image of person or book cover 6993037456305773237.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Dark Places of the Heart single work   novel  
Alternative title: Cotter's England
Issue Details: First known date: 1966... 1966 Dark Places of the Heart
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Cotters' England follows the lives of Nellie Cook, sister Peggy Cotter and brother Tom. Set in post-war England, it is a study of politics and betrayal in Nellie's professional and personal life. It is a story of smothered aspirations and dashed hopes, as class politics trap the Cotters and stifle their attempts to break free from the boundaries of the working- and middle-classes.

'The book is also an exploration of love and sexuality. An undercurrent of incestuous flirtation and a lesbian affair add further strain to Nellie's relationships with family and friends, driving one of them to suicide. By the renowned author of The Man Who Loved Children, this is the first Stead work to be set wholly in England. It weaves a strange and compelling story that explores the limits of class, politics, lust and passion.' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Secker and Warburg ,
      1967 .
      Alternative title: Cotters' England
      Extent: 352p.
      Edition info: Reprinted from American first edition.
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Angus and Robertson , 1974 .
      Extent: 352p.
      Edition info: Reprinted from American first edition.
      Note/s:
      • Afterword by Terry Sturm
      ISBN: 0207131627
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Virago ,
      1980 .
      Extent: 352p.
      Edition info: Reprinted from American first edition.
      Note/s:
      • Introduction by Margaret Walters
      ISBN: 0860681289
      Series: y separately published work icon Virago Modern Classics Virago (publisher), 1978- Z1498171 1978 series - publisher Number in series: 37
    • North Ryde, Ryde - Gladesville - Hunters Hill area, Northwest Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales,: Sirius Books , 1989 .
      Extent: 352p.
      ISBN: 0207161003

Works about this Work

Australia in Three Books Tim Dunlop , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin , September / Spring vol. 80 no. 3 2021; (p. 18-21)

— Review of The Vivisector Patrick White , 1970 single work novel ; Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel ; Mullumbimby Melissa Lucashenko , 2013 single work novel
Politics and Passion in Stead’s Late Novels Susan Sheridan , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 8 December vol. 31 no. 6 2016;

'This essay examines some recent attempts to devise a new critical approach to Stead’s fiction which can encompass both the socialism she endorsed and the feminism she rejected, and asks how these approaches attempt to account for the affective as well as the intellectual impact of politics in Stead’s novels, in particular Cotters’ England and I’m Dying Laughing.'

Source: Abstract.

Christina Stead’s 'Kelly File' : Politics, Possession and the Writing of Cotters’ England Brigid Rooney , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 8 December vol. 31 no. 6 2016;

'Critics who value Christina Stead’s radical politics often find the passionate excess and the spectral and ambiguous qualities that attend her fiction harder to explain. The political dimensions of Stead’s fiction are further complicated by a scene of writing – most dramatically described in Rowley’s 1993 biography – in which the author draws her material from the lives of close family and friends. The problem is framed in this paper as follows: how can qualities of excess, ambiguity and desire in Stead’s fiction (intimately connected to this scene of writing) be understood in relation to its politics? A substantial notebook acquired in 2007 by the National Library of Australia, dated from mid 1949 to early 1950 and internally designated as the ‘Kelly file’, illuminates Stead’s ten-month process of documenting, researching and transforming raw materials for the novel that was eventually published as Cotters’ England (1967). The notebook sheds new light on Stead’s creative process as one that involved, in Susan Lever’s phrase, ‘living inside the fictions she was making’ (Lever 2003). Patiently observing and capturing her characters, Stead allowed herself to be caught up with them. This paper identifies Stead’s notion of ‘possession’, a doubled and spectral dynamic, as integral to her creative modus operandi. On the one hand this involves the writer in taking possession by means of naturalist observation and classification, and on the other hand it entails being possessed. This is a dynamic that thrives on projection, paranoia, and the willed forgetting of investments. Stead’s theory of ‘spectral England’ – her own political explanation of what ails England – emerges from deep inside a creative process that returns to haunt the finished novel.'

Source: Abstract.

A Pastoral Reading of Christina Stead’s Cotters’ England William Lane , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 30 June vol. 30 no. 2 2015;

'With specific reference to Virgil’s Eclogues, Paul Alpers argues that ‘the poetics of pastoral can tell us something about poetics in general’ (The Singer of the Eclogues 6). He equates song with voice when he discusses aspects of the poetics of voice in Virgilian pastoral, including, ‘self-representation, self-reflexiveness, and the community implied by the song’ (6). In this essay, I explore the poetics of voice in a modern novel, Christina Stead’s Cotters’ England (1966), and highlight links between voice in Stead’s novel and the Eclogues. The discussion of voice leads to a second point, that Stead’s writing treats the particular and the general in ways that recall Virgil’s pastoral poems. In the course of this argument, I also discuss the treatment of the idyllic, and the contrasts and tensions between city and country, in Cotters’ England.'

Source: Abstract.

Review : Cotter's England Jenny Summerville , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Good Reading , April 2014; (p. 41)

— Review of Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
Sydney Whodunnit Rings True Hope Hewitt , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 14 May 1989; (p. 21)

— Review of The Garden House Martin Long , 1989 single work novel ; Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
[Review] Dark Places of the Heart 1966 single work review
— Appears in: Book Review Digest , vol. 62 no. 1966-1967; (p. 1148)

— Review of Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
Poor Nellie 1966 single work review
— Appears in: Time , 23 September 1966; (p. 76)

— Review of Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
[Review] Dark Places of the Heart 1967 single work review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 3 August 1967; (p. 701)

— Review of Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
[Review] Dark Places of the Heart J. Barbour , 1967 single work review
— Appears in: Nation , 4 November 1967; (p. 22)

— Review of Dark Places of the Heart Christina Stead , 1966 single work novel
Christina Stead and the Marxist Imagery Stephen Cowden , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 63 no. 3 2003; (p. 63-75)
World Literature, Stalinism, and the Nation Simon During , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Exit Capitalism : Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity 2010; (p. 57-94)
'The Rest Flies Down the Wind' : Complexities of Late Style in the Work of Christina Stead Susan Carson , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 26 no. 2 2012; (p. 253-257)
Christina Stead's "Miss Herbert (the Suburban Wife)" and the English Middle Class Ann Blake , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 26 no. 1 1991; (p. 49-64)
Christina Stead : Selected Fiction and Nonfiction : Introduction R. G. Geering , Anita Kristina Segerberg , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: Christina Stead : Selected Fiction and Nonfiction 1994; (p. xi-xxv ia,)
Last amended 9 Oct 2014 09:38:21
X