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Elizabeth Jolley would have turned 100 today. Philip Salom summed up her work so well as ‘mirth and malice’. I wrote an article about her centenary for the State Library of New South Wales’ Open Book magazine called ‘The Bard of Eccentricities’ – you can read it here. It’s an introduction to her life and work, and a consideration of her afterlife and the sad forgetting of a writer who had been a superstar.
I’ve also been working with my colleagues on an exhibition: ‘The Centenary of Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007): The Legacy of a Curtin Literary Great’. We opened it on Thursday and it will be in place until the end of August on Level 3 of Curtin University’s Robertson Library. The details are here.
Lisa Hill at ANZ Litlovers has long been a champion of Jolley’s work and has an author page here and new post here.
Nathan Hobby, a biographer in Perth 
Thank you for the mention, but you know, there were others who love Jolley who contributed to that ‘week’. She is certainly not forgotten amongst readers of my generation.
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Yes, kudos to all the bloggers who contributed! ‘Forgotten’ might be the wrong word. ‘Somewhat neglected since she stopped writing’?
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Well, marketing persuades people to want shiny new books… only some of which will last the distance the way that Jolley’s have.
I am starting to think that a generation of people who only read YA at school don’t know how to read anything more demanding and new releases full of ‘relatable’ ‘issues reflect that. One of my friends at Latin brought me an article from The Australian which predicted that an ‘elite’ of readers is emerging. Well, you know, *sardonic expression* The Australian, of course, this is code for The End of the World is Nigh and not from climate change but from Labor governments, but still, I don’t like the direction that global publishers are taking as their stable of great writers move on to the Great Library in the Sky.
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There is a cult of the new at play!
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Yes, in the UK there’s a lot of interest in books from C20th (and not just so-called cosy crime) but here, debut authors are flooding the market (with variable success of course) and backlists don’t get enough attention. IMHO a lot of younger authors could do with reading some of our really fine novelists from the C20th.
I was rather cross to hear the other day of a book about Ned Kelly’s sister being marketed as original when in fact Jean Bedford wrote Sister Kate in 1987…
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Hi Nathan, I like your article in ‘Openbook’ on Elizabeth Jolley a lot, especially the last two paragraphs! She’s such a good writer, although complicated — so requires a bit of work, I reckon. Anyway, good to know there are lots of readers who appreciate her. Denise
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Thanks Denise!
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I’ve had to bookmark your article, but I agree that Jolley is very rapidly becoming unread and unknown, and it is difficult to know how that has come about.
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