Australian Dictionary of Biography

Geoffrey Dutton, c.1951

National Library of Australia

Geoffrey Piers Henry Dutton (1922–1998), writer, editor, and publisher, was born on 2 August 1922 at his family’s sheep property Anlaby, near Kapunda, South Australia, fourth and youngest child of Henry Hampden Dutton, grazier, and his wife, Emily, née Martin, both South Australian born. Along with his sister Bryony (Chibs), whom he regarded as his ‘first companion’ (Dutton 1994, [v]), Geoffrey was initially educated at home by an English nurse and a German governess, and amidst Anlaby’s abounding library: ‘I was born in a house of books’ (Dutton 1994, 3), he recalled. He attended Wykeham preparatory boarding school, Belair (1930), and Geelong Church of England Grammar School (1931–39), where he began writing poetry.

Dutton enrolled at the University of Adelaide in 1940 but, World War II having broken out, briefly served part time in the Citizen Military Forces before enlisting in the Royal Australian Air Force on 24 May 1941. He qualified as a pilot in November. While flying near Geelong, Victoria, on 24 December he engaged in unauthorised manoeuvres with other aircraft, one of which crashed, killing its two occupants. In February 1942 he was court-martialled for his involvement in the incident and sentenced to forty-two days’ detention. Following his release, he resumed his training and in September 1943 was commissioned. He performed instructional duties in Australian until 1 August 1945 when he began a two-month operational tour in Bougainville with No. 17 Air Observation Post Flight. Promoted to flight lieutenant in September, he was demobilised in Australia on 25 October. His first book, the poetry collection Night Flight and Sunrise (1944), drew substantially on his wartime flying experiences. He had married Adelaide-born university student Ninette Clarice Florence Trott on 31 July 1944 at Christ Church, North Adelaide. After the war he returned to the University of Adelaide briefly, before reading English literature at Magdalen College, Oxford (1946–49; BA, 1949). He travelled extensively in Europe before returning to Australia to teach English at the University of Adelaide (1955–62).

As a student Dutton befriended Max Harris, editor of the literary magazine Angry Penguins, which had been made famous by the 1944 anti-modernist Ern Malley hoax. Dutton wryly recognised that, in the Angry Penguins group, ‘We were all for internationalism and detested Australian nationalism’ (Dutton 1994, 86). Repudiating the parochial conservatism of his class and upbringing, he became a passionate advocate for modernism. He reflected later that ‘I don’t think any of us had even read a poem by the greatest Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor’ (Dutton 1994, 86), who had introduced modernism into Australian poetry. Dutton went on to publish a biography of Slessor (1991) and, with Dennis Haskell, to edit a scholarly edition of Slessor’s Collected Poems (1994).

At university Dutton had been scandalised by the absence of Australian literature, history, and culture from the curriculum. Much of his life’s work was dedicated to establishing the worth of Australian literature and art, locally and globally. To that end, he co-founded and edited the journal Australian Letters (1957), and the Australian Book Review (1961). He established Penguin Australia with Harris and Brian Stonier in 1963, then Sun Books in 1965, and participated in the major literary organisations of his time, including the Australian Council for the Arts, and the Australia Council’s Literature Board. Even as late as 1976, he felt compelled to argue that ‘it is not parochial to claim that there is a good body of Australian writing that will stand comparison with that of any other country … Men and women are born universal, but they live particular days’ (Dutton 1976, 7–8). He edited literary supplements at the Bulletin (1980–85) and the Australian (1985–88).

On broader social issues, Dutton became an ardent advocate for an Australian republic, which led him to resign his membership of the Adelaide Club in 1966 and serve as one of the founding committee members of the Australian Republican Movement from 1991. He marched to protest against the Vietnam War and railed against Australia’s censorship laws.

In his ‘disarmingly frank’ (Semmler 1998, 13) autobiography, Dutton wrote extensively about his many extra-marital relationships: ‘I desperately needed to keep something of myself away from my marriage and … friends, and chose to do it through love affairs’ (Dutton 1994, 218). He and Ninette divorced in 1983. His philandering behaviour ended when, on 4 April 1985, he married the writer Robin Lucas (formerly Baulch) in Sydney. He had sold what remained of Anlaby in 1984; he and Robin moved to Sydney that year, then to Mudgee, New South Wales, in 1988, and finally to the Glasshouse Mountains, Queensland, in 1991.

More than any other Australian writer, Dutton could lay claim to the description ‘Man of Letters’; Clement Semmler regarded him as ‘one of the most prolific, versatile and talented writers in our history’ (Semmler 1998, 13). Over a long career he published more than two hundred books—poetry collections, novels, children’s writing, biographies, literary and art criticism, popular books—and he edited anthologies. Nevertheless, towards the end of his life he concluded, ‘Poetry is my first and last love’ (Dutton 1994, 500); and he continued to refute the conservatism of his upbringing, wishing in his poem ‘New Testament,’ ‘may the untidiness of the wise / Loosen lives done up too tight’ (Dutton 1993, 225).

Dutton knew most of the major Australian writers and painters of his generation and was particularly close to Patrick White until they fell out in 1982. His honours included the Grace Leven poetry prize (1958) for Antipodes in Shoes, the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Christopher Brennan award (1993) for lifetime achievement in poetry, and he was an honorary member of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. He was appointed AO in 1976.

Possessing a genial, outgoing personality, Dutton maintained many friendships; a number of his literary activities involved collaboration. Semmler considered him ‘a splendid conversationalist and raconteur,’ and that his ‘elegance as a writer was a reflection of his personality’ (1998, 13). The poet Thomas Shapcott noted ‘his mop of white hair, his wide welcoming smile, and his tall, slightly stooped figure, elegant and informal’ (1998, 1). While visiting Canberra to conduct research for a new book, Dutton died of a stroke in the Canberra Hospital on 17 September 1998, and was privately cremated. He was survived by Ninette, their children Francis, Teresa, and Samuel, and by Robin. There are portraits of him in the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Clifton Pugh, 1950) and the National Portrait Gallery (Frank Hinder, 1977).