This is a hand-written letter from my personal collection to Ion Idriess from May Tilton. May Tilton (born 1884, died 1964) was the author of The Grey Battalion (Angus and Robertson, 1933) describing her experiences as an AIF nurse in WWI. Perhaps her connection with Idriess was through Angus and Robertson. Her brother Jack also served in France and became a POW. May never married.

The address is Caulfield (101 Eskdale Rd?), where she resided before enlisting (only single nurses could enlist!) and where she is commemorated in the Caulfield RSL. The date is 12th February - but no year is given. However, given that she later talks about AIF nurses being chosen to attend the Coronation, the year is 1937 and the Coronation is that of George VI on 12 May, 1937 (Edward VIII acceded to the throne in 1936 - but there was no Coronation before h…

This letter is from my personal collection. As I mentioned Charles Barrett as being a friend of Idriess in my last post on the Literary World of Idriess, I thought I would reproduce this letter here (Barrett includes the line, "Like all your other friends" in this letter). It is typed, but signed personally by Charles Barrett and written to "Jack": when he signed a copy of his Isles of the Sun book for Idriess, he addressed it more formally to "Ion Idriess!"

Herald Office is presumably the office of the Melbourne Herald, forerunner of the Herald Sun and the Editor would be of that newspaper, perhaps one and the same as Percy Jenkin, the Magazine Editor mentioned in the letter.

Perhaps Barrett was working in some capacity for the Herald, maybe helping produce articles for its magazine (he wrote articles for Walkabout magazine also: at least one in…

The people who Idriess met or corresponded with (or who wrote to him) was enormous: from premiers and prime ministers to politicians of all persuasions; from royalty to rouseabouts, indigenous people and boundary riders; from military personnel including admirals and generals to privates; from police commissioners to mounted police and patrolmen; from the outback to the cities and suburbs. Eley, Ion Idriess, p.149, even notes that in 1932, HRH The Prince of Wales (later, briefly, to be King Edward VIII), had a thank you (for The Desert Column) sent to Idriess. But in this post I want to look at some of the literary figures around Idriess.

Eley notes the future King Edward VIII's thank you to Idriess: she also notes, in the same place (p.149), that Idriess received a letter from John Masefield, the Poet Laureate. But it is unlikely that Idriess ever met Masefield - but closer to…

Reproduced here is the Colin Roderick April 1951 Walkabout article on Ion Idriess (the date was actually 1st April - but I don't think this was meant to be a joke!). See also my post, Colin Roderick and Ion Idriess.

Of interest also is that Roderick lists at the end "the scores of books that make up his [Idriess'] tally." One would think that as an editor, etc, at Angus and Robertson, Roderick would have a definitive list, yet there are a few anomalies in the list with dates and the titles included (or not included). Thus he has Madman's Island, 1926, as the first book - when we know it was first published 1927. But it was published by Cornstalk, an Imprint division of A and R and Roderick may not have had access to records or a copy of this very limited edition.

Roderick has Must Australia…