Susan Lever in conversation with Peter Kirkpatrick

Susan Lever in conversation with Peter Kirkpatrick on her new book. A.D. Hope: A Life

The first biography of Alec Derwent Hope (1907–2000), one of Australia's greatest poets.

This biography recounts Hope's early life in rural Tasmania, the influences of his education at Sydney and Oxford universities, his notoriety as a critic and wit in the 1940s and '50s, and his career as a poet and academic, which placed him at the centre of Australian literary life for over fifty years.

Drawing on Hope's poetry, notebooks and surviving letters to friends, biographer Susan Lever examines the many contrasts and contradictions of Hope's life: a polite, softly spoken man with a savage wit; a professor who refused to confine himself to the narrow specialisations of the academy; an intellectual with an emotionally complex inner life who lived in an outwardly conventional way in ordinary Australian suburbia; a poet responding to the major cultural shifts of the twentieth century and concluding that the contemporary poet's task was the renewal of tradition.

‘... a book everyone interested in modern literature will want to read.’ —Kevin Hart, author of Poetry and Revelation

Susan Lever taught literature for many years at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and she is the author and editor of several books, including The Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse and A Question of Commitment: Australian Literature in the Twenty Years after the War.

Peter Kirkpatrick has published widely in Australian literary studies and cultural history, and is an honorary associate professor in the discipline of English and Writing at the University of Sydney. He is the author of three poetry collections. His The Wild Reciter: Poetry and Popular Culture in Australia 1890–2020 was shortlisted for the 2025 Prime Minister’s literary award for Australian History in 2025.