Leonard Mann

This article is about the writer. For the actor, see Leonard Mann (actor).

Leonard Mann
Born	(1895-11-15)15 November 1895 Toorak, Victoria, Australia
Died	29 April 1981(1981-04-29) (aged 85) Emerald, Victoria, Australia
Occupation	novelist and poet
Nationality	Australian
Period	1932-1969

Leonard Mann (15 November 1895 – 29 April 1981) was an Australian poet, and novelist.

Life

Leonard Mann was born in Prahran, Victoria on 15 November 1895 to Samuel Mann, draper, and his wife Kate Louise, née Truebridge. He was educated at Moreland State School and Wesley College. The failure of is father's drapery business in 1913 forced Mann to take up work as a military staff clerk in the Australian Military Forces. He continued his studies and eventually graduated from the University of Melbourne (LL.B, 1920).

He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in January 1917, was transferred to Britain with the rank of corporal, and served on the Western Front with the 39th Battalion. In February 1918 he joined the 5th Division Engineers, served as a sapper and was promoted to sergeant. He returned to Britain in January 1919 and embarked for Australia. discharged from the AIF on 9 June 1919.

Back on Australia he completed his studies and was admitted to the Victorian Bar Association on 28 April 1921. He married Florence Archer on 11 January 1926 and later became an associate to Justice Lionel Lukin of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. In 1929 he was appointed secretary of the Victorian Employers' Federation where he advocated for the basic wage.

In 1940 he resigned his position and joined the war effort with the Department of Aircraft Production in World War II.

After World War II he worked as senior public relations officer in the Department of Labour and National Service. He was, in September 1949, a charter member of the Australian Peace Council.

He began writing short stories and sketches for The Age newspaper under the name "Fabius" in the late 1920s, and published his first novel Flesh in Armour in 1932. During his life he published seven novels and four volumes of poetry.

Widowed in 1976, Leonard Mann died on 29 April 1981 at Hallam, Victoria, and was buried in Emerald cemetery, survived by his son and daughter.

Awards

• 1957 Grace Leven Prize for Poetry for Elegiac and Other Poems
• 1932 ALS Gold Medal for his first novel, Flesh in Armour

Works

Poetry

• Elegiac, and other poems. Cheshire. 1957.
• The delectable mountains and other poems. Angus and Robertson. 1944.
• Poems from the mask. Hawthorn Press. 1941.
• The plumed voice: poems. Angus & Robertson. 1938.

Novels

• Flesh in Armour (1932)
• Human Drift. Angus and Robertson. 1935.
• A Murder in Sydney. Jonathan Cape. 1937.
• Mountain Flat. Jonathan Cape. 1939.
• The Go-Getter. Angus and Robertson. 1942.
• Andrea Caslin. Jonathan Cape. 1959.
• Venus Half-Caste. Hodder and Stoughton. 1963.

Anthologies

• Jennifer Strauss, ed. (1993). The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-553297-5.

External links

• ["Remembering the war: Australian novelists in the interwar years.", Australian Literary Studies]