Explanation
These Chapter Notes are offered for readers seeking information about which parts of Wild Love are factual and which are imagined.
They are supported by a bibliography listing the archival holdings I visited in across Australia as well as England, Italy, Scotland and Wales. This bibliography also details the secondary sources consulted during the seven years it took to research and write this book. Although the Chapter Notes are designed to ‘show my workings’, they are illustrative and informative, rather than exhaustive. Typically, the outline where, how, and why I triangulated primary and secondary sources to inform my imagination with what the historian E. P Thompson called ‘the discipline of context’, speculate about problematic elements of the historical record, before advancing my understanding and the narrative.
For those who would like to know more about my ‘speculative methods’, the bibliography also lists the publications I produced during my Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (2018-2023), which was concerned with ‘Historical Craft, Speculative Biography and the case of Adelaide Ironside (1831-1867) ARC DE180100379. These include articles published in TEXT Literary Journal and European Journal of Life Writing which discuss some work-in-progress challenges I encountered along the way.
Interested readers may also enjoy the Routledge collection, Speculative Biography: Experiments, Opportunities and Provocations, which I co-edited with Donna Lee Brien in 2022. This book was designed for writers and readers interested in contemporary biographical practice, both as a form of practice and a research area. The collection comprises work-in-progress chapters from sixteen authors, including the co-editors, as they wrestle with their distinctive subjects and different stages of writing speculative biography.