Ann Luckett Blake

Background

Ann Blake was born in 1941 in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Ann Blake was the daughter of Eric William and Sybil Pauline. Eric William was a cabinet maker. Sybil Pauline was a research biochemist.

Education

Ann Blake studied with honors at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1963. In 1966 Ann got a Bachelor of Letters.

Career

Ann Blake was a writer. From 1967 till 1969 she was a tutor in Extra-Mural Department at the University of London. In 1969 Ann became a senior tutor at the University of Melbourne. At La Trobe University in Bundoora Ann Blake was a lecturer, then she became a senior lecturer from 1970 till 1999. From 1996 till 1998 Ann worked as an associate dean on the faculty of humanities.

Ann Blake was also a contributor to Menu for Murder: Food, Feminism and Felony (stories), Sisters in Crime (Melbourne), 1994, and to Cambridge Guide to Writing by Women, edited by Lorna Sage, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Ann was also a contributor of essays to several works on William Shakespeare, including Shakespeare: Readers, Audi ences, Players, edited by R. S. White, Charles Edelman, and Christopher Worthen, University of Western Australia Press, 1998. She has contributed articles to numerous periodicals, including Meridian, Review of English Studies, Yearbook of English Studies, Theatre Notebook, and Australian Literary Studies.

Achievements

• Ann Blake was a master of her art. She was renowned for her contribution to writing essays to several works on William Shakespeare, including Shakespeare: Readers, Audiences, Players. Now Shakespeare's works are classics and everybody knows them.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Christina Stead's Politics of Place

    (This study breaks new ground in its concentration on Engl...)

    1999
  • England Through Colonial Eyes in Twentieth-Century Fiction

    (Much attention has focused on the imperial gaze at coloni...)

    2001

Views

Writer Ann Blake examines the life of the expatriate author in Christina Stead’s Politics of Place. Kerryn Goldsworthy noted in Australian Book Review that Hazel Rowley’s biography of Stead is “generally accepted... as definitive,” but that a criticism of Rowley’s book, particularly by Michael Wilding, was that she had not covered the political aspects of Stead’s work. Goldsworthy called the title of Blake’s work “misleading,” saying that Blake concentrates primarily on Stead’s portrayal of England and its people in Stead’s fiction. However, Goldsworthy noted that Blake’s book is appropriate for the general reader and that Blake is generous in crediting others, particularly Rowley, Wilding, and Diana Brydon, whose works she acknowledges as being the basis of her own. And Goldsworthy praised the “useful” chronology, bibliography, and index, and said the book, “while it does only a limited amount of justice to its own promising thesis, should be of considerable interest.” A reviewer for Australian said Blake shows readers that Stead’s post-war residence in England was largely due to her husband’s political beliefs, which required the move from the United States. However, the reviewer noted of Stead: “England and the English are familiars with whom her ties, like those of fellow expatriate writer Jack Lindsay, are circumstantial rather than preferential.” The reviewer called Christina Stead’s Politics of Place an “excellent study.”

Quotations: “My interests as a writer precisely reflect where I’ve lived. My interest in Shakespeare and the plays on the stage began with going to the theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon at the age of eight. My first husband’s being an Australian explains to a great extent why I’ve spent half my time in Melbourne, and why I’ve thought and written about emigration, postimperial relations, and belonging. This led to Christina Stead, one of the greatest Australian novelists, herself an expatriate and a penetrating critic of the English and of British colonialism.”

Interests

• theatre, plays, books

Connections

Ann Blake married William Richard Blake in 1966. He was a medical practitioner and researcher. William was deceased in 1981. Then Ann married Derick Marsh in 1984. He was a professor of English. From the first marriage, Ann had got Thomas, William, Julian.

Father:

Eric William

Mother:

Sybil Pauline

Late Husband:

William Richard Blake

Son:

Thomas Blake

Son:

William Blake

Son:

Julian Blake

husband:

Derick Marsh

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, TV, & Other Fields