Joyce Cary 1888-1957

Retrospective on the 50th anniversary of his death

An exhibition featuring first editions, artworks, photographs and memorabilia from the private collection of Tristram Cary will be on display in the Barr Smith Library entrance foyer from 14 March to 11 May 2007.

The Barr Smith Library thanks Tristram Cary for the loan of his personal collection of first editions, artworks, photographs and memorabilia of his father, Joyce Cary.

Thanks also to Jane Cary for scanning the photographs featured in the display.

Joyce Cary: A Brief Biography

Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary was born in Londonderry, Ireland, on December 7, 1888. Before marriage his mother had been Charlotte Louisa Joyce, and her maiden name was used as one of the new baby's Christian names.

Joyce belonged to a branch of an old English family based in Devon, some of whom had lived and flourished in Ireland for nearly 300 years, but the times were against them and at the end of the 19th century much of their land and money had gone and most of the family were returning to England. During Joyce's childhood he usually spent his summers in Ireland where the last Cary property, Whitecastle, stood and still stands on the Donegal shore of Lough Foyle, and his winters in London.

After school at Clifton College he decided that he would take up painting, and spent time in Paris where he studied the Impressionists and saw some early work of Matisse. He then took art studies in Edinburgh but decided that he would not make it to a high standard, though he did draw and paint throughout his life. In 1909 he went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he met Heneage Ogilvie, brother of his future wife. At the Ogilvie house in London he wooed Gertie Ogilvie, but she rejected him. He felt that the wealthy and conventional Ogilvies regarded him as a disreputable Bohemian.

Being something of an adventurer, he joined the First Balkan War as a Red Cross volunteer, working in some gruesome battles in Montenegro in 1912. When the war ended in the spring of 1913, he returned to Trinity, but later that year applied for the post of Assistant District Commissioner in the Northern Nigerian Political Service. Shortly after he began work in Africa the Great War broke out.

War was waged in Africa between British and German colonies, and Joyce was shot and nearly killed fighting in the Cameroons in 1915.

Recovering in the bad climate, he starved on inadequate rations and became very ill with dysentery and bronchitis. He was sent home on three months sick leave in 1916, and this time Gertie Ogilvie accepted him and they were married in June. Joyce was very thin and sickly at the time, but he nevertheless had to return to Nigeria in August. Gertie's first child was born in April 1917, with Joyce still in Africa.

Eventually, after their second child was born in late 1918, Joyce resigned from the Colonial Service, and in 1920 the couple settled in Oxford, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Joyce had already sold a few short stories to magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, which encouraged him to think he could live by writing. However, he didn't regard these stories as serious, and in the 1920s he undertook a large programme of preparation for his main work, studying philosophy, biography and history, and analyzing the techniques of the great 19th century novelists. He wrote several novels at this time, but didn't consider any of them adequate to send to publishers.

In 1929 the great stock exchange crash forced him to begin publishing (by now he had four sons to educate), and his first published novel, Aissa Saved, came out in 1932 when he was already 44. It sold very few copies and brought in no cash to speak of. His third book, The African Witch, was a Book Society Choice, which drew attention to Joyce and his work, and by the time the war came in 1939 he had published five novels, four of them based on his experiences in Africa.

Joyce volunteered as a senior Air Raid Warden (Post Warden) and also took a course on high explosives, and continued to write throughout the war. Gertie (usually called Trudy after the move to Oxford) typed all Joyce's books, but was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1948. She died in 1949 after all attempts to save her failed. She was only 58. In 1955 Joyce started getting symptoms of what was then called disseminated neuritis, but today would be called motor neurone disease, which gradually destroyed him until he died, at home in Oxford, on March 29, 1957, at 68. His head remained clear, and he worked to within a few days of his death.

Tristram Cary: A Pioneer of Electronic Music

Tristram Ogilvie Cary is the third and only surviving son of Joyce and Trudy Cary.

Born and raised at Oxford, England, Tristram Cary decided he wanted to become a composer while he was in the navy during World War Two.

Having been a radio enthusiast during his teens, and working in the navy as a radar specialist, Cary became after the war a qualified electronics engineer - I.Eng., MIET. While in the navy he became aware of a new technology that enabled the recording of sound onto magnetic tape. It occurred to me that instead of just being a reproductive medium, something to record a concert with, for instance, that here was a chance to have a new sort of music altogether.

After the war, he returned to Oxford in 1946 to finish his undergraduate degree, then moved to London to study at the Trinity College of Music. In 1952 he bought his first tape recorder and began composing electronic music as well as orchestral music.

Cary's work on music for BBC radio plays led to his first film score: The Ladykillers, a black comedy starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. The film became an instant classic, with critical and public success. More film and television work followed, among them two movies for the Hammer horror studios and the Disney feature: The Prince and the Pauper.

Cary is also famous for being the first composer to score music for Doctor Who's arch enemies, the Daleks, in the first series of the 1960s TV show.

As well as being a composer, Cary was one of the founding members of the company Electronic Music Studios (London) Ltd., designing and building some of the world's first electronic synthesisers.

His work on one of these synthesisers eventually led him to Australia in the 1970s. Having spent some time in Melbourne to instruct music lecturers on how to use one of the devices, he was offered a one-year visiting composer position at the University of Adelaide's Elder Conservatorium. His one-year term as visiting composer at the University of Adelaide instead became 12 years as senior lecturer, teaching orchestration and composition. Following his retirement in 1986 he was made an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow.

A member of both the Australian Music Centre and the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters, Cary continues to compose music in his studio at his Adelaide home. In 1991 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to Australian music. In 2001 he earned a Doctor of Music degree from the University of Adelaide.