Join the Friends of the National Library and biographer Matthew Lamb for 'a ramble in the mind of an adolescent' as he delves into the young Frank Moorhouse's life and his juvenilia, exploring how this critical period shaped the author and why adolescence deserves more attention in literary biography. 

Frank Moorhouse was legendary in Australian literary and cultural life, the author of a huge and diverse body of work – essays, short stories, journalism, scripts, the iconic Edith Trilogy – an unapologetic activist, intellectual, libertarian and champion of freedom of speech and sexual self-determination. Though he lived his life publicly, his private stories have not been shared, the many paths he forged left unexamined, until recently. The National Library holds Moorhouse’s early papers from when he started writing, aged 12. 

About Matthew Lamb

Matthew Lamb is the author of Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths (Knopf, 2023), the first in a projected two volume cultural biography of Frank Moorhouse. A former editor of Review of Australian Fiction and Island magazines, Matthew has two PhDs, in Literature and Philosophy, respectively. He currently writes the Public Things Newsletter, on the relationship between literary culture and democracy. 

Image: Frank Moorhouse, middle front, 1954. Courtesy Matthew Lamb.