Cirrus@Austlit

'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)

Author's abstract: 'John Frow's analysis of Power without Glory is often regarded as one of the seminal pieces written on Hardy. Frow provides a rigorous defence against institutional literary histories which have relegated Hardy to the status of 'non-writer' and Communist 'propagandist' and in so doing discovers new dynamics within Hardy's realist writings which have been ignored by critics of the social realist novel. Nevertheless ... Frow's account still only provides a limited and indeed under-theorised account of the importance of Hardy's writings and the multiple forms of determination which need to be considered in a literary history.' (Southern Review, p.86)

Examines the way in which the 'trope of strangerhood in Hardy's writing ... works through the problematic relations between "universal" intellectuals and their intervention within local political struggles.' (Introduction, Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment , p.20)

The author 'seeks to explore Prichard's novels written during the mid to late 1940s in comparison to those written in the earlier part of her career, considering specifically the impact that the Soviet literary doctrine of Socialist realism had on her writing style and philosophy.' (p. 200).

This list of the real names of people mentioned in the novel Power Without Glory was developed as a special lift-out for The Battler newspaper (4 August 1976) on the occasion of the first screening of the ABC Television series of Hardy's Power Without Glory. An amended version appears in Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment. (Editors' note, Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment.)