The Diaries of Frank Hurley 1912-1941

Edited by Robert Dixon, Christopher Lee

Publication date:

15 April 2011

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780857287748

This is the first illustrated edition of the diaries kept by Australian-born photographer and film maker Frank Hurley about his work on the Mawson and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions, his two expeditions to Papua in the 1920s, and his experiences during the First and Second World Wars. While Hurley is best known today as a photographer and film maker, there is another source, so far little known to the public, which also gives us a startling sense of the presence of the past – his voluminous manuscript diaries, which have survived years of world travel and are now carefully preserved in the archives of the National Library of Australia in Canberra and the Mitchell Library in Sydney. This illustrated edition of his diaries presents Frank Hurley in his own words, explores his testimony to these significant events, and reviews the part he played in imagining them for an international public.

List of Illustrations; Introduction; Acknowledgements and Notes on the Text; 1. Sledging Diary, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (November 1912–January 1913); 2. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition Diary (November 1914–April 1917); 3. The Great War Diary (August 1917–August 1918); 4. Tour Diary – ‘In the Grip of the Polar Pack-Ice’ (December 1919–January 1920); 5. The Torres Strait and Papua Expedition Diaries (December 1920–August 1921); 6. The Papua Expedition Diary (August 1922–January 1923); 7. The World War II and Middle East Diaries (September 1940–October 1941); Index

'Frank Hurley’s diaries are a gripping record of two parallel adventures, as a photographer on the new frontiers of exploration in Antarctic ice and Papuan jungle and as a showman amid the new thrills of modernity, publicity and the cinema. He is the twentieth century.' —Richard White, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, University of Sydney