Robin Dalton aggregated collection of papers

fonds

1938-2014

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs

9661064

3.78 metres of textual material (21 boxes)

Robin Eakin was born in Sydney in 1920. She grew up in Kings Cross with her parents, grandparents and a great aunt—an experience that formed the basis for her first published book, the much-loved Aunts Up the Cross, 1965. My Relations, an entirely fictitious account, was written when Robin was eight and first published eighty-six years later, in 2015.

She married briefly in 1940 before moving to London in 1946. Through her association with David Mountbatten, 3rd Marquess of Milford Haven, Robin entered high society. She then met an Irish doctor named Emmet Dalton, whom she married in 1953. They had two children, Lisa and Seamus, and after an approach by her friend Prince Chula of Thailand, Robin began working as an intelligence agent for the Thai Government. When Emmet died suddenly at age 33 during heart surgery, she left the Thai diplomatic corps and lived for a time in Italy and Australia before returning to London.

In 1963 she started a life with Bill Fairchild, who became her third husband in 1992, and she became a literary agent. Her list of clients included four Booker Prize winners—David Storey, Bernice Rubens, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Iris Murdoch—as well as Edna O’Brien, John Osborne, Margaret Drabble, playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and movie directors Peter Weir and Louis Malle. Dalton went on to become a successful film producer with credits to her name for Oscar and Lucinda and Madame Sousatzka, among others. Bill died in 2000. Robin has written several books including Aunts Up the Cross (1965), An incidental memoir (1998), My Relations: by Robin Ann Eakin, aged 8, 1929 (2015) and One Leg Over: Having Fun—Mostly—in Peace and War (2017).
In 2013 Robin was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), "for significant service to the film industry as a producer, literary agent and author, and as a mentor to emerging actors and writers".

COLLECTION 1:
Robin Dalton further papers, 1955-2012

COLLECTION 2:
Robin Dalton further papers, 1953-2014

COLLECTION 3:
Robin Dalton papers, 1938-2009