Meanjin

A journal known as Meanjin Papers (1940-47), Meanjin (1947-60, 1977- ) and Meanjin Quarterly (1961-76), began in Brisbane in December 1940 with an eight-page edition of eight poems, two each by the editor, C.B. Christesen, James Picot, Brian Vrepont and Paul Grano. Bi-monthly in 1940-42, Meanjin has been quarterly since 1943. It takes its name from the Aboriginal words migan (spike) and chagun (earth, place, land), the composite word 'meanjin' (mianjin), referring to the site where Brisbane was first established. In 1945 Meanjin moved with Christesen to Melbourne, where the University of Melbourne gave it the home it has occupied to the present time. The constant battle for financial viability has seen Meanjin partly supported from Christesen's own resources then assisted by grants-in-aid from the Lockie Bequest, University of Melbourne (since 1949), from the CLF and the Literature Board, and the Ministry for the Arts, Victoria. Meanjin certainly owed its survival to its long-standing (1940-74) editor Clem Christesen. He was succeeded by Jim Davidson (1974-82), who changed the appearance of the magazine, introduced new features such as the regular interviews with contemporary writers, but retained much of the traditional Meanjin political stance and interests. In 1982 Judith Brett became editor. Perceiving Meanjin's role as offering 'a broad review of ideas with a strong contemporary focus', she encouraged articles on general cultural matters as well as literary. In 1987 Jenny Lee became Meanjin's fourth editor and continued the journal's traditional role as an organ of socio-political and literary comment as well as creative writing. Christina Thompson became editor in 1994. Opinions of Meanjin's political leanings have ranged from a 'fellow-travelling publication' (the description of James McAuley, editor of Meanjin's right-wing rival Quadrant) to Christesen's own phrase, 'democratic left of centre', which more accurately describes its liberal humanist stance. Meanjin's task, according to Christesen in his 1951 commentary 'The Wound as the Bow' on the magazine's first decade of existence, was to offer 'disinterested criticism that is interested in all pertinent ideas', to be 'flexible because of its inflexible sincerity' and 'as a matter of principle' to be 'unattached to any one principle'. Other judgements have obviously differed. Financial support was with-held in 1948-49, and during the 1950s political and intellectual opposition to the Meanjin stance became widespread. The number and intensity of its polemical articles increased in the late 1960s with the Vietnam War, and Christesen, on his retirement in 1973, is reputed to have indicated (in a letter to Jim Cairns) his satisfaction that he did 'not allow Meanjin to become a right-wing Quadrant type of magazine'. Although Meanjin has regularly published or focused on overseas writing, its major literary importance has been in its publication of Australian poetry and short fiction and its establishment of a body of seminal criticism on a wide range of Australian writers. A review of arts and letters for much of its life, it has also paid attention to music, cinema and the other arts, and has periodically investigated contemporary Australian society, as in its 'Austerica' and 'Godzone' series in the 1960s and its 'State of the Nation' articles in the 1970s. Important new work by established writers such as A.D. Hope, James McAuley, Douglas Stewart, Judith Wright, Patrick White, Randolph Stow, and by younger writers such as Frank Moorhouse, Les Murray and others has been published in Meanjin. Special numbers of Meanjin have been devoted to writers, e.g. Joseph Furphy (3, 1943) and Vance Palmer (2, 1959); genres, e.g. Australian theatre and drama (3, 1964); Aboriginal writing (4, 1977); and traditions, e.g. the 'St Petersburg or Tinsel Town' issue on cultural traditions in Sydney and in Melbourne (1, 1981). On Native Grounds (1968), edited by Christesen, and Sideways from the Page (1983), a selection of Davidson's interviews with writers, are both volumes which reprint material first published in Meanjin. The Meanjin Press, also associated with the journal, published several volumes in the 1940s, e.g. Judith Wright's The Moving Image (1948) and Nettie Palmer's Fourteen Years (1948). Lynne Strahan's Just City and the Mirrors: Meanjin Quarterly and the Intellectual Front, 1940-65, a history of Meanjin and the literary life of that first quarter-century of the journal's existence, was published in 1984. In 1990 Meanjin's fiftieth anniversary was celebrated with the publication of The Temperament of Generations: Fifty Years of Meanjin, an anthology of essays, poetry, fiction and correspondence from the journal's archives, edited by Jenny Lee, Phillip Mead and Gerald Murnane. Clement Semmler's review of that anthology, Quadrant (July 1991), provides another significant account of Meanjin, its role and history.

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