Bartlett, Robert MerrillBiblio.com
Adamson, BartlettBiblio.com
These Beautiful Women
015745Sydney: Sydneysider Company. Stiff Wrappers. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hodgkinson Roy. The wrappers are foxed else a clean and solid copy. No publishing date given. There is a dedication by Adamson " With affectionate birthday greetings from Rachel and from Bartlett Adamson Sydney 1932." Erotic poetry with illustrations to match. "George Ernest Bartlett Adamson 1884-1951 journalist was born on 22 December 1884 at Cascade Ringarooma Tasmania . About 1914 the family moved to New Zealand. There Adamson became a clerk with the Wellington publishers Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd and later publicity manager for New Zealand Picture Supplies Ltd. Always interested in literature particularly the English Romantics he published a volume of verse Twelve Sonnets 1918. Rejected for military service in 1914 on medical grounds Adamson had been pro-war and anti-Bolshevik. In the 1930s he became an active executive-member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. In the mid-1930s he promoted the communist-sponsored Writers' League later Association which amalgamated with the fellowship in 1938. Although subsequently accused by Miles Franklin and Jean Devanny of factionalism in his activities on the F.A.W. executive as its president Adamson persuaded the government to increase the vote for the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1938 and was to suggest liberal changes embodied in the Obscene and Indecent Publications Amendment Act of 1946. His experience in the Depression his relationship with other writers especially Devanny and his alarm at fascist triumphs in Europe and authoritarian trends in his own country had led him to join the Communist Party of Australia by 1943. Adamson's publications included two collections of leftist political verse a long erotic poem Beyond the Sun privately printed in 1942 bushranger stories an adventure book for boys and miscellaneous works. Most of his vast journalistic output remains uncollected. As a poet he was old-fashioned. He typified the survivor on Sydney's Grub Street the working journalist who could turn his pen to whatever copy was required: in 1939-40 he wrote a poem in praise of airmen for Smith's Weekly and another denouncing the national register for the Workers' Weekly. Genial passionate and sometimes obstinate Adamson was a fighter for civil liberties a hater of wowsers an indulgent and often delightful father and a man who wanted his writing to improve the lot of ordinary people. he died suddenly on 4 November 1951 in Sydney while speaking at the Domain on behalf of the Australian-Soviet Friendship Society. Australian Dictionary of Biography <br/> <br/> Sydneysider Company unknown
