Peter Robb (author)

Last updated

Peter Robb (born 1946) is an Australian author, who has also written under the pen names B. Selkie and Ross Edwards.

Contents

Early life and education

Robb was born 1946 in Toorak, Melbourne. He spent his early years in Australia and was educated in New Zealand. [1]

As a young man he was involved in a small Trotskyist organisation named the Communist League, which was sympathetic to the Fourth International, between 1972 and 1976. [2] Robb helped produced its newspaper, Militant, and was also key in the departure of a section of the Communist League's leadership, through absorption by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1976. The group was co-founded by Queensland doctor John McCarthy (1948–2008), who played a major role in integrating the CL and the SWP, [3] and activist and later academic Marcia Langton was the third member of the CL committee. [4] McCarthy broke away from the SWP (then Socialist Workers League) to create CL, and then, along with Robb and Langton, rejoined the SWP four years later, in November 1976. [2]

Career

Robb left Australia for Europe in 1971, working there for several years before returning to Australia. He moved to Italy in 1978 and spent 15 years there, living much of the time in Naples [1] and southern Italy, interspersed with sojourns to Brazil. At the end of 1992 he returned to Sydney. His experiences in southern Italy were recounted in his first book, Midnight in Sicily (1996). [5] [6]

His second book, M , a biography of the Italian artist Caravaggio, was published in Australia in 1998, and went on to provoke controversy when it was published in Britain two years later. [7] [ clarification needed ]

In December 1999, he published Pig's Blood and Other Fluids, a collection of three crime fiction novellas. [7]

In October 2003, Robb published his fourth book, A Death in Brazil. [7]

In October 2010, his book Street Fight in Naples was published by Allen & Unwin.[ citation needed ]

Some of his works were written under the pen names B. Selkie and Ross Edwards. [1]

Academia

Robb has taught at the University of Melbourne, the University of Oulu in Finland, and the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples. [7]

Recognition and awards

Selected works

Books

Essays

Related Research Articles

The Wiradjuri people are a group of Aboriginal Australian people from central New South Wales, united by common descent through kinship and shared traditions. They survived as skilled hunter-fisher-gatherers, in family groups or clans, and many still use knowledge of hunting and gathering techniques as part of their customary life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Spira</span> 20th century animal rights advocate

Henry Spira was an American activist for socialism and animal rights, who is regarded by some as one of the most effective animal advocates of the 20th century.

Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.

<i>Asimovs Science Fiction</i> American science fiction magazine

Asimov's Science Fiction is an American science fiction magazine edited by Sheila Williams and published by Dell Magazines, which is owned by Penny Press. It was launched as a quarterly by Davis Publications in 1977, after obtaining Isaac Asimov's consent for the use of his name. It was originally titled Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and was quickly successful, reaching a circulation of over 100,000 within a year, and switching to monthly publication within a couple of years. George H. Scithers, the first editor, published many new writers who went on to be successful in the genre. Scithers favored traditional stories without sex or obscenity; along with frequent humorous stories, this gave Asimov's a reputation for printing juvenile fiction, despite its success. Asimov was not part of the editorial team, but wrote editorials for the magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Democratic Socialist Perspective</span> Defunct Marxist group in Australia

The Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) was an Australian socialist political group. It was founded in 1972 as the Socialist Workers League (SWL), changing its name to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) a few years later. In the early 1990s it was once again renamed, as the Democratic Socialist Party, and in 2003 it became the Democratic Socialist Perspective.

The Communist League in Canada was founded as the "Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire" (RWL) in 1977 as the result of a merger of the League for Socialist Action (LSA), the Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG) and the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionaire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian literature</span> Literature by Australian writers

Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bobbi Sykes</span> Australian poet and author

Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes was an Australian poet and author. She was a lifelong campaigner for Indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women's rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Hollenbeck</span> American journalist

Don Hollenbeck was a CBS newscaster, commentator, and associate of Edward R. Murrow and Fred W. Friendly. He died from fuel gas inhalation as it was discovered that his stove and oven had been turned on but not lit. Consequently, Hollenbeck's death was ruled a suicide. Reasons that it might have been suicide included health problems, depression, a broken marriage, and frequent published attacks by Jack O'Brian, a Hearst columnist and supporter of Joseph McCarthy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcia Langton</span> Australian Aboriginal scholar and activist

Marcia Lynne Langton is an Aboriginal Australian writer and academic. As of 2022 she is the Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Langton is known for her activism in the Indigenous rights arena.

Michael Duffy is an Australian author and former journalist and broadcaster. He and his wife the artist Alex Snellgrove own the publishing company Duffy & Snellgrove, which published the first books by Peter Robb, Ashley Hay, John Birmingham and Rosalie Ham. Other authors included Les Murray, Mungo MacCallum and John Olsen. The company stopped publishing new titles in 2005.

Nicolas Rothwell is a journalist and the Northern Australia correspondent for The Australian newspaper. He is also an award-winning writer with two novels and several works of non-fiction to his name.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK.

The Fourth International (FI), founded in 1938, is a Trotskyist international. In 1963, following a ten-year schism, the majorities of the two public factions of the Fourth International, the International Secretariat and the International Committee, reunited, electing a United Secretariat of the Fourth International. In 2003, the United Secretariat was replaced by an Executive Bureau and an International Committee, although some other Trotskyists still refer to the organisation as the USFI or USec.

The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), earlier known as the International Spartacist tendency is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL (FI) in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Workers Party (UK)</span> Far-left political party in the United Kingdom

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Workers Party (United States)</span> Political party in the United States

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a Trotskyist party in the United States. Originally a group in the Communist Party USA that supported Leon Trotsky against Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, it places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. The SWP publishes The Militant, a weekly newspaper that dates back to 1928. It also maintains Pathfinder Press.

<i>Midnight in Sicily</i> 1996 book by Peter Robb

Midnight in Sicily is an English-language book on Italy written by Peter Robb. The book was first published in 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous Australian literature</span> Literature produced by Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australian literature is the fiction, plays, poems, essays and other works authored by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

Chelsea Louise Polk is a Canadian author of fantasy fiction, best known for the debut novel Witchmark which won the World Fantasy Award in 2019. A blend of murder mystery and fantasy, Witchmark is a set in a gaslamp secondary world and is followed by two sequels, Stormsong and Soulstar.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Peter Robb". AustLit . 14 February 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  2. 1 2 "Whither the Communist League?" (PDF). Australasian Spartacist: 6. December 1976.
  3. ↑ "Vale John McCarthy, 1948". Green Left. 8 November 2008. Archived from the original on 24 October 2023. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  4. ↑ "More Communist League members join SWP" (PDF). Direct Action : 13. 16 December 1976. Their joining forces with the SWP followed the fusion on November 20 [1976] of three other former leaders of the CL, John McCarthy, Peter Robb, and Marcia Langton,...
  5. ↑ Robb, P. (1999). Midnight in Sicily. Vintage departures. Vintage Books. ISBN   978-0-375-70458-1 . Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  6. ↑ "Midnight in Sicily" (catalogue entry). Trove . Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Peter Robb". Duffy & Snellgrove. 26 January 2001. Archived from the original on 6 September 2005. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  8. ↑ Peter Robb at the State Library of Victoria [ dead link ]
  9. ↑ Online version is titled "Art Gallery NSW's Michael Brand".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.