y separately published work icon Bobbin Up : A Novel single work   novel  
  • Author:agent Dorothy Hewett http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/hewett-dorothy
Issue Details: First known date: 1959... 1959 Bobbin Up : A Novel
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A classic novel about urban working-class life in 1950s Australia, combining the shifting narrative viewpoint pioneered by Modernism with a relentless realist mode. The book abounds with portraits of working women, married and unmarried, middle-aged and young, zestful and tired. These varied existences form the collective hero of the novel whose social message has lost nothing of its urgency. (Source: Trove)

Notes

  • Dedication: To Les - Who taught me to love and understand the tenderness, courage and struggle of the Sydney workers, and without whom this book would never have been written.

Contents

* Contents derived from the London,
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe,:Virago , 1985 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Bobbin Up : Introduction, Dorothy Hewett , single work biography (p. ix-xvii)
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* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:The Vulgar Press , 1999 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Bobbin Up : Introduction, Dorothy Hewett , single work biography (p. x-xviii)
Author's Afterthoughts on Bobbin Up, Dorothy Hewett , single work criticism (p. vii-ix)
"Bobbin Up" and the Working-Class Novel, Stephen Knight , single work criticism (p. 213-226)
The Critical Reception of Bobbin Up, Nathan Hollier , single work criticism (p. 227-233)
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Porog az Orzo
Language: Hungarian
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Other Formats

  • Sound recordings include the 1988 audio cassette published by Louis Braille Productions, narrated by Natalie Bate and the 1989 ABC adaptation by Jill Milford, narrated by Noni Hazlehurst.
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Related Works

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Works about this Work

Shorts Elizabeth Dean , single work review
— Review of Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
The Novel at Arms : Rereading Australian Mid-century Realism Nicole Moore , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
Bobbin Up as Social Reproduction Text Dougal McNeill , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 1 2020;

'Reading Dorothy Hewett's Bobbin Up (1959) with the tools provided by recent advances in social reproduction theory, this essay suggests that Hewett's text develops a richer and more sophisticated account of the relations between waged and unwaged labour than previous materialist critics have acknowledged. In turn, it reads Bobbin Up for the ways Hewett's fiction can provide insights for social reproduction theorists. Hewett's novel, this essay argues, builds a specifically social-reproduction poetics.' (Publication abstract)
'Bobbin Up by Dorothy Hewett' Nicholas Jose , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 385 2016; (p. 36-40) 'Bobbin Up was written in 1958 during eight weeks of the coldest Sydney winter on record', recalled Dorothy Hewett in her introduction to the Virago Modern Classics reprint of her first novel in 1985. Encouraged by Frank Hardy, Hewett wrote it for the Mary Gilmore Award for fiction, to a tight deadline. After being rescued from a cupboard by one of the judges, it won second prize. Published by the leftist Australasian Book Society in 1959, the first edition was a success and the 3,000 copies sold out quickly. But it was not available again until Seven Seas in East Berlin published an English export edition along with its German translation, Die Mädchen von Sydney, in 1965, with a print run of 10,000 copies, from which other Eastern bloc translations followed.' (Introduction)
Labour in Vain: the Forgotten Novels of Australia’s Radical Women Danae Bosler , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , June 2015; 'Not a month goes by in academia or in literary culture without a debate about Australia’s literary canon and calls for a more inclusive list. Undoubtedly our canon should include more voices from women, the LGBTI community and Indigenous Australians. But I’d like to throw forward another undervalued and underrepresented genre: women’s political agency and activism – and this year might be a good time to acknowledge it.' (Author's introduction)
Untitled Andrew McCann , 2004 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 3 no. 2004; (p. 187-190)
— Review of Sugar Heaven Jean Devanny , 1936 single work novel ; Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
Sincere Dishonesty Ray Mathew , 1959 single work review
— Appears in: The Observer , 3 October vol. 2 no. 20 1959; (p. 633)
— Review of Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
Fiction Chronicle John Barnes , 1960 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , March vol. 19 no. 1 1960; (p. 99-111)
— Review of Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
Bobbin' Up Paul Mortier , 1960 single work review
— Appears in: Realist Writer , vol. 1 no. 2 1960; (p. 19-20)
— Review of Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
Shorts Elizabeth Dean , single work review
— Review of Bobbin Up : A Novel Dorothy Hewett , 1959 single work novel
'These Girls Are on the Right Track' : Hardy, Devanny and Hewett Carole Ferrier , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment 2003; (p. 71-87) 'Frank Hardy, Jean Devanny and Dorothy Hewett were all significantly influenced as writers by their membership of the Communist Party, and the views of art and culture dominant in or debated around the Party; expectations in particular of what the 'social realist' novel should or might be impacted upon the work of all three. This essay addresses some issues of politics, committed writing and sexual politics, with particular reference to how these were played out for writers who were communists in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.' (p.71)
Writing Sound : Popular Music in Australian Fiction Peter Doyle , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Altitude , no. 8 2007;
Dorothy Hewett's Paths to the Chapel Perilous Susan Sheridan , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , July vol. 54 no. 1 2009; (p. 170-188) Discusses Dorothy Hewett's transition from a Communist writer in the 1960s to a dramatist recognised as a feminist in the 1970s.
Dorothy Hewett and the Redfern Reds : Lawson Square Rowan Cahill , Terry Irving , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Radical Sydney : Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes 2010; (p. 265-272)
Bobbin Up in the Leseland : Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic Nicole Moore , Christina Spittel , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Republics of Letters : Literary Communities in Australia 2012; (p. 113-126) 'The reading nation m the Leseland - or at least distinct reading formations within two separate national politics - remains an important determinant in Nicole Moore and Cristina Spittel's comparative study of the reception of Dorothy Hewett's novel Bobbin Up (1959) in Australia and the German Democratic Republic. These distinct reception histories work 'as revealingly transposed opposites', as between 1949 and 1990 Australian titles published in East Germany formed 'an alternative cannon, a shadowy literary archive that rewrites Australia's post-war cultural history from behind the iron curtain.' In Australia, the networks of production and reception for Bobbin Up were focused on the Australian Book Society and the GDR on that nation's centralised cultural administration. This meant that its readerships in Australia were at once nationally distinctive but internally marginal within the wider culture of the Menzies era. Moore and Spittel's case study is also sensitive to the discursive frames - humanist, universalist, socialist and feminist - which allowed for the transnational mediation of meanings between these two distinct though internally diverse national cultures of reading. They argue that 'Eastern Bloc editions...formed threads along which literary realisation of intensely localised expressive identity, as Bobbin Up so thoroughly is, travelled beyond themselves and their reading worlds.'' (Kirkpatrick, Peter and Dixon, Robert: Introduction xv)
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Awards

1958 highly commended ACTU Dame Mary Gilmore Award
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Last amended 8 Nov 2018 14:39:14
Subjects:
Common subjects:
Settings:
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
  • 1950s
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