Internationally-renowned novelist and essayist Frank Moorhouse has been awarded the National Archives of Australia’s 2004 Frederick Watson Fellowship.

Moorhouse, 67, whose most recent novel Dark Palace won the Miles Franklin Prize for Australian Literature says his Archives fellowship will provide him with an office and other research support and will enable him to historically examine the emergence of literary writing in Australia and the infrastructure which has grown around it.

The Fellowship covers Moorhouse’s research into the early days of the Commonwealth Literary Fund which assisted many of the established names in Australian writing. The archive research will mesh with a larger project on which Moorhouse is working.

‘The idea of the project was prompted when I launched the Guides to (the) Archives of Australia’s Prime Ministers in Canberra this year,‘ Moorhouse said.

‘In the wider project, I want to look at funding bodies, the teaching of writing, writer-in-residences, mentorship schemes, festivals and writers’ centres. I think this project would reveal things of value to future thinking and planning of the funding and structuring of writing, and the state of our culture,’ he said.

Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Ross Gibbs, says the Archives is delighted to award its fellowship to Mr Moorhouse, and looks forward to opening its collection to his area of interest.

‘Many of the writers who applied (to the Commonwealth Literary Fund) for grants at that time are elderly or dead but the then ‘younger’ writers are now in their sixties and are seen as our literary establishment. These include such luminaries as Barry Humphries, David Williamson and Peter Carey,’ Mr Gibbs said.

The Frederick Watson Fellowship was established by the Archives to encourage and facilitate the use of the archival resources of its collection by promoting archival research in Australia and encouraging scholarly use of its holdings. It is named after the historian, librarian and archivist Dr J.F. Watson who is best remembered for his contribution to the Historical Records of Australia series. Frank Moorhouse will commence his fellowship later this year at the National Archives in Canberra.