Tiffin, Chris

University of Queensland eSpace

 Ken Goodwin (1934-2014) was raised in 
Homebush, Sydney, son of a lift driver and 
a dressmaker. He was the first member 
of his family to attend university. He came 
to The University of Queensland in 1959 
with a BA Hons. and a Dip. Ed. from 
the University of Sydney, and teaching 
experience at both high school and 
Wagga Wagga Teachers’ College. His 
initial appointment was in the Department 
of External Studies, but after three years 
he ‘went internal’ and joined the English 
Department as a lecturer.1 Through the 
1960s he advanced rapidly, completing 
his MA from Sydney and his DPhil. from 
Oxford, and being rapidly promoted to 
Senior Lecturer (1967), Reader (1970), and 
Professor (1971).2 As a colleague at the 
time commented: ‘One minute he was Mr 
Goodwin, the next he was Dr Goodwin 
and the next he was Professor Goodwin’.3
Goodwin wrote his Masters thesis on 
the influence of the poet, Ezra Pound,4 
and his earliest interest was in modern 
British poetry. However, attending a 
conference on the nascent sub-discipline 
of Commonwealth Literature at Leeds in 
1964 led him to convene at UQ in 1968 
the first triennial conference of the newly 
formed Association for Commonwealth 
Literature and Language Studies.5 
The detail of Ken’s planning for this 
conference became legendary, down 
to piles of sixpences (the then price of a 
local phone call) being placed next to the 
public phones in the residence in which 
international delegates were staying. 
The Association formed national and 
regional branches, with Ken becoming 
the foundation chair of the South Pacific 
branch. He was voted Chairman of the 
international association a few years 
later. His role in the Association put him 
in personal, literary and professional 
contact with academics and writers from 
many Commonwealth countries among 
whom he was popular and respected, 
leading to appointments as external 
examiner to universities in Fiji, Malaysia 
and Papua New Guinea, and as advisor 
on chair appointments at the University 
of Hong Kong.
In the early 1970s as well as changing 
from year-long courses to semesters, the 
University embarked upon a process of 
administrative democratisation. Until 1973 
the ranking professor in each Department 
was appointed also as Head for life.6 
Rotating Headships were introduced, 
with the Departments asked to vote for 
their Head.7 Under this new system, Ken 
Goodwin became the first elected Head of 
the English Department. Curiously, he was 
also made Acting Head of the Department 
of Religious Studies for part of this time. 
He guided the English Department through 
an exuberant but unruly period with great 
tact and diplomacy.
As an administrator, Ken had certain 
sterling qualities. He had an excellent 
sense of departmental politics, chose 
his battles carefully, and did not waste 
energy or time needlessly. His rhetorical 
style was elaborate but rational rather 
than passionate, and deeply effective. 
In a meeting where controversial topics 
were being discussed he would typically 
wait until the more strident positions had 
been put and then, when the energy in the 
room was starting to sag, would nudge the 
meeting through complicated analogies, 
multi-part arguments, and references 
to abstruse rules and precedents in the 
direction he felt it should go. His ability to 
project total command of the immediate 
argument and simultaneously of the 
contextual issues, rules, precedents and 
probable outcomes without seeming to be 
confrontational was unparalleled.
Throughout his career he was recognised 
as a go-to person for all sorts of 
administrative difficulties and complexities. 
In still-hierarchical 1971, as a newly 
promoted Reader he was made Acting 
Head of Department ahead of two senior 
colleagues, one of whom had even had 
experience in the role. When the idea for 
an Australian Studies Centre was floated 
within the Department it was Ken who 
negotiated its passage through the various 
committees in the approval process. When 
he spent a study leave working in Fryer on 
his history of Australian literature, he had 
to protect himself from interruptions by 
counsel-seekers by concealing where he 
was working. In 1992 he was recruited by 
the University of Southern Queensland as 
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic to beef 
up their research profile.
Although his formal degrees were earned 
for theses on English topics, he was 
reviewing Australian literature from very 
early in his teaching career, and his work 
in Commonwealth literature enriched his 
Emeritus Professor 
Ken Goodwin AM
29 September 1934 – 12 July 2014
UQ LIBRARY28
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approach to that study. The 1980s saw 
his most important work on Australian 
literature with the publication of his one-
volume History of Australian literature 
(1986), his literary biography of Bruce 
Dawe, Adjacent worlds (1988), his edited 
collection of Dawe’s prose work, Bruce 
Dawe, essays and opinions (1990), and 
his compendious anthology edited with 
Alan Lawson, The Macmillan anthology of 
Australian literature (1990). It is impossible 
