Osborne, Roger (2026) Book Review of "A.D. Hope: A Life" by Susan Lever. Melbourne, La Trobe University Press, 2026. ISBN: 9781760645885. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 26 (1). pp. 1-2.

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Abstract

The portrait on the cover of A.D. Hope: A Life by Susan Lever captures the biographical subject in his late sixties, about to enter the last third of his life. With pen in hand and the accoutrements of authorship nearby, the author seems caught in the very act of composition or revision, gazing at the viewer in a moment of interruption. We might think of Susan Lever’s biography of Alec Derwent Hope as an assembly of such moments, each moment arresting the subject and fleshing it out with a biographical narrative that guides the reader through not only the life of the author, but also the literary cultures the author lived through as both a poet and a critic. Lever assembles her version of Hope’s life with productive readings of archival materials that are enhanced by perceptive readings of his published works to produce a comprehensive portrait of a twentieth century man of letters, for readers of the twenty-first century. After seeing several planned biographies of Hope fall by the wayside, Lever has taken on the job to position Hope more firmly and clearly in cultural memory and, in the process, make an argument for the value of doing so.

Item ID:	94029
Item Type:	Article (Book Review)
ISSN:	1833-6027
Copyright Information:	© 2026 the author. Articles are made available under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.
Date Deposited:	15 Sep 2026 00:29
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 100%
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