image of person or book cover 5037559197222436026.png
y separately published work icon The Delinquents single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1962... 1962 The Delinquents
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Lola and Brownie are too young to be in love. That’s the view of the world in the 1950s and their lives are taken over by their mothers and welfare. But Brownie and Lola are determined to be together and show they are capable of handling life. Survival on their own terms is a tough road to travel but also a triumph.'

(Penguin, 1986)

'At the end of two weeks of agonising waiting Lola knew she was pregnant.
Lola and Brownie were just kids - but old enough to know what the probing fingers of desire in their awakening bodies meant…
The delinquents is their story - a story of youthful passion turned into tragedy by the demands of adult-made rules. For Brownie they spelt disillusion and the dissolute pleasures of a man’s world… for Lola the degradation of the streets.'

(Panther, 1964)
 

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon The Delinquents Mac Gudgeon , Clayton Froman , ( dir. Chris Thomson ) 1989 Australia : Silver Lining Entertainment Village Roadshow Delinquents Pty Ltd , 1989 Z1415675 1989 single work film/TV crime In a small, conservative, Australian town in the mid-1950s, Brownie and Lola fall in love. Both are well under the age of consent, and their parents attempt to break up the relationship. Brownie and Lola rebel against their elders, and embark on a life of petty crime.

Notes

  • Produced as an Australian film, The Delinquents, in 1989 and directed by Chris Thomson.
  • 'Several Australian publishers turned down the manuscript before a literary agent in London found a publisher for it in Victor Gollancz who also published Down by the Dockside in 1963. Deirdre Cash said in 1962 that 'Australian publishers won't touch a book unless it builds up Australians as great heroes.' (Glenys Smith Brodie's Notes on Criena Rohan's The Delinquents (1994): 6).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Gollancz ,       1962 .
      Extent: 192p.
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Panther ,       1964 .
      image of person or book cover 5037559197222436026.png
      Extent: 188p.
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1986 .
      image of person or book cover 1500431531976845204.png
      Extent: 192p.
      Note/s:
      • Foreword: When I first read Criena Rohan's The Delinquents, I thought here at last was the Brisbane novel. Not only a novel of the 50s decade, but one which held in suspension the eternal, subtropical, charmingly slow-moving and essentially amoral quality of this misunderstood urban conglomerate....Barrett Reid (v-xiii).
      ISBN: 0140075127 0140119191
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2014 .
      image of person or book cover 1437137481690078663.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 224p.p.
      Note/s:

      • Published 19 November 2014.

      ISBN: 9781922182142
      Series: y separately published work icon Text Classics Text Publishing (publisher), Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012- Z1851461 2012 series - publisher novel 'Great books by great Australian storytellers.' (Text website.)
Alternative title: Liebe ist stark : roman
Language: German
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Other Formats

  • Also braille, sound recording, large print.
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Related Works

The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1988 single work extract
— Appears in: Women's Erotica : Erotica by Contemporary Australian Women 1988; (p. 111-114)
Lola and Brownie - The Real Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1989 extract novel (The Delinquents)
— Appears in: The Advertiser Magazine , 23 December 1989; (p. 3)
VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (2)

