New England Lives III

Abstract

This collection of regionally based biographic essays constitutes the third such book to be assembled and produced as a result of a special collaborative project between the University of New England and the Armidale and District Historical Society. The creative purpose - one inaugurated and generously funded by the University - is and will remain the same as it was in the earlier anniversary year, 1998 - to further and enhance mutual scholarly endeavour, as well as to enhance the general dialogue with the surrounding community. Pleasingly this somewhat delayed collection of regional portraits is being assembled in the 80th year since the founding of the Armidale Teachers' College in 1928, and the 70th since the 1938 commencement of classes at the University of New England University College, itself also an outreaching initiative, but from the University of Sydney. The present project's driving force, a close and dynamic co-operation with the Armidale and District Historical Society, is peculiarly appropriate since that mature organization itself came into being as the resultant of two catalysing forces, - the first, the energetic collection – and complementary drive for the retention in the region - of all locally generated and preserved archives; and the second, the equally representative community-academe 1950-1960s groups based in the foundling University who constituted the first - and long the only - non-metropolitan committee selecting and nominating both subjects and writers for the then new national research effort, the 'Australian Dictionary of Biography'.