Title: Eric Lambert Papers,

Date (inclusive): ca. 1960s

Collection Number: Mss 62

Creator: Lambert, Eric, 1921-1966

Extent: .4 linear feet (1 document box)

Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Department of Special Collections

Physical Location: Del Sur

Language: English.

None.

Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

Eric Lambert Papers. Mss 62. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Multiple purchases, ca. 1967-1968.

Eric Lambert (1918-1966) was born in London, England but raised in Sydney, Australia, He drew on his experiences in combat during World War II to become a successful novelist. He joined the Communist Party of Australia in the late 1940s, and his early works reflect both his Communist politics and his experiences fighting in the Middle East and Indonesia. He was active in the Melbourne literary scene in the early 1950s, and developed a reputation for being contentious and unpredictable. Following 1955, he moved to England and, disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, changed his politics and his works took on a decidedly right-wing anti-Communist tone. However, as the 1960s arrived, Lambert's sympathies moved to the center and then again sided with the left. He continued to draw upon his wartime memories in his later novels. He died of heart failure at his home in England in the spring of 1966. Works include:



The Twenty Thousand Thieves (1951)

The Five Bright Stars (1954).

The Veterans (1954).

Watermen (1956).

The Dark Backward (1958).

Glory Thrown In (1959).

Ballarat (1962).

Kelly (1964).

A Short Walk to the Stars (1964).

The Long White Night (1965).

MacDougal's Farm (1965).

The Tender Conspiracy (1965).

Hiroshima Reef (1967).

Mad with Much Heart: A Life of the Parents of Oscar Wilde (1967).



Further biographical details may be found in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

The collection contains carbon typescript manuscript drafts of several of Lambert's works, many with extensive handwritten corrections and revisions.