Works about this Work

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;
Sharon Faylene and the Woman from the Welfare : Heterosexual Fulfilment and Modernist Form in Criena Rohan's The Delinquents Nicholas Birns , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , vol. 23 no. 2 2016; (p. 196-206) 'Criena Rohan's The Delinquents (1962) has always had a cult appeal — in 1989 it was made into a movie, starring Kylie Minogue as Lola and an unknown American as Brownie — and was recently reissued as a Text Classic. A short novel written by a writer who did not have a long career, and published between more commonly scrutinised periods of Australian fiction, The Delinquents is still, however, liminal. The Delinquents is very much a novel of rebellion and subversion, as its teenage protagonists, Brownie Hansen and Lola Lovell, pursue their love over the opposition of both sets of parents the police, the bourgeois consensus and everybody who is not them. By the fiery smoldering of its passion, though, their love sustains them and they emerge at the end, buffeted but united and resilient. This article argues that Rohan's book represents a Queensland iteration of a ‘regional modernism’.' (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)
Sex and the City : New Novels by Women and Middlebrow Culture at Mid-Century Susan Sheridan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October-November vol. 27 no. 3/4 2012; (p. 1-12) 'Central to developments in Australian literature during the period from the end of Second World War until the mid-1960s - what might be called the 'long 1950s' - was the emergence of the kind of modernist novel written by Patrick White as the benchmark of modern fiction. This was the outcome of a struggle among opinion-makers in the literary field, which during this period came to be dominated for the first time by academic critics. They, by and large, favoured the new forms of postwar modernism and rejected that literary nationalism which had drawn the loyalty of most influential writers during the 1930s and 940s.' (Author's introduction)
Working-Class Youth Subcultures : Resistance and Expolitation in Criena Rohan's The Delinquents and Mudrooroo's Wild Cat Falling Ian Herbertson , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 10 2010; 'Of the small group of Australian novels written from beneath the shiny surface of late 50s and early 60s youth styles - reports from underground, stamped with 'insider' authority - none observed the intellectual uncertainties of a new order more acutely than Criena Rohan's The Delinquents (1962) and Mudrooroo's Wild Cat Falling (1965). Both hinged on an intriguing paradox: on the one hand they eagerly accepted that youth subcultures were the source of new identities, less welded to traditional class alignments; but they also contained some of the darkest interpretations of the relationship between youth and the culture industries which provided the raw material for subcultural styles. Their radical depiction of youth's energy and popular culture's allure was undercut by troubled equivocations, or doubts, that youth could creatively use mass popular culture to resist or undermine the power of the dominant capitalist order that produced it.' (Author's abstract)
The Delinquents 1962 single work review
— Appears in: Realist Writer , November no. 10 1962; (p. 10)
— Review of The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1962 single work novel
Australian Fiction : 1962 Geoffrey Dutton , 1962 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October vol. 1 no. 12 1962; (p. 155)
— Review of A Bachelor's Children : Short Stories Hal Porter , 1962 selected work short story ; The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1962 single work novel
Growing Up : Young Ladies' Trials Through the Ages Robin Lucas , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 13 January 1990; (p. 62)
— Review of A Cartload of Clay : A Novel George Johnston , 1971 single work novel ; The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1962 single work novel ; Clean Straw for Nothing : A Novel George Johnston , 1969 single work novel
Fiction Chronicle Kylie Tennant , 1962 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Quarterly , September vol. 21 no. 3 1962; (p. 377-380)
— Review of Don't Speak to Strangers G. R. McCallum , 1962 single work novel ; The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1962 single work novel
Our Short Fiction Helen Daniel , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 1 March 1986; (p. 13)
— Review of Transgressions : Australian Writing Now 1986 anthology short story ; The Delinquents Criena Rohan , 1962 single work novel
Working-Class Youth Subcultures : Resistance and Expolitation in Criena Rohan's The Delinquents and Mudrooroo's Wild Cat Falling Ian Herbertson , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 10 2010; 'Of the small group of Australian novels written from beneath the shiny surface of late 50s and early 60s youth styles - reports from underground, stamped with 'insider' authority - none observed the intellectual uncertainties of a new order more acutely than Criena Rohan's The Delinquents (1962) and Mudrooroo's Wild Cat Falling (1965). Both hinged on an intriguing paradox: on the one hand they eagerly accepted that youth subcultures were the source of new identities, less welded to traditional class alignments; but they also contained some of the darkest interpretations of the relationship between youth and the culture industries which provided the raw material for subcultural styles. Their radical depiction of youth's energy and popular culture's allure was undercut by troubled equivocations, or doubts, that youth could creatively use mass popular culture to resist or undermine the power of the dominant capitalist order that produced it.' (Author's abstract)
Shelf Life [25 November 1989] Jane Sullivan , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Age , 25 November 1989; (p. 11)
A Life Worthy of Her Fiction Katharine England , 1989 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Advertiser Magazine , 23 December 1989; (p. 3,5)
Foreword : Best Sellers Out of Print - In Triplicate Elizabeth Swanson , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 30-31 December 1989; (p. 6)
Criena Rohan Comes Home to Her Own Adrian Rawlins , 1993 single work biography
— Appears in: Tirra Lirra , Spring vol. 4 no. 1 1993; (p. 7-9,47)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (25)
Last amended 28 Jan 2025 14:35:17
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Brisbane, Queensland,
  • Spring Hill, Brisbane City, Brisbane, Queensland,
  • 1940s
  • 1950s
  • 1960s
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