Women's History Month Heritage WalkCivic Square, March 2022 |  |
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this Heritage Walk contains images and names of deceased people.
Dorothy Green (1915-1991)
Poet, Literary Critic, Academic and Peace Activist
A promising mezzo-soprano and international representative swimmer, Dorothy Green née Auchterlonie is best remembered as a poet, literary critic, academic, and peace activist.
The Auchterlonie family migrated from England in 1927. Dorothy attended the University of Sydney where she studied English, French and Philosophy while also working as a teacher. Her first poetry was published in this period. In 1938 Dorothy was appointed co-editor the literary journal Hermes and won a gold medal in swimming at the Empire Games in Sydney. Dorothy taught at high schools until becoming a journalism cadet in 1941 with the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Taking a position as a broadcast journalist with the ABC, she set up the newsroom in Brisbane, reporting on the war in the Pacific from 1942.
In 1944 Dorothy married Henry M Green (1881-1962) with whom she had two children. Barred from full-time work once she married, Dorothy continued with freelance journalism and literary criticism, returning to teaching in 1955, when she was appointed to the Presbyterian Girls’ College in Warwick where she taught and was co-principal until 1960.
In 1961 Dorothy was the first female lecturer appointed at Monash University. She specialised in literary criticism of Australian authors at a time when the cultural cringe marginalised local writers. In 1964 she began teaching at the ANU and continued to publish poetry and literary criticism. Her award-winning biography of Henry Handel Richardson was the first full-length study of a female Australian writer. From 1977 to 1980 Dorothy lectured at Duntroon under the University of NSW.
Dorothy’s religious values underpinned her activism. Among the organisations in which she was active, were the Australian Council of Churches, the Australian Association of Armed Neutrality, Nuclear Disarmament Party, Writers Against Nuclear Arms and Writers for an Ecologically Sustainable Population. In 1984 Dorothy Green was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) and in 1998 was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for her service to literature, teaching and writing.
Select Bibliography
Photograph courtesy Australian National University Archives.
Australian Dictionary of Biography
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Header photograph: March by Women's Employment Rights Campaign from the ACT Health Authority to the CES building, 2 December 1977. ACT Heritage Library, Canberra Times Collection, 006515