Gift of Painting Commissioned for Xavier Herbert’s <i>Poor Fellow My Country</i>

The University of Queensland Library will celebrate the gift of Mr Ken Wilder and Mrs Jean Wilder of a painting by Ray Crooke. The Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay will unveil the painting today at 11.15 in the Fryer Library Reading Room.

The painting was commissioned by William Collins Publishers Ltd for the jacket cover of Poor Fellow My Country and presented to Ken Wilder, Managing Director of Collins, when he retired.

The gift has been donated in memory of Ken and Jean Wilder’s son, Christopher.

The Fryer Library, a branch of the University of Queensland Library, holds a significant collection of papers of Xavier Herbert.

The collection consists of notebooks, drafts, proofs and other papers relating to Poor Fellow My Country, Disturbing Element and Soldiers` Women, together with correspondence, photographs, and taped interviews.

Herbert is but one significant Australian writer whose papers and manuscripts are held in the Fryer Library. Others include Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Janette Turner Hospital, Peter Carey, Frank Moorhouse, Bruce Dawe and Gwen Harwood.

The Fryer Library collection also includes papers relating to selected other topics, for example trade unions, communism, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, minority groups, theatre and architectural records, where they focus on Queensland or Queenslanders.

Donations of papers relating to its collecting interests are eagerly sought and greatly appreciated.

Media: for more information please contact Peter McCutcheon on 07 3365 1088