Michael Wilding (born 1942) is a British-born writer and academic who has spent most of his career at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. He is known for his work as a novelist, literary scholar, critic, and editor. Since 2002 he has been Emeritus Professor in English and Australian Literature at the University of Sydney.
Michael Wilding was born in 1942 in Worcester, England, and read English at Oxford University, where he graduated in 1963 with BA with first-class honours. [1]
Wilding took up an appointment as assistant lecturer at the University of Sydney in 1963, where he stayed for three years. He returned to England in 1967, where he attained his M.A., and took up a lectureship at the University of Birmingham. [1]
In 1969 he took up a post as senior lecturer at Sydney University, then becoming Reader in English from 1973 to 1992. He received the degree of D. Litt. from the University of Sydney in 1993. In 1993 he was appointed Professor of English and Australian Literature at Sydney, a position he held until his retirement in 2000, after which he was made professor emeritus. [1]
His scholarly work focused especially on 17th- and early 18th-century English literature (notably the poet John Milton), and he also garnered esteem as a literary critic and scholar of Australian literature (including works on Marcus Clarke, William Lane, Christina Stead). [1] His correspondence with Stead is in the National Library of Australia.[ citation needed ]
He became known for his creative writing work in the late 1960s, when he was one of the leading lights of the "new writing" movement, whose members were influential in revitalising Australian literature. [1] His work was later described as "exciting and innovative" by Ross Fitzgerald in The Australian . [2]
He has published many novels and short story collections, and has had his stories published widely in anthologies. [1]
His most widely referenced work has been the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, which he co-founded with Frank Moorhouse and Carmel Kelly in 1972 and which ran for 33 issues, until 1974. [1]
For many years he was Australian editor of Stand , the UK quarterly edited by Jon Silkin and Lorna Tracy, introducing the work of Robert Adamson, Peter Carey and Vicki Viidikas to the UK.[ citation needed ]
Wilding has been involved with the promotion of writers and writing, including as editor of short story collections, and as Chair of the New South Wales Writers' Centre. [1]
In 2015 he received the Colin Roderick award and the Prime Minister's Literary award for non-fiction for his Wild Bleak Bohemia: Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall: a Documentary.[ citation needed ]
His papers and manuscripts are held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Central Independent Television UK made a documentary on his writing in 1987, Reading the Signs.[ citation needed ]
A critical study of his work, Michael Wilding and the Fiction of Instant Experience by Don Graham, was published in 2013. [7]
A festschrift in his honour, Running Wild: Essays, Fictions and Memoirs Presented to Michael Wilding, edited by David Brooks and Brian Kiernan, was published in 2004. It includes a number of essays on his fiction by Brian Kiernan, Laurie Hergenhan, Bruce Clunies Ross, Adrian Caesar and Robert Yeo.[ citation needed ]
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