James McAuley was born in 1917 in Sydney, Australia and had a successful career as both a poet and right-wing intellectual. He is best known for orchestrating the famous Ern Malley literary hoax in 1944, intended to expose modernist poetry, though the poems themselves went on to be seriously studied. Throughout his life he published several poetry collections and works of literary criticism, holding academic positions, until his death in 1976 from cancer. While seen as a major Australian poet in his time, debates over his political views and role in the Ern Malley hoax have since overshadowed critical interest in his own work.

1. James McAuley, photographer unknown
James McAuley was born in Lakemba, in the western suburbs of Sydney, in 1917,
the son of grazier and real estate speculator, Patrick McAuley, and his wife Mary
(née Judge). He spent most of his childhood at Homebush, where the family moved
after his father’s retirement, and attended Homebush Public School. Displaying
early literary and musical talents, McAuley was sent to the selective public school
Fort Street Boys High School, where he became school captain and won prizes for
his writing; a number of his earliest poems appeared in the school magazine, The
Fortian . In 1935 he matriculated to the University of Sydney, where he studied
English and philosophy. At university he continued to hone his poetic craft,
contributing poems to the student magazine Hermes , where he also became one of
the editors. After graduating with a B.A. (Hons) in 1938, he went on to complete
an M.A., writing a thesis on the influence of symbolism in English, French and
German literature. From the late 1930s he supported himself in various tutoring
and teaching positions, and in 1942 took up a teacher’s scholarship, completed a
Diploma of Education and was appointed to Newcastle Boys Junior High School.
In June 1942 he married a fellow teacher, Norma Elizabeth Abernethy.
In January 1943, McAuley was called up for national service in the Militia, and
quickly transferred to the Australian Imperial Force. In January 1944 he was
commissioned in the Melbourne-based Army Directorate of Civil Affairs, where he
renewed his association with another Fort Street graduate, Harold Stewart. While
working at the Army Directorate in 1944, McAuley and Stewart concocted the
‘Ern Malley’ hoax, intending to expose what they saw as a lack of meaning in
modernist literature and art. The target of the hoax was Max Harris, the Adelaide-
based editor of Angry Penguins magazine and champion of literary modernism.
When Harris took the bait and published the poems of ‘Ern Malley,’ Stewart and
McAuley were (eventually) revealed as the actual authors, and admitted having
concocted a fictitious identity for ‘Ern’ and using partly random composition
methods to produce the poems. While the hoax did cause significant
embarrassment to Harris—and has been seen by some as inhibiting the

2. development of literary modernism in Australia—the poems of ‘Ern Malley’ have
remained in print and continue to be a subject of significant critical debate: a
consequence Stewart and McAuley surely did not intend. In 1946, McAuley
published his first collection of poetry (in his own name), Under Aldebaran .
After the war, McAuley became a lecturer at the Australian School of Pacific
Administration, first in Canberra then Sydney, a position he retained until 1959.
While at the School he became deeply interested in the then Australian
administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea, and was profoundly influenced
by the Roman Catholic missionary archbishop Alain Marie Guynot de Boismenu
(1870–1953). In 1952, McAuley converted to Catholicism, which would
henceforth have a defining influence on his intellectual life. Immersing himself in
Cold War politics, he became associated with the radical Catholic ideologue B.A.
Santamaria, and was instrumental in the anti-Communist agitation that split the
Labor movement and resulted in formation of the Democratic Labor Party in the
mid-1950s. In 1955, he joined the Australian branch of the Congress for Cultural
Freedom, a conservative, anti-Communist organisation, funded in part by the CIA,
and became editor of its journal, Quadrant . McAuley’s reputation as a poet was
furthered with the publication of his second collection, A Vision of Ceremony , in
1956, and his credentials as a conservative public intellectual were bolstered by the
publication of a collection of critical essays, The End of Modernity: Essays on
Literature, Art and Culture (1959).
In 1960 McAuley and his family moved to Hobart, where he took up a position at
the University of Tasmania, and the following year he was appointed to the chair
of English at the University. Despite his academic duties he continued to write and
publish poetry, including his epic poem Captain Quiros (1964), and the collection
Surprises of the Sun (1969), which included a poem sequence ‘On the Western
Line,’ based on McAuley’s childhood experiences in the Western suburbs of
Sydney. During the 1960s he also published a number of critical works, including a
monograph on the work of Christopher Brennan (1963), a general introduction to
poetics, A Primer of English Versification (1966), and a book-length study of
Australian poetry entitled The Personal Element in Australian Poetry (1970). He
did not abandon his interest in politics, publishing and organising in support of
Australian involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1970, McAuley was diagnosed with bowel cancer. After recovering from the
illness, he devoted increased time and energy to ensuring his literary legacy. His
Collected Poems appeared in 1971, and was a joint winner of the Grace Leven
Prize in that year. In 1975, he published a second collection of his essays, The
Grammar of the Real: Selected Prose, 1959–1974 , and a collection of his critical
work on Australian poetry, A Map of Australian Verse: The Twentieth Century .
Two collections of his later poetry appeared in 1976: Time Given: Poems 1970–
1976 , and Music Late at Night: Poems 1970–1973 . Early in 1976, McAuley was
diagnosed with liver cancer; he died on 15 October that year, in Hobart. His

3. posthumous publications included the poetry collection, ‘A World of its Own’
(1977), a collection of his writing edited by his long-time friend Leonie Kramer (
James McAuley: Poetry, Essays and Personal Commentary , UQP, 1988), and a
revised volume of his Collected Poems (1994).
A significant and often controversial figure in the Australian post-War literary
landscape, McAuley’s achievement as a poet has in recent years often been
overshadowed by debates over his role as a right-wing intellectual. While
unquestionably seen as a major Australian poet in his own time, it is a lasting irony
that critical interest in McAuley’s work since his death has been largely eclipsed
by the interest in his short-lived creation ‘Ern Malley.’
Poems on this website by arrangement with the Licensor, The James McAuley
Estate, c/- Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd.