Elizabeth Jolley
Elizabeth Jolley is the author of 14 novels and four short-story collections. Her numerous awards include the Age Book of the Year Award, the Age Fiction Prize, the Miles Franklin Award, the National Book Council (Banjo) Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award, WA Critical and Historical Prize and WA Premier’s Fiction Award.
Learning To Dance, a new collection of work edited by Caroline Lurie was published in 2006 followed by a paperback edition in 2007.
Books by Elizabeth Jolley
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Palomino
Elizabeth Jolley's first novel is an unusual, haunting story of the deep relationship between two women, set against the solitude, beauty and harshness of the West Australian landscape.
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The Newspaper of Claremont Street
The Newspaper of Claremont Street is the story of an old cleaning woman, known as Weekly, or 'The Newspaper.' Unknown to the residents of Claremont Street for whom she works, Weekly dreams of escape - escape from the parasitic demands of both her past and her present. She dreams of owning a small farm beyond the city.
Adapted for the stage by Alan Becher and David Britton
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Woman in a Lampshade
In this masterly collection of stories, Elizabeth Jolley has created a splendid array of characters, all of whom fail to achieve the expected. Her stories are sometimes slyly comic, sometimes disturbing - but always they are written with a delicacy and compassion as moving as the characters themselves.
Filmed for television, THE LAST CROP, Zenith Productions (UK)
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Mr Scobie's Riddle
Mr Scobie's arrival at the nursing home of St Christopher and St Jude is accidental. Self-educated and still preserving the gift of idyllic memory and wish, Mr Scobie stands apart from the others. For long-term resident and eccentric, Miss Hailey, he represents a kindred spirit; for Matron Price - a lady of questionable practices - the latest victim... But unwittingly Mr Scobie has some recourse - his very simple riddle.
Age Book of the Year Award, 1983
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West Australia Fiction prize, 1983 -
Miss Peabody's Inheritance
In this powerful tale of love and loneliness, Elizabeth Jolley has woven two parallel stories into a dazzlingly original novel.
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Milk and Honey
A self-absorbed young musician comes as a pupil-boarder to the house of an 'old European' family. Gradually his life is taken over and consumed, seemingly, by dark, mysterious forces within as much as outside himself. Milk and Honey is a strangely haunting novel.
New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, 1985
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Adapted for the stage by Inge Knight, 1998 -
Foxybaby
Elizabeth Jolley's celebrated novel is set in a Summer School amid an isolated and surreal landscape where nothing is quite as it appears. Miss Alma Porch, writer and tutor, travels to the School to present the outline of her unwritten novel, "Foxybaby", to the Creative Drama Students. In the process, real and invented words collide.
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The Well
Miss Hester Harper, middle-aged and eccentric, brings Katherine into her emotionally impoverished life. Together they sew, cook gourmet dishes for two, run the farm, make music and throw dirty dishes down the well. One night, driving along the deserted track that leads to the farm, they run into a mysterious creature. They heave the body from the roo bar and dump it into the farm's deep well. But the voice of the injured intruder will not be stilled and, most disturbing of all, the closer Katherine is drawn to the edge of the well, the farther away she gets from Hester.
Miles Franklin Award, 1986
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Film produced by Sandra Levy at Southern Star, directed by Samantha Lang, starring Pamela Rabe and Miranda Otto, released 1997 -
The Sugar Mother
An aging but handsome university professor, Edwin Page, is married to Cecilia, a much younger woman who is an obstetrician and gynaecologist. When the childless Cecilia goes away for a year's study leave, Edwin finds himself more and more in the company of Leila and her mother who live next door.
Winner of the Inaugural France-Australia Award for Literary Translation; translated by Francoise Cartano
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My Father's Moon
Vera is young, awkward and naive. As schoolgirl she has her sheltered idealism, her Quaker boarding-school education, and the warm, enveloping security of her parents. As student nurse at the large military hospital during the war, her transition to womanhood - and victim to more experienced players - is rapid, painful and disastrous. Yet, for Vera, always there is the moon - her companion, comforter, and the unbreakable link with her father.
