Johnston, George Henry (1912-1970), an Australian author, became known for a partly autobiographical trilogy of novels centering on a character named David Meredith. The first two volumes, My Brother Jack (1964) and Clean Straw for Nothing (1969), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. My Brother Jack is a powerful reconstruction of Melbourne following World War I (1914-1918). The narrator, David Meredith, recalls his beginnings with a mixture of irony and nostalgia and analyzes his relationship with his brother. Clean Straw for Nothing takes narrator Meredith to Europe. In this novel, Johnston examines the problems of the creative artist in general and the expatriate Australian in particular. Johnston died before completing the final volume in the trilogy, A Cartload of Clay. It was published in 1971, after his death.
Johnston was born on July 20, 1912, in Malvern, Victoria, and educated at Brighton Technical School and the National Gallery Arts School in Melbourne. During World War II (1939-1945), he was a war correspondent. Johnston’s first novel was High Valley (1948), written with his wife, Charmian Clift. They also collaborated on two other novels, The Big Chariot (1953) and The Sponge Divers (1955). From 1954 to 1964, Johnston lived with his family on the island of Hydra in Greece. There, he wrote the novels The Darkness Outside (1959), Closer to the Sun (1960), The Far Road (1962), and My Brother Jack. Johnston died on July 22, 1970.
