{"product_id":"2026770001585-secondhand-ern-malleys-poems","title":"Ern Malley's Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Fair                          \u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good                  \u003cbr\u003eMarkings: No markings\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image. New paper clip taped on back of binding. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the most celebrated literary hoaxes in history, Ern Malley's Poems presents the complete collected works of a poet who never existed — a fictional modernist genius invented in a single afternoon in 1943 by two conservative Australian poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, as a deliberate act of sabotage against the avant-garde. The poems were submitted to Max Harris, the ambitious young editor of the modernist literary journal Angry Penguins, who accepted them with great enthusiasm, hailing the fictitious Ern Malley as a towering new voice in Australian literature. The subsequent exposure of the hoax became a national scandal, resulting in Harris's public humiliation and even an obscenity prosecution over the poems' content. Yet the story took an ironic and enduring turn: the poems themselves, composed carelessly and with satirical contempt, were widely recognized by later critics as genuinely accomplished works of surrealist verse, standing as a testament to the unpredictable nature of artistic creation. This collection remains a fascinating artifact at the intersection of literary politics, modernism, and the philosophy of authorship, as compelling for its cultural history as for the strange, haunting beauty of the poems themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48887898472667,"sku":"2026770001585-SECONDHAND","price":30.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/85e00983-d4fc-4248-8f9f-ef728b700845.png?v=1781748293","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026770001585-secondhand-ern-malleys-poems","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}