born, or naturalised, in Australia, New Zealand, or the British South Pacific Islands, or had been a bona fide resident of any of those places for the three years preceding the closing date. In this respect the competitions were more liberal than those which have been arranged for the New Zealand celebrations, the latter being confined, I understand, to New Zealand writers only. This wide proviso was made the first of the conditions governing the competitions which we then issued to the public, the remainder reading as follows:—

2. All rights, including book, serial, dramatic, cinema, radio, and gramophone, are reserved to the author.

3. Works entered for the competition must not have been published in any form, in whole or in part or in abridgment (“published” for this purpose shall include stage or radio performances, lectures or public readings).

4. Works entered for the competitions must not be published in any form, in whole or in part or in abridgment, until the Judges announce their decision.

5. Every work must be submitted under a nom-de-plume, and the correct name and address of the author, with the nom-de-plume, must accompany the M.S. in a sealed envelope. The author's name must not appear on the M.S. Entries which do not comply with this rule will not be eligible. Conditions 3, 4 and 5 do not apply to the entries in the novel class.

6. Every competitor must give his consent to the publication of his real name and address in the event of him winning a prize.

7. No competitor may enter more than three works in one section, but any competitor shall be eligible to enter works in all or as many as he or she wishes.

8. Stamps for return must accompany all Mss. which should be typewritten. While every care will be taken of entries, no responsibility will be accepted for loss or damage, and competitors are advised to keep duplicate copies.

9. The decisions of the Judges shall be final and binding on all entrants, and in all other matters arising out of the competitions entrants must accept the ruling of the Literary Committee.

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10. Members of the Literary Committee shall not be eligible to enter for the competitions.

11. The closing date shall be at noon on Friday, 31st December, 1937, and all entries received after that hour, whether delivered or posted, shall not be eligible but shall be returned to their authors.

12. All entries shall be addressed to Mr. S. Elliott Napier, Chairman Literary Committee, Australia's 150th Anniversary Celebrations, G.P.O. Box 3845T, Sydney, and plainly marked Literary Competitions with the title of the Sections for which entry is intended.

13. The Literary Committee reserves the right to make no award in any particular section, or to lessen the number of awards.

14. The Literary Committee reserves the right to bracket competitors.

Results.

It may be mentioned here that very “nice” and particular were some of the many points we were called upon to decide. Thus, a firm of publishers declared that they were ready to publish the winning novel whatever it might be, and then endeavoured to induce us to open the competition to all Mss. sent in, whether previously accepted (or published) or not, on the ground that as “any” Ms. might win and would thus, ipso facto, be accepted, page 30 page 31 “all” Mss. received could be regarded as accepted, and therefore be eligible for consideration. The Committee were somewhat taken aback by this ingenious argument; but, believing that common sense was with them, and preferring that the publishers' “readers” should tackle such a Herculean task rather than themselves, decided against it. However, it was pressed, and so the opinion of counsel learned in the law was taken (at considerable cost), and as it agreed with that already expressed by the Committee, the matter was dropped.

The competitions proved extraordinarily successful: 26 novels, mostly in published form, were received; 110 long essays; 151 full length plays; 262 short essays; 435 short stories, and 628 poems! To deal with this immense mass of material in the short space of three months (for the results in all classes except one had to be announced by the 1st of April, 1938, and in that one exception—the full length play—by the 1st of March, so that the play, if desired, could be rehearsed and staged before the termination of the Celebrations on the 30th April) meant hard work on the part of the Committee, and most of them were kept with their noses very consistently to the grindstone. It was impossible for all members of the Committee to read and judge all the different entries in all the different classes, so we divided the Committee into sub-committees of one, two or three members, and to each sub-committee was allotted one section of the competitions.

Each sub-committee was allowed to engage from three to five preliminary readers (who were paid from £5/5/-to £7/7/- for their work) to read the entries and to reduce them, by the elimination of such as were clearly “impossible,” to such numbers as could be handled by the final judge.

Take the case of the plays, for example, with which I was appointed to deal and of which therefore I am particularly competent to speak. In view of the number of entries, their individual length, and the particularly short time available for their judging, I was permitted to engage five preliminary judges; to each of whom I entrusted twenty-five plays, taking the remaining twenty-six myself. Each of these preliminary judges—and let me say, they were chosen for their particular knowledge of, and experience in, dramatic literature and production—was asked to reduce the entries to three if possible and certainly to not more than five. This procedure left me with a little over twenty plays upon which to pass final judgment. A careful re-reading reduced these to five, and on these five I again took the advice of two of the preliminary judges who were specially qualified for the job. In the final issue we were all agreed upon the first prize winner; as to the other four there was a difference of opinion; so that I had to shoulder the responsibility and award the minor place-winners myself.

Much the same procedure was, I believe, followed by the other subcommittees, and, so far as I have been able to gather, with as much general satisfaction as is possible for any such judgments to achieve. Certainly I have heard no objection—except one of a technical nature which we were easily able to answer—and I think that if there had been much dissatisfaction, the Chairman of the Committee would have heard of it.

Publication of Results.

The prize-winners were announced over the air, the Australian Broadcasting Commission very kindly allowing us a short evening session for the purpose. Mr. FitzHenry, the late Sir John Dunningham (who was the Minister in charge of the Celebrations) together with myself attended at the studio on the arranged date, and actually opened the sealed envelopes containing the rightful names of the winners before the microphone, Mr. Dunningham (as he then was) announcing the names and congratulating their owners on behalf of the Government and Council.

The competitions brought entries from every State of the Commonwealth, from New Zealand, and from New Guinea, and many islands of the Pacific. The winners, too, were finely representative of the entries in their cosmopolitanism. The prize for the full length play was won by a well-known West Australian writer; the second prize-winner came from Manly, near Sydney, the third and fourth from Tasmania. The winner of the short stories could not be definitely resolved—the judges finally divided the prizes between ten competitors, whose entries came from all the States of the Commonwealth and New Zealand.

And so with the other sections—further evidence, if such were needed, of the widespread appeal of the whole affair.

The Commonwealth Prize was dealt with by a sub-committee of three, and the final decision went in favour of a novel by Xavier Herbert, of Northern Australia, which was also the venue of the story. It was entitled “Capricornia” and, while its tense realism may be found objectionable by some readers, there can be no question of its strength, its sincerity or its value as a study of life in the somewhat primitive conditions obtaining in the locality wherein its scenes are laid.

It only remains to add that as a result of the competitions most of the prize-winners have seen their entries published and/or staged in a manner compatible with the importance of the event which called them into being.