Join the Friends of Fryer to meet the author of Happily ever after: Celebrating Pride and prejudice and President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA), Susannah Fullerton, next Friday, 11 October, 2013.

And browse more events to celebrate the anniversary of the publication of Pride and prejudice, as part of EMSAH's 200 Years of Pride and Prejudice symposium.

On July 25, author and journalist Matthew Condon sat down in conversation with HPRC's Dr Geoff Ginn for a discussion about his latest book, Three crooked kings, which follows the career of former police commissioner Terry Lewis, exposing the story of how Queensland society was shaped by almost half a century of corruption.

Photos from the event are available on UQ Library's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/uniofqldlibrary

Keep an eye out for future events on facebook, or join our Friends group to receive invitations.

Next Tuesday's Friends of Fryer Event is "Investigating Arthur Upfield": a panel discussion about Upfield, the first Australian professional writer of detective novels. Panellist and co-editor, Kees de Hoog, blogs about how his interest in Upfield developed...

My interest in Arthur Upfield really began in the 1960s when I was a teenager. I remember reading quite a few Bony novels over that time.

I was still enjoying detection fiction in 2001. In addition to the Bony novels, I had read Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie stories. I also admired those who researched the life and works of authors, such as Richard Usborne's work on PG Wodehouse and C Northcote Parkinson's work on Hornblower. When I decided to research an Australian author, Arthur Upfield really chose himself - there was no contest.

When I started in late 2001, there were only two published books about Upfield. The first is Follow my dust by Jessica Hawk. I enjoyed the anecdotes but it effectively ends in 1930 (Upfield lived until 1964). The other book is The spirit of Australia by Ray B Browne published in 1988, but it relies heavily on Follow and, to my mind, contains some strange ideas about Upfield. Apart from bookseller lists of the Bony titles with short biographies (and many errors), one superficial website, and a new discussion site called Famous Folk Forum, there was not much information online about Upfield.

I was very keen to publish a collection of scholarly articles about Upfield and his works. I had exchanged emails several times with Carol Hetherington through her work at AustLit. Carol had also researched Upfield's works, and she praised my work in an article she had written about Upfield. I was very pleased when she agreed to join the project; without her expertise and hard work the book may never have materialised.

Carol lives in Brisbane and I live in Perth, so we used phones, Skype and emails to communicate and exchange documents. The book launch will enable us to meet in person for first time.

Kees de Hoog has BSc and MBA degrees from the University of Western Australia. He maintains the Arthur Upfield: Creator of "Bony" internet site, and has published three anthologies of Upfield's short works, four of his non-Bony novels, and two related books. At present he is co-compiling a bibliography of the Upfield books first published in Australia, the UK and the US.

Download (319.66 KB) an invitation to the event.

Hi All,

Isn't it amazing how some things are burned into our psyches and remain, not far from the surface, for a lifetime? One place where perpetual evidence of this is displayed is the Abbey Road crossing webcam. There is seldom a wait of more than two minutes before someone is being snapped emulating the Fab Four striding the famous crossing. The generational variety of participants in this re-enactment is staggering, from people who may have been yelling at their children to turn that damn record down in 1970, to people who may have noticed Golden Slumbers medley.mp3 mixed in with the One Direction stuff on their iPod, they all walk the walk. When the original snap was taken in 1969 the photographer was armed with a ladder and a policeman to stop traffic, generally the modern emulators are armed with neither of these so I would assume their results rarely measure up to the original.

In the spirit of these intrepid crosswalkers, music rivia will be starting next week. Attend one session each week for the next 3 weeks and the Carlos Luna "Modern Strat" in the display cabinet could be yours. All sessions will be held in library eZone1 the times are:

Tuesday 29th 11AM

Wednesday 30th 10AM & 1PM

Thursday 31st 11AM

Friday 1st 10AM & 3PM

For more info. come and see me in the library.

See you there.

Marcos