Peter Pierce

Peter Pierce took a first class degree in Arts from the University of Tasmania and then went on a Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he completed his M.Litt. thesis on Rider Haggard under the supervision of J.C. Maxwell. After declining a lectureship at the University of Birmingham, he returned to Australia where he taught at the Universities of Tasmania and Melbourne (as Lockie Fellow and Lecturer in Creative Writing and Australian Literature), the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra and then (as Senior Lecturer) at Monash University. From 1996-2006 he was Professor of Australian Literature at James Cook University. After retirement, he held an Adjunct Chair at Monash University.

His main publications include Australian Melodramas: Thomas Keneally’s Fiction (1995), The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety (1999), From Go to Whoa: A Compendium of the Australian Turf (1994), Donnini’s Pasta (1984),Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam (1991, as co-author and co-editor), The Poets’ Discovery: Nineteenth Century Australia in Verse (1990, as co-editor). He was also General Editor of The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (1987) and of The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009). His main research interests are literary history, Australian literature (especially nineteenth-century), war literature, melodrama. He has also reviewed extensively for newspapers and journals for more than 40 years.