Nationality Australian Name Dulcie Deamer | Role Novelist Died August 16, 1972, Randwick | |
 | ||
Full Name Mary Elizabeth Kathleen Dulcie Deamer Occupation novelist, poet, journalist and actor Known for founder of the Fellowship of Australian Writers | ||
Stations of the x 101 dulcie deamer queen of bohemia
Mary Elizabeth Kathleen Dulcie Deamer (13 December 1890 – 16 August 1972) was an Australian novelist, poet, journalist and actor born in Christchurch, New Zealand. She was a founder and committee member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers.
Contents
Life
Deamer was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, daughter of George Edwin Deamer, a physician from Lincolnshire, and his New Zealand-born wife, Mable Reader. She was taught at home by her mother, who had been a governess. She married Albert Goldie, a theatrical agent, in Perth, Australia, on 27 August 1908. She bore six children, but separated from Goldie in 1922.
Career
In the 1920–30s Dulcie Deamer was a poet, playwright and author in Sydney, where she was Australia's first female boxing reporter.
Deamer was known as the "Queen of Bohemia" due to her involvement with Norman Lindsay's literary and artistic circle, the Bohemian world of Kings Cross, Sydney, and vaudeville. During the inter-war years, many balls were held in Sydney, including those known as the "Artists' Balls" which had been held as far back as the 1880s. Dulcie Deamer attended every Artists' Ball for 30 years. The leopard-skin costume with dog-tooth necklace that she wore to the 1923 Artists' Ball in Sydney "has come to symbolise the joie de vivre of the decade, despite Deamer's own protest regarding its relevance."
The balls regularly made the newspapers and behaviour at the 1924 Ball, which Dulcie referred to as "The Night of the Great Scandal", resulted in the introduction of restrictions on alcohol and a greater police presence for subsequent events.
A modern critic has noted that Deamer's work "demonstrates a fascination with religion, mythology and classical literature (typical of associates such as Norman Lindsay and Hugh McCrae) and is characteristically ornamental in style." Poems written by Deamer appeared in the souvenir program of the 1924 ball along with those of Kenneth Slessor.
Literary works
Novels
Plays
Poetry
Death
Deamer died at the Little Sisters of the Poor, Randwick, New South Wales, aged 81. She had written an unpublished autobiography in the 1960s. Her daughter, the theologian Rosemary Goldie, died at Randwick as well, three decades later.