Thelma Herring (1933) MA
In 1941, Thelma Herring became the first female staff member of the English Department at the University of Sydney where she remained as a highly regarded senior lecturer and prolific publisher for 32 years until her retirement in 1975.
Thelma Gladys Herring enrolled at Â鶹ÊÓƵ School in 1923 into Kindergarten, and in 1933 she was Dux of the School. The 1986 Â鶹ÊÓƵ School publication Walk in the Light records the following on Thelma’s success in the Leaving Certificate ‘Along the way, however, there were some remarkable individual performances, such as the pass obtained by Thelma Herring. She gained first class honours in English and Latin as well as second class honours in History, and went on to a distinguished career as an academic’.
Thelma went on to complete a BA and then an MA at the University of Sydney. She was the top MA student in English and won a scholarship to Oxford for post-graduate study. In 1941, Thelma Herring became the first female staff member of the University’s English Department. In tribute to her long and distinguished career at the University, the University of Sydney established the ‘Thelma Herring Memorial Award in English Literature’ in 1979, and in 2011 the ‘Chair of Poetry and Poetics’ was created and dedicated to Thelma Herring.
For many years Thelma was also associated with the English Association’s Sydney Branch. The Association supports creative writing, the study of literatures in English, and English as a discipline. Its journal Southerly has fostered Australian creative and critical writing since 1939. The period of Thelma’s Presidency of the Sydney Branch of the English Association was a very flourishing one for the Association.
Thelma joined the Association in 1940 as Editorial Secretary and was elected President in 1955, presiding over the Association during troubled years and not retiring from office until 1964 when she deemed the Association to be in safe hands. She was a staunch contributor to Southerly, contemporaries recall that her reviews and articles were wise, scholarly and discerning reflections; particularly her writing on the work of Patrick White. When ‘Ten Essays on Patrick White’ was published by the Southerly in 1970, three of the essays were Thelma’s. Over the years, Thelma and Patrick White developed a deep and lasting friendship, in fact it was he who informed the English Association of Thelma’s passing in 1977.
In a tribute published in Southerly after her death, friends stated that friendships with Thelma Herring once begun were lasting. She is described as a charming, efficient and gracious person who had a “living, genuine, active enthusiasm for a whole range of the arts”.
Michael Wilding’s contribution to Southerly’s dedicated to Thelma Herring recalled that “Thelma was much more complex, much more alive, curious, open than later generations ever suspected”.
Thelma’s generosity in inviting Wilding and other young Sydney writers to a dinner party she had arranged in Surry Hills for Patrick White was particularly remembered by Wilding. At that time White was still the legendary recluse, who in particular avoided academics and writers. Wilding recalls that “it was one of those generous, beautiful things that Thelma did. It came from her love of living literature. And it was a brilliant evening.”
The Hon Michael Kirby, while delivering the Introduction of the Professorial Lecture in 2011, reminisced on his time at the University of Sydney and said that Thelma Herring was a great teacher, that her students sought out the inspiration she plainly felt and was determined to convey.
Kirby concluded that “Thelma Herring was greatly loved by me and by my brothers, although we never told her so. Now, tonight, I try to repay my debt to her” and acknowledged the long overdue creation of the Chair of Poetry and Poetics dedicated to Thelma Herring.
This biography on Thelma Herring has drawn from these sources:
Wilding, M. (1977). Miss Thelma Herring. Southerly, 37(4): 442-445.
Kirby, M. (2011). Sydney University: Pure Poetry. Introduction of the Professorial Lecture. Thursday 10 November 2011.