person or book cover
Image courtesy of UQP
y separately published work icon Foxybaby single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1985... 1985 Foxybaby
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Alma Porch, novelist and aspiring dramatist, is hired to teach a course in Trinity College's "Better Body Through the Arts" summer program for overweight adults. On the rundown campus in the remote Australian outback, Alma is surrounded by starving matrons, orgies of sex and gluttony, and an eccentric group of staff and students who are eager to open themselves to the transforming possibilities of her screenplay, "Foxybaby." As the students develop their roles and film this story of a father trying to rescue his runaway daughter and her baby from discos and drugs, the play becomes a kind of therapy and begins to unite and console the lonely hearts of this unlikely group in surprising ways.In this wise and frequently uproarious book, Elizabeth Jolley is at her provocative best.' (Publisher's blurb)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Viking ,
      1985 .
      image of person or book cover 1135118952381985708.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 261p.
      ISBN: 0140084185 (pbk.)
    • Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Penguin ,
      1986 .
      image of person or book cover 1035728672530865416.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 261p.
      ISBN: 0140083804
    • Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Penguin ,
      1987 .
      Extent: 261p.
      ISBN: 014009914X
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Persea Books ,
      2010 .
      image of person or book cover 20084609502562207.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 261p.
      ISBN: 9780892553631, 0892553634
Alternative title: FoxyBaby : Roman
Language: German
    • Vienna,
      c
      Austria,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Zsolnay ,
      1989 .
      image of person or book cover 5900916187667099701.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 288p.
      ISBN: 355204101X
    • Munich,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Goldmann ,
      1991 .
      image of person or book cover 1137461771819177919.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 288p.p.
      ISBN: 3442097371

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Elizabeth Jolley : A Cross-Cultural Life in Writing Barbara Milech , Brian Dibble , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010;

'Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most significant writers: she published some two dozen books of fiction, essays and radio dramas, won every major Australian literary award, received four honorary doctorates, was awarded the Order of Australia for service to Australian Literature in 1988, and was named an Australian 'National Living Treasure' in 1997.

Her career has its roots in the UK, the place of her birth, schooling and early marriage. In 1959 she travelled with her three children and her husband to Perth, Western Australia, where Leonard Jolley took up a position as foundation Librarian of the University of Western Australia. She brought with her a trunk full of unpublished/rejected manuscripts which provided the initial materials from which she developed her published fictions and essays in Australia.

This article explores the institutional frameworks in Australia which enabled Jolley - a constant writer from childhood - to develop, in David Carter's phrase, 'a career in writing' from the mid-1970s onwards. It argues that Jolley rewrote her foundation manuscripts (written in another country) both to imagine Australian lives and to conform to Australian publishers' requirements. In doing so, it traces how the fiction and essays translate the experience of migration/exile, often thematised through the recurrent image of being 'on the edge,' into the particular and powerful ethic of love that informs Jolley's writing.' (Author's abstract)

Reading Institutional Women : A Nexus Approach to Bourdieu, Summer Heights High, and the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley Larissa McLean-Davies , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October/November vol. 24 no. 3-4 2009; (p. 66-78)
The essay uses Bourdieu's theories to show the ways in which some key female characters in institutions in Lilley's Summer Heights High and Jolley's fiction support the workings of institutional patriarchal power. In the final section, the author draws on the concept of 'heterotopia', in order to discuss the ways in which 'these texts contest masculine institutional paradigms, and explore the limits and possibilities of the alternative views offered by these fictions' (74).
A Scattered Catalogue of Consolation Elizabeth Jolley , 2006 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Learning to Dance : Elizabeth Jolley : Her Life and Work 2006; (p. 17-53)
The Gendered Literary Landscapes of Elizabeth Jolley Fionnuala Neville , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Land and Identity : Proceedings of the 1997 Conference Held at The University of New England Armidale New South Wales 27-30 September 1997 1998; (p. 197-201)
Elizabeth Jolley's Bourgeois Carnival: Novelistic and Social Dialogism in 'Foxybaby' and 'Mr Scobie's Riddle' Cecilia Pietropoli , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: Representation, Discourse and Desire : Contemporary Australian Culture and Critical Theory 1994; (p. 184-193)
Pietropoli investigates the position of canonical and non-canonical literature in Australia, developing on the idea of an Australian carnivalesque and how this might constitute part of a national 'voice'. - editor's note
A Feminist View of the Young Artist Susan McKernan , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 26 November vol. 108 no. 5495 1985; (p. 99-100)

