Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Sydney in the Fiction of Elizabeth Harrower
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'The recent publication by Text of two new works by Elizabeth Harrower, along with their reissuing of all her earlier novels, some out of print for over fifty years, provides an ideal opportunity to study the development of various themes and preoccupations in her fiction. I have chosen here to focus on her fictional representations of Australia and Australians, and in particular how the city of Sydney, where she has spent most of her life, figures in her work. The previous difficulty of accessing Harrower’s novels has, no doubt, been one of the reasons why they have received little detailed critical study. Most essays published to date have discussed The Watch Tower (1966), using a variety of perspectives but rarely mentioning its Sydney setting. In 1990, when editor of Southerly, I published an essay on Down in the City (1957) by Rosie Yeo, based on her Honours thesis which I had supervised, to draw attention to this then largely forgotten novel. While the differences in class and attitude of those who live in various parts of Sydney are especially important in this novel, the city appears in all of Harrower’s works, even those not primarily set there.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Elizabeth Harrower : Critical Essays Elizabeth McMahon (editor), Brigitta Olubas (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2017 12996118 2017 anthology criticism

    'In 2014, four decades after it was written, Elizabeth Harrower's novel In Certain Circles was published to much anticipation. In 1971, it had been withdrawn by the author shortly before its planned publication. The novel's rediscovery sparked a revival of international interest in Harrower's work, with the republication of her previous novels and, in 2015, the appearance of her first new work in nearly four decades.

    'Elizabeth Harrower: Critical Essays is the first collection of critical writing on Harrower's fiction. It includes eloquent tributes by two acclaimed contemporary novelists, Michelle de Kretser and Fiona McFarlane, and essays by leading critics of Australian literature. They consider Harrower's treatment of time and place; her depiction of women, men, and their interactions in the mid twentieth century; her engagement with world history; and her nimble, complex, profoundly modern approach to plot, character and genre. Together they offer new insights into a writer at the crossroads of modernism and postmodernism, and invite readers to read and re-read Harrower's work in a new light.' (Publication summary) 

    Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2017
    pg. 28-37
Last amended 23 Jul 2020 13:14:59
28-37 Sydney in the Fiction of Elizabeth Harrowersmall AustLit logo
Subjects:
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
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