Guide to the Papers of Judith Rodriguez
MS 9295
National Library of Australia View Catalogue Record
Collection Summary
- Creator
- Judith Rodriguez
- Title
- Papers of Judith Rodriguez
- Date Range
- 1988-1997
- Collection Number
- MS 9295
- Extent
- 2.82 metres (13 boxes)
- Language of Materials
- English
- Repository
- National Library of AUstralia
Introduction
Scope and Contents
The papers are a record of Rodriguez's editorship of the Penguin Poetry Series, 1989-97, and Australian poetry in general over that period. The correspondence is with contributors to the Series and with potential contributors, editorial staff, and with the head of Penguin, Bob Sessions, on the closure of the Series.
Also included are rejection letters with reports, prose manuscripts, reviews, and working files on the Series, which include progress lists and publishers' lists, sales figures and invoices.
Conditions Governing Access
Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2199725).
Conditions Governing Use
Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.
Preferred Citation
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Judith Rodriguez, National Library of Australia, MS 9295, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The papers were donated to the Library by Ms Judith Rodriguez in 1998 under the Cultural Gifts Program.
Biographical Note
Judith Rodriguez , who began writing poetry at the age of 15, was born in Perth in 1936. She studied at the University of Queensland and later lectured there, and at La Trobe University. Since 1974 her work has become widely known to readers of Australian poetry. Her published works include Nu-plastik fanfare red (1973), Water life (1976), Shadow on glass (1978), Mudcrab at Gambaro's (1980), Witch heart (1982), Mrs Noah and the Minoan queen (1983), Floridean poems (1986), and The cold (1992).
Rodriguez was invited to initiate the Penguin Books Australia Australian Poetry Series, and was consulting editor from 1989 to its closure in 1997.
The large amount of correspondence is in several sections. In the main alphabetical sequence (Files 1-53) the writers have individual files, which often contain manuscript or copied verse. In the second alphabetical sequence (Files 54-65), the correspondence is mainly with potential contributors to the Penguin Poetry Series. The two files of editorial correspondence (Files 66-67) include the decision to end the Series and the termination of Rodriguez's contract with Penguin. Files titled 'acceptances', 'anthologies' and 'prose mss', a miscellaneous file containing Rodriguez's comments on brief manuscripts, complete the record of the Poetry Series (Files 68-70).
In the working files of the Poetry Series (Files 71-74), there is a draft contract with Penguin, invoices, progress lists of the Series, publishers' lists and notes, and reviews.
In addition there is a prose manuscript 'The monkey's mask' by Dorothy Porter, which was not accepted for publication, an unidentified manuscript, and three manuscripts of Martin R. Johnson's poems (Files 75-77).