The Association for the Study of Australian Literature: Conference in Honour of Professor Elizabeth Webby.

In early February a Conference was held at the University of Sydney to Honour the retiring Professor of Australian Literature, Elizabeth Webby. It was attended by a very large number of her past students, colleagues and friends of Australian Literature. Professor Webby has been the Professor for many years and has worked tirelessly in teaching, promoting and writing about our literature. Her friendly approach to her work has ensured that there are many disciples of literature now in the community and her work will endure for many years to come.

There were a large number of papers presented during the three days. Perhaps the highlights of the papers for me were the three papers on Henry Lawson concentrating on his period in London. Dr. Meg Tasker, Dr. Lucy Sussex and Professor John Barnes managed to put to rest many of the stories and myths about the 'failure' of Lawson during his time in London.

I must mention my own paper 'John Lang and the Early Sydney Poets'. It was Elizabeth Webby who first brought to my notice the large number of poets both good and bad, who published their verses in the early newspapers. Her book called Early Australian Poetry. An Annotated Bibliography remains the standard work on the subject.

There were a number of other papers on nineteenth century writers.

In addition there were many papers on the more modern writers with a special session on Patrick White. This was before the recent exciting acquisition of the Patrick White manuscripts by the National Library of Australia proving that you can not always believe what writers say about their works. White claimed that he had destroyed them all but they have now turned up safe and sound, a large archive for future scholars to work on.