— Review of Running Backwards Over Sand Stephanie Dowrick , 1985 single work novel ; Foxybaby Elizabeth Jolley , 1985 single work novel
Three Novels Barbara Jefferis , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , July no. 103 1986; (p. 65-66)

— Review of A Long Time Dying Olga Masters , 1985 selected work short story ; Foxybaby Elizabeth Jolley , 1985 single work novel
A Jolley Comic Horror Helen Daniel , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 7 September 1985; (p. 13)

— Review of Foxybaby Elizabeth Jolley , 1985 single work novel
As Cunning as a Fox Katharine England , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 7 September 1985; (p. 7)

— Review of Foxybaby Elizabeth Jolley , 1985 single work novel
Dream-Crowded Inferno : Laughter and Tears and Laughter Brian Dibble , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January (1985-1986) no. 77 1985; (p. 29-31)

— Review of Foxybaby Elizabeth Jolley , 1985 single work novel
A Scattered Catalogue of Consolation Elizabeth Jolley , 2006 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Learning to Dance : Elizabeth Jolley : Her Life and Work 2006; (p. 17-53)
Elizabeth Jolley's Bourgeois Carnival: Novelistic and Social Dialogism in 'Foxybaby' and 'Mr Scobie's Riddle' Cecilia Pietropoli , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: Representation, Discourse and Desire : Contemporary Australian Culture and Critical Theory 1994; (p. 184-193)
Pietropoli investigates the position of canonical and non-canonical literature in Australia, developing on the idea of an Australian carnivalesque and how this might constitute part of a national 'voice'. - editor's note
Reading Institutional Women : A Nexus Approach to Bourdieu, Summer Heights High, and the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley Larissa McLean-Davies , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October/November vol. 24 no. 3-4 2009; (p. 66-78)
The essay uses Bourdieu's theories to show the ways in which some key female characters in institutions in Lilley's Summer Heights High and Jolley's fiction support the workings of institutional patriarchal power. In the final section, the author draws on the concept of 'heterotopia', in order to discuss the ways in which 'these texts contest masculine institutional paradigms, and explore the limits and possibilities of the alternative views offered by these fictions' (74).
Elizabeth Jolley : A Cross-Cultural Life in Writing Barbara Milech , Brian Dibble , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010;

'Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most significant writers: she published some two dozen books of fiction, essays and radio dramas, won every major Australian literary award, received four honorary doctorates, was awarded the Order of Australia for service to Australian Literature in 1988, and was named an Australian 'National Living Treasure' in 1997.

Her career has its roots in the UK, the place of her birth, schooling and early marriage. In 1959 she travelled with her three children and her husband to Perth, Western Australia, where Leonard Jolley took up a position as foundation Librarian of the University of Western Australia. She brought with her a trunk full of unpublished/rejected manuscripts which provided the initial materials from which she developed her published fictions and essays in Australia.

This article explores the institutional frameworks in Australia which enabled Jolley - a constant writer from childhood - to develop, in David Carter's phrase, 'a career in writing' from the mid-1970s onwards. It argues that Jolley rewrote her foundation manuscripts (written in another country) both to imagine Australian lives and to conform to Australian publishers' requirements. In doing so, it traces how the fiction and essays translate the experience of migration/exile, often thematised through the recurrent image of being 'on the edge,' into the particular and powerful ethic of love that informs Jolley's writing.' (Author's abstract)

Aristophanic Love-Dyads: Community, Communion, and Cherishing in Elizabeth Jolley's Fiction Barbara Milech , Brian Dibble , 1993 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 7 no. 1 1993; (p. 3-10)
Last amended 22 Mar 2022 07:58:57
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