Abstract
This chapter examines the verse of the Irish-Australian poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop in contexts of colonialism and gender. Dunlop’s work was neglected in literary history until feminist approaches retrieved colonial women writers. Arguing for the key role of elegy through close readings of Dunlop’s poetry, including “The Aboriginal Mother” (1838), Anna Johnston shows how Dunlop used elegy to commemorate what she had left behind and to forge new literary and emotional bonds. Complex topics such as colonial violence, emigration, exile, and race were addressed through conventional verse forms and new venues for literary publishing. Dunlop’s literary innovations included Indigenous themes and languages alongside intimate sketches of new settler societies. Poetry provided a cultural sphere in which diverse ideas about race, empire, and gender were hotly contested by amateur and professional writers, editors, and readers in an emerging print culture.
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Notes
- 1.
Dunlop, “Star of the South.”
- 2.
Baden-Powell, New Homes for the Old Country.
- 3.
Dunlop, “Star of the South.”
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Webby, Early Australian Poetry, ix.
- 7.
Stewart, The Form of Poetry; McGann, The Poetics of Sensibility; Rudy, Imagined Homelands.
- 8.
St George, Possible Pasts.
- 9.
McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies.
- 10.
Stewart, The Form of Poetry.
- 11.
Leighton, On Form, 220.
- 12.
Ibid., 221.
- 13.
[Hill], “Stanzas.”
- 14.
Dunlop, “Rosetta Nathan’s Dirge.” Dunlop eulogised her daughter in poems such as “The Dead.”
- 15.
Dunlop, “Inscribed to the Memory.”
- 16.
Dunlop, “Elegy.”
- 17.
The Myall Creek massacre was almost the sole occasion on which settlers were punished for mass interracial violence in Australia. See Lydon and Ryan, Remembering the Myall Creek Massacre.
- 18.
Dunlop, “Songs of an Exile No. 4: The Aboriginal Mother” [henceforth Aboriginal Mother].
- 19.
Nathan himself was no stranger to scandal and had an impresario’s eye for publicity: his setting of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies is well-known, and his life included well-publicised court intrigues before his emigration to the Australian colonies. See Mackerras, The Hebrew Melodist; Legge and Golby, “Nathan, Isaac 1790–1864.”
- 20.
Dunlop, “Aboriginal Mother.”
- 21.
Nathan, “New Music,” Australasian Chronicle. A digitised copy of the score is available at the National Library of Australia: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-179698795.
- 22.
O’Leary, “Speaking the Suffering Indigene.”
- 23.
“Original Correspondence: Thorough-Bass and Nathan” (1841). Rennie is the likely author behind the pseudonym: Skinner, “Eliza Hamilton Dunlop.” Rennie arrived in 1840, working as the editor of the Sydney Herald briefly during this period, then appearing as an erudite if irascible lecturer at the School of Arts: he had been Professor of Natural History at King’s College London 1830–1834, but his colonial career was characterised by his violent temper. See Page, “James Rennie”; Lucas, “James Rennie.”
- 24.
Wu, “‘A vehicle of private malice.’”
- 25.
Wood, “Frontier Violence and the Bush Legend.”
- 26.
“New Music,” Sydney Morning Herald (1842).
- 27.
Dunlop, “Star of the South.”
- 28.
David Dunlop to Gipps.
- 29.
Dunlop, “Star of the South.”
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Lootens, “Hemans and Home”; Armstrong, Victorian Poetry.
- 32.
Stewart, The Form of Poetry. On literary albums, see Harris, Forget Me Not.
- 33.
Stenhouse, “Criticism and Critics”; Jordens, The Stenhouse Circle.
- 34.
Prior to this, a government-sanctioned Gazette was the sole outlet: see Johnston, The Paper War.
- 35.
Dunlop, “Star of the South.”
- 36.
“Domestic Intelligence: New Music,” The Sydney Herald.
- 37.
Butler, “Culture’s Medium,” 146.
- 38.
Johnston, “Mrs Milson’s Wordlist.”
- 39.
Dunlop, “The Eagle Chief”; Dunlop and Nathan, “The Aboriginal Father”; Dunlop, “Native Poetry.”
- 40.
Dunlop, “Native Poetry.”
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings, 2–3. See also Goldie, Fear and Temptation.
- 43.
O’Leary, Savage Songs and Wild Romances; Rudy, “Floating Worlds”; Rudy, Imagined Homelands.
- 44.
Dunlop, “Songs of an Exile No. 1: The Dream.”
- 45.
Dunlop, “Songs of an Exile No. 5: The Irish Mother.”
- 46.
Duffy, The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1845), xv.
- 47.
Duffy, The Ballad Poetry of Ireland (1866), 74.
- 48.
Lootens, The Political Poetess.
- 49.
Dunlop, “Songs of an Exile No. 3.”
- 50.
Rudy, “Beyond Universalisms,” 98.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Notice. Freemans Journal (1814).
- 53.
Leerssen, “Convulsion Recalled.”
- 54.
Edgeworth, Life and Letters, vol. 2.
- 55.
Leerssen, “Convulsion Recalled,” 143.
- 56.
Dunlop, “The Irish Volunteers.”
- 57.
McBride, Scripture Politics, 161.
- 58.
de Salis, Two Early Colonials.
- 59.
Dunlop, “The Two Graves.”
- 60.
Ibid.
- 61.
Dunlop, “Memorialis.”
- 62.
Stone, “Politics, Protest, Interventions,” 147.
- 63.
Her early first marriage was made without her father’s consent and ended quickly. See Johnston, “The Poetry of the Archive.”
- 64.
Fulford, Romantic Indians.
- 65.
Chapman, Networking the Nation.
- 66.
Chander, Brown Romantics, 2.
- 67.
Hensley, Forms of Empire.
- 68.
Ibid., 2.
- 69.
Lawson and Johnston, “Settler Colonies.”
- 70.
On settler logics of elimination, see Wolfe, Settler Colonialism.
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Johnston, A. (2023). Exile and Elegy: Eliza Hamilton Dunlop and Colonial Verse. In: Behlman, L., Loksing Moy, O. (eds) Victorian Verse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29696-3_6
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