Max Harris (poet)

Harris ran the Mary Martin Bookshop in Adelaide with his university friend Mary Maydwell Martin. They published a monthly newsletter with literary criticism, comment and book reviews. After Mary Martin moved to India, Harris expanded the book chain across Australia and Hong Kong. The chain pioneered the remaindered book industry in Australia by offering quality titles at reasonable prices. Harris fought the stranglehold which overseas publishers had on the Australian book market, taking on major publishing houses to ensure accessibly-priced books for Australian readers. The Mary Martin chain was sold to Macmillans in the late 1970s.

Harris was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and raised in the city of Mount Gambier, where his father was based as a travelling salesman. His early poetry was published in the children’s pages of The Sunday Mail. He continued to write poetry through his secondary schooling after winning a scholarship to St Peter’s College, Adelaide. By the time he began attending the University of Adelaide, he was already known as a poet and intellectual. In 1941, he edited two editions of the student newspaper On Dit.

Harris’s passion for poetry and modernism were driving forces behind the creation in 1940 of a literary journal called Angry Penguins. His co-founders were D.B. “Sam” Kerr, Paul G. Pfeiffer and Geoffrey Dutton. The first issue attracted the interest of Melbourne lawyer and arts patron John Reed, who offered to collaborate on publishing further issues. Harris, already trying to establish a South Australian branch of the Contemporary Art Society, was lured to the Reeds’ art enclave at Heide. By the second issue of Angry Penguins, Harris had incorporated visual art into the journal. Sidney Nolan later joined the editorial team. Other artists associated with Angry Penguins include Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, James Gleeson, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.

A documentary film about Harris’s relationship with his wife and about Adelaide’s cultural life in the 1940s, Von Loves Her Modernist, was released by Rob George in 2022.

Maxwell Henley Harris AO (13 April 1921 – 13 January 1995), generally known as Max Harris, was an Australian poet, critic, columnist, commentator, publisher, and bookseller.