Ern Malley
Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley was a fictitious poet and the central figure in Australia's most celebrated literary hoax. He and his entire body of work were created in one day in 1944 by writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart in order to hoax Max Harris and Angry Penguins, the modernist magazine Harris had founded and edited.
In the decades after their publication, the hoax had a negative impact on the cause of modernist poetry in Australia. Since the 1970s, however, the Ern Malley poems, though known to be a hoax, became celebrated as a successful example of surrealist poetry in their own right, lauded by poets and critics such as John Ashbery and Robert Hughes.
Read more about Ern Malley: Background, Creating The Hoax, Biography of "Ern Malley", Carrying Out The Hoax, The Hoax Revealed, Immediate Impact, McAuley, Stewart and Harris in Later Years, Subsequent Re-appreciation, References To Ern Malley and The Hoax