People Australia

John Manifold, by Alec Bolton, 1984

National Library of Australia, 14262028

John Streeter Manifold (1915-1985) poet, editor and music critic

Birth: 21 April 1915 at Toorak Melbourne, Victoria, son of native-born parents John Manifold (1887-1957), grazier and Barbara, née Grey-Smith (1888-1975). Marriage: 9 March 1940 at the Register Office, Hampstead, London, to Katharine Mary (Kate) Hopwood (1915-1969), who had been a fellow-student at Cambridge. They had one daughter and one son. Death: 19 April 1985 at Wynnum West, Brisbane, Queensland. 

• Born into a wealthy Western Districts squatter family, Manifold was educated at Geelong Grammar School and, during the Depression, was sent to England to study classical literature and modern languages at Cambridge University (BA, 1937).
• The events of the Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe served to radicalise him and he became a Communist. Joined the Communist Party in 1937. Supported the Spanish republican struggle against Franco. Joined the British Army and, as a gifted linguist, worked in military intelligence.
• Manifold returned to Australia in 1945 and settled near Brisbane with his wife. He was a poet, folklorist and balladeer but he was branded a “subversive” and was snubbed in the Cold War period and after. He was remembered by sympathisers as paving the way for this type of radical tradition in Australia.
• Associate editor of the journal Overland from 1954 to 1960, he was president of the Brisbane Realist Writers’ Group, which he helped to found.
• He was described in glowing terms as a class traitor (in a piece by Drew Cottle, who wrote: “Enclosed is my contribution about that great class traitor John Manifold to the doomed Southern Cross”).
• Tribune quotes a letter attributed to him: “You, who have been the unpretentious Olympian: yet no word-spinner. You, the Cambridge colonial: yet nary a drop of toffee on your nose. You, the satirical visionary; the questioning communist: the lover of life everywhere-yet yours has always been a vulgar love lit by political insights and early fury to further the causes of peace and freedom for ordinary people”.
• In 1984 he was appointed member of the Order of Australia.
• Cause of death: cerebrovascular disease. 

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962, p 426; Tribune, 1 May 1985 p 13; information from Drew Cottle.