AMAZE Gallery - on display

Published: c 1890
Call number: PXE 1814/Box 1

Published: 1983
Call number: MLMSS 11763/Boxes 1-7

Published: 1890-1899
Call number: R 2376

Author: Jack Hickson
Published: 1 February 1951
Call number: ON 388/Box 056/Item 115

Author: Lord Alfred (‘Bosie’) Douglas
Published: 1893
Call number: Safe 1/2c

Maurice Salis Schwabe (1871–1915) was exiled to the antipodes by his family to avoid his involvement in the sex scandal erupting around the celebrated author Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). He arrived in Sydney in 1893. 

Following Schwabe’s sudden departure from England, his London-based lover Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas (1870–1945) wrote to him. These two romantic letters preserve rare documentary evidence of the intimacy shared between the two men at a time when homosexual acts between consenting adults were criminalised.  

In 1919 these letters were deposited with the Mitchell Library by Detective JP Rochaix (1851–1920). The detective noted that the letters suggested ‘Wilde-Douglas’ relations between Douglas and Schwabe. Remarkable as documents of the uninhibited love language used by Douglas, they also divulge the circumstances leading up to Wilde’s landmark trial and conviction for sodomy in 1894. 

Author: Nicholas White
Published: c 1879
Call number: P1/220

Edward de Lacy Evans (born Ellen Tremaye) was not the first gender transgressor to be exposed in the colonial press, but his name became a convenient shorthand for journalists covering gender transgression. Later cases were often referred to as ‘another De Lacy Evans’ or ‘a second De Lacy Evans’.  

Although Evans was referred to as an ‘extraordinary case’, he had led an ordinary life as a miner in regional Victoria. In 1879, after an injury at work, he was institutionalised by his brother-in-law JB Loridan, ostensibly for ‘softening of the brain’. Loridan was the chairman of the board of Bendigo Hospital, a major shareholder in the mine where Evans worked, and — according to Evans’s wife, Julia Marquand — the biological father of Evans and Marquand’s daughter.  

While Evans was still a patient at Bendigo Hospital, his co-workers began the first miners’ strike in Bendigo. At the same time, Marquand sued Loridan for child support. Evans was called as a witness, and his striking co-workers came to the trial to express their support for him.  

Evans was discharged and deemed cured not long after he was forced to detransition. He worked briefly as a sideshow act, and then left the public eye. He died in 1901.

Author: William Yang
Published: 1976
Call number: PXD 1580 box 5 item 4

Author: Henry Lawson
Published: 1909
Call number: MLMSS 314/vol. 46/item 1

Letter from the Angus & Robertson archives.

In 1895 Sydney publishers Angus & Robertson (A&R) contracted Lawson to compile a book of his poetry and another of his short stories. These became very popular and, with his regular contributions to leading magazines and newspapers, cemented his reputation as a writer. Flushed with literary success, in 1896 he met and married Bertha Bredt, but when he wasn’t writing Henry slipped into depression, drinking heavily to suppress his shyness and insecurities.

Always short of funds, he sold his copyright to A&R while his books were still on the press. Frustrated by his lack of financial success, he took his wife and two young children to London in April 1900, hoping to conquer the literary world.

Despite some publishing success there, the Lawsons grew homesick. They returned two years later, broke, in poor health and with their marriage in tatters. Lawson’s failure in London was a setback from which he never fully recovered. Bertha divorced him in April 1903, citing his alcoholism and desertion of the family.

Author: William Yang
Published: 10 April 1977
Call number: PXD 1580 box 1 item 5

Author: William Yang
Published: 1976
Call number: PXD 1580 box 4 item 1

Author: Francis Willughby
Published: 1686
Call number: RB/F0434

This beautifully patterned triangular fish (Piscis triangularis) appears in De historia piscium by British ichthyologist Francis Willughby. The book was published by the Royal Society, the leading association of British scientists, after Willughby’s early death from pleurisy at 37. It was the first illustrated work on fish published in England.

Author: Conrad Gessner
Published: 1575
Call number: SAFE/RICHARDSON/258

The flying gunard (Dactylopterus volitans) would have been sent to Gessner from the English Channel or Mediterranean. A bottom- dwelling fish, it can glide above the water for short distances by spreading its pectoral fins.

Leading 16th century naturalist Conrad Gessner compiled the four-volume Historia animalium between 1551 and 1558. The fourth volume describes fish, marine animals, and mythical creatures including mermaids and sea monsters. Gessner would not have observed these creatures himself but relied on descriptions or specimens sent to him from across Europe.

Author: Sydney star observer
Published: 22 January 1993
Call number: TN 747

Sydney drag legend Leggs Galore (1958–1993) was born Clifford Powell in the West Indies. He moved to the mid-western American state of Ohio as a child before studying ballet in New York. While teaching dance in San Francisco, he began a relationship with an Australian man and followed him to Sydney, arriving here in December 1981. When Powell overstayed his visa he was forced to return to the US, where he changed his name to Kliphe Gillard before moving back to Sydney permanently.

Gillard had never performed as drag artist in the US, but in Sydney he entered a local competition ‘as a joke’. He was soon performing regularly at Patchs nightclub on Oxford Street, then Sydney’s drag training ground. Nicknamed ‘Leggs Galore’ by the barman at the nearby Flinders Hotel, Gillard performed incredible acrobatics as part of his choreography. He became the main attraction there, before making the Albury Hotel his home base from 1988.

A star of Sydney gay nightlife for over a decade, Gillard lived through the emergence of AIDS, when many feared the LGBTQI+ community might be destroyed. He never missed the chance to use his performances to promote AIDS awareness and safe sex, and to speak out against bigotry, violence and intolerance.

Author: Louis Renard
Published: 1719
Call number: MRB/F597/R

This is the earliest known book on fish with colour illustrations. Its 460 brilliantly hand-coloured engravings show marine creatures collected in the East Indies.
The Dutch publisher Louis Renard never left the Netherlands but relied on drawings and information from travellers and natural historians. He went to great lengths to establish the authenticity of the specimens and included first-hand testimonies in the introduction.

It is estimated that only 100 copies of the book were printed, and the Library’s copy is one of 16 known to have survived. It includes information on how the fish taste and how best to serve them. The douwing princess pictured here is said to have a delicious a taste similar to salmon.

Author: Henry Lawson
Published: 1899
Call number: A 1887

An unpublished manuscript in bound volume from the Angus & Robertson archives.

Published: c 1890
Call number: MLMSS 3694/Box 1/Folder 4

Published: 1929
Call number: MLMSS 1639/vol. 5

Lawson’s health and state of mind continued to decline through the last decades of his life. Though he continued to write, and published several collections of poetry and prose, he never regained his previous creative spark. His public drunkenness and failure to pay child support led to repeated incarcerations in Darlinghurst Gaol, and he also spent time in Darlinghurst Mental Hospital. Deeply depressed and perpetually poor, Lawson quickly reverted to his old ways on his release from hospital or gaol, petitioning steadfast friends like George Robertson and JF Archibald for financial aid.

In 1920 Lawson was granted a lifetime pension of £1 per week from the Commonwealth Literary Fund. He suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1921, which ultimately led to his death on
2 September 1922, at the age of 55. His death generated widespread mourning on a scale usually reserved for national leaders and he was accorded a state funeral on 4 September, the first non-official to be honoured in this way.

Henry Lawson was a celebrated figure during his lifetime and his work continues to be read widely and taught in schools. However, for readers today, Lawson’s work needs to be interpreted in the light of the mental illness and domestic violence that so greatly affected his life and work.