Writers Defiled (Security Surveillance of Australian Authors and Intellectuals 1920 - 1960). by Capp, Fiona - 1993

Melbourne: McPhee Gribble / Penguin Books, 1993. Paperback octavo, good plus condition, black & white photos centre spread, pages & inside cover toned as usual, top edge little foxed, minor edgewear. 239 pp. A first report by Fiona Capp on ASIO surveillance of Australian writers with communist sympathies, which until now has remained largely unknown. This spying was a combination of farcical and serious. She reveals ASIO files on Frank Hardy, Dorothy Hewett, Katherine Susanah Prichard, Manning Clark, Judah Waten, Alan Marshall, Jean Devanny, Clem and Nina Christesen, Stephen Murray-Smith and Vance Palmer. ASIO also had extensive interest in the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) and the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF).