Securing the Past
Conservation in Art, Architecture and Literature

"Paul Eggert, currently Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) of The University of New South Wales has for many years effected a happy marriage between his practice as a critical editor (being responsible for, among others, two major critical editions of D.H. Lawrence published by Cambridge University Press in 1992 and 1994, The Boy From the Bush and Twilight in Italy) and his experience as a scholar of English literature and of textual studies (directing the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre from 1993, and founding and developing the Academy Editions of Australian Literature series which from 1996 to 2007 has issued some ten critical editions). It’s precisely such an interplay between theory and practice which now leads Eggert to examine, from an unusually wide perspective and with solid historical-philosophical foundations, the interrelation between the three disciplines of Art, Architecture and Literature and the welter of questions posed for those engaged in restoration and the answers which inevitably reflect a more or less conservative attitude with regard to works of art but even more generally with an idea of a past still alive and in close relation with the present. The examples that Eggert uses to focus attention on common themes are innumerable and contribute to the pleasure of reading a volume that, with a different approach, might have been confined strictly to workers in the field. But that this is far from Eggert’s aim is amply demonstrated by his solid and well-structured argumentative prose, always limpid and rational even when dealing with the most difficult issues."

-Translation of a section of a review essay in Italian by Paolo Italia in Ecdotica 6 (2009), 459–466.

"This book is well written, informative and challenging; above all, it provokes questions. Securing the Past will undoubtedly make an important contribution to intellectual debates about the decisions we make as we seek to preserve the past for the future...It is a volume to be highly recommended. I look forward to seeing Eggert’s work being picked up and debated in those professional forums where it can make most impact."
-Robyn Sloggett, Cultural Studies