Whichever approach is taken, though, comes nowhere near to ‘tracing the development of the author’s canon and the evolution of his reputation’. There is little about the critical and popular response to a writer’s work at the time, or since. I can recall, for example, very few examples that report the sales figures for a book which is, at least, one measure of a writer’s influence. There is also no indication of how much of an author’s body of work is still in print. Instead, what we are given is an outline of each work with some critical comments, and perhaps some general ones about the oeuvre at the end. It is not that this is done badly, but rather that it is done at the expense of an assessment of the writer and his or her place in Australian literature. There must be some reason for yet another compilation on Australian writers, though I am not sure what it is. It is a genre – if it is a genre – that has been done to death. Perhaps the literary biography angle is the reason. It is a pity, then, that the editor has not ensured that her contributors followed the guidelines.

Who qualifies as an Australian writer? For some reason, unexplained by the editor, the first volume in this series was titled ‘Australian Literature’; the following three volumes have been titled ‘Australian Writers’. This implies a broadening of the categories for inclusion. However, this is not reflected in the contents.

The advisory board is quite clear that DLB entries are ‘not limited to “creative writers” but extend to other figures who in their time and in their way influenced the mind of a people. Thus the series encompasses historians, journalists, publishers, book collectors, and screenwriters.’ This scoping note is published at the beginning of each volume, but the injunction has never been followed in the four Australian volumes. I made this point in my review of the third volume (ABR, June–July 2004) and, more in sorrow than in anger, I make it again now.

The editor herself does endorse the advisory board’s view in her introduction to the first volume (Australian Literature, 1788–1914, published in 2001). She states that:

The history of Australian literature is made up of more than just the traditional prose, poetry, and drama … [this volume] attempts to give a comprehensive overview of the literature of the period by inclusion of writers working in genres outside this narrow, ‘high art’ definition.

By way of illustration, she cites the inclusion of Rachel Henning (letter-writer); A.G. Stephens (editor); and Alexander Harris (convict memoirist). Actually, out of forty-one entries in that volume, only eight fall into this category. We read no more on this subject from the editor in subsequent introductions, and for a good reason. The attempt, if indeed there was one, to broaden the range of inclusions is abandoned. In the second volume, P.R. Stephensen is the sole representative of those who are not writers of what the editor calls ‘high art’. In the third volume, there are none.

In this volume, there are none who have not also made a name for themselves as littérateurs. For example, Jennifer Strauss and Michael Wilding are included, and their work as literary critics discussed. The former is also a poet, and the latter has written fiction. Critics such as Andrew Riemer and Peter Craven, on the other hand, are excluded, even though it could be argued they have been much more influential outside the academy – critics who ‘in their time and in their way influenced the mind of a people’, as the advisory board puts it. In fact, apart from those literary critics who also practise the ‘high arts’, there are no other categories of writer represented. There are no biographers, editors, journalists, historians or publishers. Taking the latter category, for example, over the whole four volumes, Stephens and Stephensen are the sole representatives of Australian publishers. How lopsided is that?

The editor’s criterion for inclusion seems to be that you do in fact have to be a writer in the ‘high art’ genre – ‘traditional prose, poetry, and drama’ – even though she explicitly denied this in the first volume. Given this narrow criterion, I have no criticism of those who are included. All the usual suspects are present, plus a good sprinkling of lesser names. The one criticism I have is that no children’s writer is represented. This is a grave omission in a work of reference that purports to represent Australian writers of the last thirty years.

The editor devotes a paragraph in her introduction to the controversy surrounding Helen Demidenko’s The Hand That Signed the Paper (1994). However, Demidenko (Darville) does not appear in the volume. Whatever the merits of her novel may be, it did win our major literary award (Miles Franklin). It also won the The Australian/Vogel Literary Award (which the editor calls the Vogel Prize) for an unpublished manuscript written by an author under thirty-five (the editor says it was for the best first novel). It engendered heated debate, books and articles. The controversy was by no means limited to the literary world. Demidenko ought to be included in a work of reference for the light this incident sheds on the period.

The editor has given any number of excuses to justify the omissions. In Volume Two, she said that omissions were ‘attributable to the usual problems of editorial selection and the more unexpected hindrances of scholarly fashion’, the meaning of which is opaque to say the least. In Volume Three, ‘omissions have occurred as a result of the constraints of space and time’. And in this volume, the editor quotes Dale Spender: ‘[o]ne of the most upsetting features of putting together an anthology is the number of good writers who must be omitted.’ However, this is not an anthology. I think one of the problems all along with this series has been the lack of recognition that this is a work of reference, not an academic compilation of literary criticism.

There are still, though not to the same extent as previously, irritating factual errors – MBE is Member of the Order of the British Empire, not Member of the British Empire (we were all that once); Arthur Philip High School is Arthur Phillip High School because that is the way our first governor spelt his name; the publication date of Dymphna Cusack’s Come in Spinner is 1951, not 1957; and the publication date for Patrick White’s Tree of Man is 1956, not 1955. How can we verify our references if the reference books are in error?

The refusal to adhere to the stated scope of this series, the lack of, or unwillingness to enforce, clear guidelines for contributors, and the presence of too many errors vitiate the Australian volumes of DLB. I can only muster two cheers.