Age Fiction Prize, 1989
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3M Talking Book of the Year, 1989 -
Cabin Fever
Vera has cabin fever. Confined with her thoughts in the concrete tower of a New York hotel, she is haunted by her mother's reminders of what she should have been, and the desperate choices she faced as an unprotected single mother. Elizabeth Jolley writes lucidly of betrayal and survival, loneliness and desire, and with compassion for the sad dislocations of love between parents and children.
Extract first published in the New Yorker, Sept 1990
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Federation Australian Writers/ANA Fiction Prize, 1991 -
Diary of a Weekend Farmer
A delightful, humorous and moving mixture of personal observation and poetry, Diary of a Weekend Farmer is based upon Elizabeth Jolley's own record of life on the land.
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The George's Wife
Vera and Mr. George have made a new life together but Vera's thoughts return again and again to loves and lovers, meetings and partings - the voices that echo in the mind like music. In The Georges' Wife Elizabeth Jolley returns to the themes of discord and harmony between brothers and sister, husbands and wives, friends and lovers.
Age Book of the Year, 1993
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National Book Council (Banjo) Award, 1994 -
The Orchard Thieves
Every household is subject to times of discord. Every member feels that their own difficulties are unique. The grandmother, mother of three grown-up daughters, understands that it is the unseen, the unspoken and the unrevealed which either perplex or console people in their family dealings.
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Fellow Passengers
Drawing on previously unpublished stories, new offerings as well as some of Elizabeth Jolley's most lauded work, Fellow Passengers sheds light on the evolution of one of the most innovative writers of our time. Many of the short stories gathered here introduce characters and themes that have served as the basis for her highly acclaimed novels.
Edited by Barbara Milech
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Lovesong
To Mrs Porter's establishment - A Home Away from Home for Homeless Gentlemen - comes Dalton Foster, recently and reluctantly returning to the community. Dalton is intent on a fresh start. So is Miss Emily Vales, fellow lodger, and recipient of Mrs Porter's tea-leaves predictions...
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An Accommodating Spouse
When Professor marries, Lady Carpenter warns that his new wife, Hazel,is so like her twin, Chloe, he will have trouble telling them apart. So inseparable in fact are the twins that the Professor lives with both women under one roof.
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An Innocent Gentleman
Henry and Muriel's life on the new estate is relatively harmonious, despite the vulgar neighbours, the Tonkettes, the Second World War and the regular Sunday visits from Muriel's mother.....
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Five Acre Virgin
This fine collection introduces the unique fictional world of Elizabeth Jolley. With a comic, yet disurbing vision, these stories are a sympathetic exploration of the lives of ordinary, although sometimes slightly eccentric, people. Their wry hopes, their courage, their moments of tenderness and understanding in the face of despair, are all presented with sensitivity and a quiet humour.
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The Travelling Entertainer
This assured collection of short stories reveals Elizabeth Jolley's preoccupation with various kinds of darkness. The atmosphere of despair which surrounds so many of her characters as they stumble through experience, is rendered with enormous sensitivity and a kind of whimsical charm.
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Another Holiday for the Prince
This Saturday as we leave the house on the hill that Mother cleans, she tells me that Mrs Lady is letting her use the car. Mother wants us to take the Prince on holiday to that nice motel on the sea front. But he doesn't care, he just growls...
Illustrated by Steven Bray
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Off the Air
Elizabeth Jolley's radio plays bear all the witty and poignant characteristics of her novels and short stories. Writing for a medium where sounds and silences are as crucial as words, this collection of nine plays adds a completely new dimension to our understanding of Jolley's work.
Edited by Delys Bird
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Learning to Dance
Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most significant and best-loved writers, delighting readers with her acute observation of the world, her wicked humour, her compassion and her honesty. Learning to Dance brings together some of her most poignant short stories, essays and poems, and includes two formerly unpublished pieces. The recurring themes of her life and work are evident here: the complex relationships within families; homesickness and exile; intense love between women; the healing power of the land; the inevitability of loneliness; and the fragile nature of happiness.
Together, these writings form something close to an autobiography. Above all, they are a celebration of Elizabeth's rich life and work.
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