The Ern Malley Affair

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Dear Sir, When I was going through my bother s things after his death, I found some poetry he had written. I am no judge of it myself ' In 1943, Max Harris, editor of the literary journal Angry Penguins, received a letter containing a collection of poetry which he read with mounting excitement. As Harris recalled later- I was immediately impressed that here was a poet of tremendous power, working through a disciplined and restrained kind of statement into the deepest wells of human experience. Less than a year later his great discovery not just the poems but even Ern Malley himself - was revealed to be the literary hoax of the twentieth century , perpetrated by poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart. Michael Heyward s brilliant, meticulously researched account of the scandal, THE ERN MALLEY AFFAIR, was published in 1993 to international acclaim and is proudly reissued in 2003 by Vintage.