to summarise his criticism in a sentence 
but one might start by remarking that it is 
explicatory and contextual – he believed 
that the critic’s task was to tease out 
what the author had said, and that part 
of that teasing involved considering the 
circumstances that helped frame both the 
text and its reception.
Ken continued to publish on Victorian 
literature, particularly on the topic of 
his doctoral thesis, William Morris. He 
was interested in Morris as artist and 
designer as well as writer, and as late as 
1989 published an article on Victorian 
stained glass of which Morris & Co. was a 
significant producer.8 His interest in art was 
not just academic and historical, however. 
He was a Trustee of the Queensland Art 
Gallery for more than a decade including 
four years as Deputy Chairman. On 
moving to Toowoomba he became a 
Council member of the Lionel Lindsay 
Gallery. He chose a striking painting by 
William John Hughes for the cover of The 
Macmillan anthology of Australian literature 
and was delighted some time later to be 
able to purchase the painting.9
Although Ken habitually projected an air of 
reserve, competence and erudition, he had 
a way of setting against that a robust, self-
deprecating, and sometimes zany sense 
of fun. When he was overseas on leave in 
1980 a colleague wrote to him mentioning 
en passant the visit to the Department 
by a prominent Australian poet. Ken 
subsequently replied: ‘Have I ever told you 
that [the poet] is one of only two people 
who have ever thrown a typewriter at me. 
It was in my room, too, when I worked in 
External Studies. Powerful arm, rotten aim, 
fortunately’.10 Something of that side of 
him must have communicated itself to his 
students. In the early 1980s Ken arrived 
at his office one morning to find the door 
blocked by a large mattress decorated 
like an airmail envelope addressed to him. 
Ken played up to the prank declaring that 
he was going to report the students to the 
Post Office for failing to provide a return 
mailing address, and that he wasn’t going 
‘to take the matter lying down’.11
Ken was rewarded with many recognitions 
and honours across his career although 
the sharp-eyed might notice that many of 
the honour-givers wanted their pound of 
consultancy flesh. He was a member of 
the editorial boards of numerous journals, 
of committees of learned societies, of 
judging panels for literary awards, of 
boards of trustees for art galleries, of 
committees for music societies, of library 
foundations, and of academic research 
centres. However some honours were 
more graciously altruistic. The Alliance 
Française in Toowoomba made him 
their patron, the University of Southern 
Queensland awarded him a D. Litt., and in 
1997 he was made a Member of the Order 
of Australia.
He deserved a long and productive 
retirement working on his music (he 
played piano, harpsichord and recorder), 
extending his scholarship and reviewing, 
and continuing to sit on the occasional 
board and committee, but it wasn’t to 
be. A stroke in 1999 greatly reduced 
his abilities and although he was still to 
be seen at the occasional Friends of 
Fryer event, and even managed a few 
further publications,12 he never really 
recovered. Some of his papers relating to 
Commonwealth Literature associations, 
and to the Australian Vice Chancellors’ 
Committee on English Standards have 
been donated to the Fryer,13 as were 
transcripts he made of Australian poets’ 
talks and interviews at the Warana Writers 
Weekend over almost a decade.14 
CHRIS TIFFIN lectured in the Department 
of English (later the School of EMSAH) for 
over 30 years.  He is a long-time Friend of 
Fryer. 
REFERENCES
1. Other staff to transfer from External Studies to the 
Department of English about this time included 
Peter Edwards and Alrene Sykes.
2. Information on Ken Goodwin’s appointments and 
promotions is drawn from the University Archives, 
and University Calendars.
3. Personal information.
4. Published as The influence of Ezra Pound, Oxford 
University Press, London, 1966.
5. The Proceedings were edited by Goodwin, 
and published as National identity, Heinemann 
Educational, Melbourne, 1970.
6. For the first time in 1973 the staff lists in the 
University Calendar used an asterisk to indicate 
who was Head of Department. Previously it had 
invariably been the senior Professor.
7. Technically the vote was non-binding guidance to 
the Vice-Chancellor, but in fact no vote by English 
Department staff was ever over-ruled.
8. ‘Stained Glass’, Victorian Britain: an encyclopedia, 
ed. Sally Mitchell, Garland, New York, 1989,  
pp.752-3.
9. Personal information.
10. Letter dated 17 October 1980, private collection.
11. University News, 28 July 1982, p. 6.
12. His last publication seems to have been 
‘Realistically, it’s better to be naïve:  
communication theory may be at the end of its 
tether’, The Australian (Higher Education) 23 
February 2005, pp. 36-7.
13. UQFL540.
14. F2241.
FRYER FOLIOS | AUGUST 2014 29


Obituaries: Emeritus Professor Ken Goodwin AM

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Obituaries: Emeritus Professor Ken Goodwin AM

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