| Abstract: | The whole of this issue of Australian Feminist Studies is devoted to the theme ‘Making us Modern’ guest-edited by Alison Ravenscroft. Modernity was, I have argued myself, an essential element of First-wave Feminism. The articles that Alison has brought togetherm show how mutually imbricated are questions raised by a later feminism and modernism. Alison has written her own introduction for this splendid issue. Accordingly, all that I need to do here is extraneous to it. I want to record our regret at the passing of Oriel Gray, one of Australia's first female playwrights. The Playwrights' Advisory Board voted her work, The Torrents, best play in 1955, alongside Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. She wrote a number of stage plays, worked for radio and television, and published an autobiography—Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman (Penguin Books)—in 1985. I want to record our sadness, too, at the death of Glen Tomasetti, singer, song-writer and author. She wrote poetry, articles and reviews, and two novels: Thoroughly Decent People (1976), and Man of Letters (1981). In the Australian Women's Movement she is best known for one of the protest songs that she wrote in the early 1970s; this one, ‘Don't Be Too Polite, Girls’ has often been played as a kind of Women's Movement anthem. As always, I owe thanks to everyone who contributes to this journal—authors, assessors, editorial advisory collective members, review editor Susan Sheridan, assistant editor Mary Lyons, and, for this issue, my very warm thanks to Alison Ravenscroft. |
