Sydney intellectual radicalism : a quest for anchorage (1935-1945)

Abstract

It is best to start at the beginning by outlining the stages by which this thesis was formulated. My curiosity was initially aroused by the work of anarchist poet Harry Hooton. Hooton's philosophy as expounded in a magazine called

2lst Century: A Magazine of Creative Civilisation, ~ struck me as so extreme in its proclamations of a new urban utopia that I was propelled to inguire further. In so doing, I found myself moving backwards in time to the forties and thirties and in the process discovering that Hooton had crossed paths with a small group of loosely associated young radicals centered around Sydney University in the late thirties and early forties. The group that emerged comprised: Oliver Somerville, a schoolteacher and minor poet, Harold Stewart, poet, James McAuley also a teacher and a poet, Donald Horne an undergraduate and Douglas McCallum, undergraduate.