Xavier Herbert

Xavier Herbert was born Alfred Jackson on 15 May 1901 in Geraldton, Western Australia. He was the son of Amy Victoria Scammell and John Jackson, an auctioneer. However, his father was almost certainly Benjamin Francis Herbert, a Welsh-born engine driver. Amy and Benjamin had three more children, and the family moved to Fremantle in 1912, his parents marrying in 1917. Not surprisingly perhaps, the theme of illegitimacy in the larger context of Australia’s historical relationship to Britain and its mistreatment of Indigenous Australians is explored in his work.

At the age of 14 Herbert started work in a chemist shop. After qualifying as a pharmacist, Herbert moved to Melbourne to study medicine in 1925. He commenced his writing career while in Melbourne, publishing his first story in Australian Journal in 1926 under the pseudonym Herbert Astor.  He withdrew from his university course almost immediately and moved to Sydney before travelling further north. By 1927 he was in Darwin, working alternatively as a pharmacist, railway fettler and pearl diver.

Herbert sailed for England in 1930 in the hope of furthering his literary career. He wrote the novel Black Velvet on the voyage. He also met Sarah ‘Sadie’ Cohen née Norden (1899-1979) on the voyage. Sadie was returning to England after a failed marriage in Australia. With her support, Herbert wrote Capricornia. In 1932 Herbert shipped it around various English publishers but it rejected because of its excessive length. Herbert returned to Australia that year. He worked in Sydney as a garage attendant and in Darwin as a pharmacist, miner, union organiser and superintendent of an Aboriginal compound. After some shortening and revision Capricornia was finally published in 1938. He promptly won the Commonwealth Sesquicentenary Literary Competition and the Australian Literary Society’s Gold Medal.  

Herbert spent the next four decades trying to write a comparable novel to Capricornia. After a number of failures, he published Poor Fellow My Country to great acclaim in 1975, which won that year’s Miles Franklin Award. At 1,463 pages and 850,000 words it is one of the longest novels ever published in English.The novel famously decries Australia as a land ‘Despoiled by White Bullies, Thieves, and Hypocrites’. Herbert became a vocal supporter of the Land Rights Movement in the 1970s, reflecting the affection for and understanding of Indigenous Australians that he had developed in his youth and travels.

In the early 1980s, after rejecting the award of AO because of his republican leanings, he began work on another novel that was meant to continue the criticism of Australian society that his two famous novels had begun. Early in 1984 he moved to the Northern Territory. He died on 10 November that year in Alice Springs and was buried in the local cemetery after a funeral ceremony at which Kungarakany elders and Patrick Dodson officiated.

1. Greg Barns, ‘Xavier Herbert Remembered’, On Line Opinion, 15/11/2004: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2746
2. George Negus interviews Frances De Groen, Craig Munro and Laurie Hergenhan about Xavier Herbert: http://www.abc.net.au/gnt/history/Transcripts/s1224186.htm

Biographical summary derived from:

Penny Middlemiss’ Website: http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/herbertx/herbertx.html

Russell McDougall, 'Herbert, Albert Francis Xavier (1901 - 1984)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, Melbourne University Press.

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