Alan Marshall (Australian author)

Alan Marshall , (2 May 1902 – 21 January 1984) was an Australian writer, story teller, humanist and social documenter.

He received the Australian Literature Society Short Story Award three times, the first in 1933.  His best known book, I Can Jump Puddles (1955) is the first of a three-part autobiography. The other two volumes are This is the Grass (1962) and In Mine Own Heart (1963).

Life and work
Marshall was born in Noorat, Victoria. At six years old he contracted polio, which left him with a physical disability that grew worse as he grew older. From an early age, he resolved to be a writer, and in I Can Jump Puddles he demonstrated an almost total recall of his childhood in Noorat. The characters and places of his book are thinly disguised from real life: Mount Turalla is Mount Noorat, Lake Turalla is Lake Keilambete, the Curruthers are the Blacks, Mrs. Conlon is Mary Conlon of Dixie, Terang, and his best friend, Joe from the books, is Leo Carmody.
Australian poet and contemporary, Hal Porter wrote in 1965 that Marshall was:
... the warmest and most centralized human being ... To walk with ease and nonchalance the straight, straight line between appearing tragic and appearing willfully brave is a feat so complex I should not like to have to rake in the dark for the super-bravery to accomplish it.

Marshall wrote numerous short stories, mainly set in the bush. He also wrote newspaper columns and magazine articles. He traveled widely in Australia and overseas. He also collected and published Indigenous Australian stories and legends.

His literary friends and associates included John Morrison and Clem Christesen.

He married Olive Dulcie Dixon in May 1941 and they had 2 daughters, Katherine and Jennifer. The couple divorced in 1957.

Marshall died in 1984 in East Brighton Victoria. His remains are interred at Nillumbik (Diamond Creek) Cemetery, Victoria, Australia.

Television series

In 1981 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a nine-part mini-series of Marshall's autobiographical stories. The actor, Adam Garnett, won the 1982 Logie Awards for Best Performance by a Juvenile, for his role as Alan Marshall in the series.

Recognition

In 1985 the Shire of Eltham, where Marshall had lived for many years, established the annual Alan Marshall Short Story Competition for emergent writers.
In 1937, he completed his first novel, How Beautiful Are Thy Feet, which remained unpublished until 1949.

Marshall was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 1981 Australia Day Honours. He died in Melbourne.

There is a bronze bust of him and a plaque in the Sandringham Municipal Library, Melbourne.

Bibliography

Autobiography

 I Can Jump Puddles. Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1955.
 This is the Grass. Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1962. .
 In Mine Own Heart. Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1963.

Collections
 The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall, with illustrations by Noel Counihan. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson 
 Aboriginal Myths, with Sreten Bozic. Melbourne: Gold Star Publications, 1972. 
 Pull Down The Blind, with illustrations by Noel Counihan. Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire & London: Wadley & Ginn, 1949

Non-fiction
 These are my people. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1944
 Ourselves Writ Strange. Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire, 1948, later reprinted as These Were My Tribesmen

Fiction
 How Beautiful Are Thy Feet. Melbourne: Chesterhill Press, 1949. 
 Fight for Life North Melbourne: Cassell Australia, [1972]

Children's Fiction
 Whispering in the Wind. Thomas Nelson (Australia) Ltd, 1969.

Notes

References

Miller, E. Morris & Frederick T. Macartney (1956) Australian Literature, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, pp. 324–5.
Morrison, John (1987), The Happy Warrior, Melbourne, Pascoe Publishing,

External links

 Alan Marshall at AustLit.edu.au
 
 John McLaren, "Marshall, Alan (1902-1984)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, accessed 17 October 2018.

Category:1902 births
Category:1984 deaths
Category:Australian memoirists
Category:Australian male short story writers
Category:People with polio
Category:20th-century historians
Category:20th-century Australian short story writers
Category:20th-century Australian male writers
Category:Australian male writers