James McAuley was born on 12 October 1917 in Lakemba, Sydney. Between 1935 and 1940 he attended the University of Sydney, studying English, Latin and Philosophy. He became a teacher for two years from 1940, then joined the military service as a research consultant. He then obtained a long-standing post from 1946 to 1960 as a lecturer for the Australian School of Pacific Administration, where he trained district officers for New Guinea. During this period he also became the founding editor of Quadrant in 1956, a magazine which reflected his conservative politics. From 1961 onwards he accepted a post as Reader and then Professor in Poetry at the University of Tasmania. He died in Tasmania on 15 October 1976 after a long battle with cancer.
McAuley was a prolific and successful poet, also writing literary criticism and cultural theory. He also loved music - he played the piano and wrote hymns. His publication list is long and impressive, however, interested readers are directed to his Collected Poems published in 1971. His first volume of poetry, Under Aldebaran (1946) is concerned with “the plenitude of the Christian universe”, a theme that is continued in Captain Quiros (1964), though there are many publications in between those two volumes. Some autobiographical poems may be found in Surprises of the Sun (1969).
McAuley is one-half of the Ern Malley hoax, his co-conspirator being Harold Stewart. In 1944 they created a literary experiment at the expense of Max Harris, editor of the small magazine Angry Penguins. The aim of the hoax was to prove that modernist poets and critics had lost all sense of critical judgment and discernment. It is also proved how far McAuley would go in his attack on modernist poetry. He published a collection of essays, The End of Modernity (1959), which argues for a traditional view of the relationship between art and human experience.
It is unsurprising then that in his own writing McAuley favours traditional verse forms. As well as criticising modern poetry, he also disliked expressionism and surrealism. Critics therefore saw him as reactionary and conservative, and connected this conservatism with his conversion to Catholicism in 1952. His Catholic faith illuminates the poems of A Vision of Ceremony (1956). In this collection, the poet discovers truth rather than invents it, placing poetry within human affairs rather than above them. These poems place man’s true path as recognising the spiritual meaning in life, and finding fulfilment through faith and love.
The volume Captain Quiros (1964) is an old-fashioned epic where Quiros’ voyages correspond with McAuley’s own intellectual explorations. McAuley then moved to a style of poetry that can perhaps be described as modern without giving way to pure subjectivism. In an essay published posthumously, McAuley says: “I cannot pretend that the tension between the modern and the traditional has ceased within myself. I know I have to live in ambiguities and dilemmas, not letting go one end in order to cling with both hands to the other in false simplification”.