Teaching and Professing English in Western Australia: Acknowledging the Anglophilia and democratic ideals of a figure that shaped the discipline.

The study of Literature in any nation is inevitably shaped by its roots; in Western Australia those roots are strongly Anglophilic. The first university in Western Australia was the University of Western Australia, established in 1913. Walter Murdoch was its foundational professor of English and his ‘Britishness’, as well as his unpopularity within academia, inhibited the growth of Australian literature in tertiary and secondary education. This paper argues for the recognition and acknowledgement of figures like Murdoch however for the expansionary effects of his democratic values and anti- elitism within the academy.