| Eric Irvin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Eric Robert Irvin 30 November 1908 Newtown, New South Wales |
| Died | 1 July 1993 (aged 84) Brisbane, Queensland |
Eric Irvin (30 November 1908 –1 July 1993) was an Australian writer and historian of Australian theatre. His Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788-1914 is an essential reference work. He was also an anthologised poet who published two books of poetry. [1] [2]
Eric Robert Irvin was born 30 November 1908 in Newtown, New South Wales. After attending Bondi Public School, he was apprenticed to a Bondi chemist in 1922 while studying at night at Waverley Grammar school. He enrolled in East Sydney Technical College classes in art and window display and worked in various department stores. He battled for much of the depression years before gaining a post teaching art in Catholic girls' schools in the mid 1930s. On 31 May 1940 he enlisted with the 7th Australian Divisional Signals and saw service in the Middle East and Papua New Guinea where he took part in the Kokoda Trail, Buna and Ramu Valley campaigns. He was discharged with rank of Lieutenant on 29 November 1945. [2] [3]
Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west, is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Inner West Council in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
The National Art School, is a tertiary level art school based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The School is an accredited Higher Education Provider offering specialised study in studio arts practice with study offered at a range of levels in various studio disciplines, and has been in operation on the historic Darlinghurst Gaol site in East Sydney in various forms since 1922.
In this period he had poems accepted for publication, much of the early poems in the Sydney Morning Herald and his war-time poetry in the Bulletin . From New Guinea he had a survey of war-time poetry, "Australian Poets of This War" published in The Australian Quarterly. His own first volume, A Soldier's Miscellany, was accepted for publication but delayed until 1945 by the war-time paper shortage. [2] [4]
Irvin secured a position as Secretary, Wagga Wagga School of Arts for whom he produced and set-designed various plays. He then joined local Daily Advertiser as a journalist and, in 1961, the sub-editor. During this time he continued to write poetry and also wrote three local histories, Place of Many Crows (1953), The Murrumbidgee Turf Club (1960), and Early inland agriculture (1962), and edited a collection of articles written by anonymous contributors to the Wagga Wagga Advertiser and Riverine Reporter (1868-1875), Letters from the river (1959). [2]
The Daily Advertiser is the regional newspaper which services Wagga Wagga, New South Wales Australia and much of the surrounding region. It is published Monday to Friday but also appears as a sister publication called The Weekend Advertiser on Saturdays. The paper reaches about 31,000 people during its Monday to Friday printing, equating to 85% of all people aged over 14 that live in the paper's main coverage area.
Securing a position as sub-editor with the Sydney Morning Herald, Irvin returned to Sydney with his family in 1962. He retired from the Herald in 1973. [2] [5]
In 1968 came his second volume of poetry, A suit for everyman. However, his main output was as a historian of the Australian theatre focussing on the lives of actors, the production mechanics and architecture of the theatres published in numerous articles in scholarly Australian, English and American journals and his books: in 1971, a history of Georgian theatre in Australia, Theatre comes to Australia; a biography of actor George Darrell (1841–1921), Gentleman George, king of melodrama in 1980; Australian melodrama in 1981; and in 1985 the Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788–1914 (1984). In 1979 he edited with an historical introduction, Walter Cooper's play Colonial experience which was first performed at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, in 1868. [2] [5] [6]
George Frederick Price Darrell (1851–1921) was an Australian playwright best known for The Sunny South (1883).
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He also produced Sydney as it might have been : dreams that died on the drawing-board in 1974. Drawing largely from the back issues of The Sydney Morning Herald and its sister publications, he described the architecture of Sydney which had been imagined but not built, as he wrote, because the dreams were "defeated again and again by lack of money, political in-fighting, some power struggle or other, or the fluxion of time". [7]
In 1989, Irvin moved to Brisbane. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Queensland for services to Australian theatre in 1989. [5]
Irvin's books are:
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