In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Jacqueline Kent chats with Gabriella about her choices while writing A Certain Style. Beatrice Davis: A Literary Life, the biography of Beatrice Davis, Australia’s doyenne of publishing.
Jacqueline Kent shares with us her inspiration for writing a second edition of A Certain Style after winning the National Biography Award in 2002 for the first edition of the biography. She explains how she structured the book and how she retraced Beatrice Davis’s footsteps through Sydney when so much of the 1940s and 1950s Sydney Davis knew has been replaced by glass towers and automatic teller machines. Rumours about Davis flew around Sydney’s close-knit publishing circles, requiring Jacqueline to decide how she portrayed certain aspects of her subject’s life. She shares with us how she reconciled these issues and contradictions in Davis’s character and behaviour.
Beatrice Davis, 1909-1992, was general editor at Angus and Robertson, the main Australian publishing company from 1937 to 1973. There she discovered and published such writers as Thea Astley, Miles Franklin, Patricia Wrightson, Xavier Herbert and Hal Porter, becoming a literary tastemaker in the process. A central figure in Australian literature – ‘respected, feared, courted and berated’.
Originally published to great acclaim in 2001 and winning the 2002 National Biography Award, ‘A Certain Style’ introduced this stylish and formidable woman to thousands of readers and told a history of books and publishing in twentieth-century Australia. This reissue has a new introduction and updates throughout as the author presents a compelling account of a contradictory woman and her times.
A sharp-eyed and warm-hearted biography … the pleasure of Davis’s company is further enlivened by Kent’s own quietly witty take on her material.’
― Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Age
‘A witty and enthralling read … The beauty of Kent’s book is not just the skill with which she unravels a life but the milieu she evokes en route.’
― Matt Condon, Sun-Herald
‘A simply splendid biography of the formidable, maddening, generous, always enchanting Beatrice Davis.’
― Ruth Park
‘A terrific history of the Australian book industry, with the narrative pull of a plot-driven novel. Given current trends in publishing, this is a timely and welcome book.’
― Andrea Goldsmith, Australian Book Review ― Books of the Year 2018.
Jacqueline Kent originally trained as a journalist and broadcaster. A book editor and reviewer for numerous publications, she has a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Technology, Sydney. As well as biography and general social history, she has written fiction for young adults.
Kent’s life writing works include:
A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, a Literary Life, Viking, 2001
An Exacting Heart: The Story of Hephzibah Menuhin, Viking, 2008
The Making of Julia Gillard, Viking, 2009
Take Your Best Shot: The Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard, Penguin, 2013
Beyond Words: A Year with Kenneth Cook, University of Queensland Press, 2019.
2 Comments
More Jacqueline Kent is Series 2 Biographers in Conversation, please. Would love to hear what inspired her to revisit Vida Goldstein after Julia Gillard.
yes me too Liz. However, I’ll be interviewing Jacqueline about her latest book, which is due soon.