P. R. Stephensen

Percy Reginald ( Inky ) Stephensen ( born November 20, 1901 in Maryborough, Queensland, † May 28, 1965 in Sydney, New South Wales) was an Australian writer, journalist, communist and co-founder of the Australia First Movement.

Percy Stephensen was the eldest son of the wheelwright Christian Julius Stephensen and the Russian-born Swiss Marie Louise Aimée. Percy Stephensen went to the Biggenden State School and in the Maryborough Grammar School. In Queensland he met Fred Paterson, a Communist, and Eric Partridge, the author of a lexicon know. He came into contact with intellectuals and radicals in Brisbane in 1921 and entered into the Communist Party of Australia. Percy Stephensen studied at the University of Queensland and from 1924 with a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford. In the UK he took in 1926 in the general strike held in part and issued various written works, including The Bushwackers: Sketches of Life in the Australian Outback. In 1932 he returned to Sydney and established the Endeavour Press in Sydney, where next to him also Banjo Paterson and Miles Franklin published. In 1933, he parted with this company and founded his own company, the literature of Franklin, Henry Handel Richardson, Eleanor Dark and other authors brought out. This company failed due to the delayed release of Capricornia by Xavier Herbert. After his failure as a publisher, he became a journalist and political organizer. He turned against the ban of Egon Erwin Kisch to Australia in the years from 1934 to 1935. He published for Frank Clune as a ' Inky ' more than 70 books over the next 30 years. Stephensens most important work was The Foundations of Culture in Australia, which led to an Australian poet motion Jindyworobak Movement.

He turned away from the Communist Party of Australia and was involved in the Australia First Movement, where he financed William Miles. This movement was fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-British and anti-democratic; the monthly magazine of the group, The Publicist, he edited 1941/42.

Because of its membership in the Australia First Movement, he was arrested in 1942 and detained until 1945, because he was the collaboration with the anti-war Japan and the Axis powers and sabotage suspect.

Works (selection)

• The Bushwackers: Sketches of Life in the Australian Outback
• The Foundations of Culture in Australia
• The Foundations of Culture in Australia: An Essay Towards National Self Respect (1936 )