‘We are born to become archives… (although as I think about it – I am already an archive)’ (Frank Moorhouse, private fax, 1994).

Through using libraries and archives, submitting his own papers to various archives, and developing a note-taking system based upon index cards, from which he generated his many stories, books, and essays, Frank Moorhouse developed what he called an ‘archival imagination’, through which he came to see himself as an archive personified. NLA Fellow and Moorhouse biographer, Matthew Lamb, explains how.

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