But Not for Love: Stories of Marjorie Barnard and M. Barnard Eldershaw (1988)

This volume seems to have been the first fruit of a career spent in trying to keep returning these writers to the public consciousness. Robert Darby is the one keeping up the fight, but even he has now seriously diversified into other interests, though he appears to still be occasionally venturing into this territory. It was published the year after Marjorie Barnard died (and thirty-odd years after Flora Eldershaw's death). What is collected here is most of what was not yet in book form in their work in the short story. Barnard Eldershaw had planned a short story volume in the early 30s which was rejected around the traps of London. Barnard on her own published a magnificent one in Australia only in 1943, The Persimmon Tree, which Virago republished with a couple of extras thrown in in the 80s. An Australian publisher had planned another in 1949 / 1950, which also never eventuated. This volume collects most of what seems from research to have been the proposed contents of the two stillborn volumes, to complement the Virago reprint which was newly available at the time of publication. Darby gives a fascinating history of all the background of publication of various of the stories, why others were rejected, and, most importantly, the attitude of Barnard and Eldershaw to story-writing, and that of the literary world around them. It is astonishing how wrong a lot of people got these stories, including the authors - proof, if more were needed, that writers themselves are not always the best judges of their work from a public perspective. That said, Barnard always seems to have had a special place for the short story in her heart, and despite seeming to droop under the criticism of Vance or Nettie Palmer (for example), kept up her fascination with the form. Eldershaw, as usual, seems a far less easy-to-decipher individual. These stories have a lot of hurt in them, a stormy colour, and troubled contemporary settings which didn't sit well I'm sure with the more larrikinesque bush-yarn expectations of a good number of punters. That they portray the greeny-grey disturbed skies of modern 30s and 40s city life, and its concomitant nervous disorders and banjaxing frustrations, is what brought to them continual criticism of depressiveness, and is what now makes them so wonderful as a vision of alterity to the traditional picture. Add to that the particular and revealing talent of these two writers, who are still not accorded their due, and one has a book filled with rich layering and significance.