image of person or book cover 2659841864489335834.jpg
y separately published work icon Fairyland : A Novel single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1990... 1990 Fairyland : A Novel
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The final book by Sumner Locke Elliott, the award-winning author of Careful, He Might Hear You.

Drawing heavily on Locke Elliott's own experiences, Fairyland charts the life of Seaton Daly, an aspiring writer coming to terms with his homosexuality in the repressive atmosphere of inner-city Sydney during the 1930s and '40s. Lonely and naive, Daly dreams of escaping to the 'promised land' of the United States.

Fairyland is an intimate, affecting, sometimes harrowing portrayal of a lifelong search for love. Sumner Locke Elliott's 'coming out' novel, it was first published in 1990, the year before his death.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Dedication: For Frances Lindley with love
  • Semi-autobiographical novel.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Harper and Row ,
      1990 .
      Extent: 249p.
      Edition info: 1st ed.
      ISBN: 006016221X
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Pan , 1991 .
      Extent: 249p.
      ISBN: 033027225X
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 1997 .
      Extent: 249p.
      ISBN: 0330359843
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 2659841864489335834.jpg
      Extent: 336p.
      Note/s:
      ISBN: 9781922147103
      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: Zauberland : Roman
Language: German

Works about this Work

Backwards to Bourke : Bulldust about Gays in the Bush Michael Burge , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 46 no. 3 2022; (p. 307-320)

'In his 2006 thesis, “‘Staying Bush’ – A Study of Gay Men Living in Rural Areas”, author Edward Green described his subject as the “largely hidden and untold story of gay men living in rural areas”. That was a pivotal year for gay men living in the bush, with Australian television broadcasters platforming two of their stories. In the space of one 12-month period, this cohort went from “hidden and untold” to prime time. From as early as 1989, rural politician Bob Katter had been declaring that he would “walk to Bourke backwards if the poof population of North Queensland is any more than 0.001 per cent”. Analysing media and popular culture, this article explores the visibility and portrayal of rural gay men in Australia prior to and after 2006. In spite of Katter’s minuscule population estimates, the rural gay cohort continues to defy assumptions.' (Publication abstract)

Australia in Three Books Yves Rees , 2021 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2021; Meanjin , Summer vol. 80 no. 4 2021;

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel ; Dancing on Coral Glenda Adams , 1987 single work novel ; Wild Abandon Emily Bitto , 2021 single work novel
On Not Having Sex : Sumner Locke Elliott and Queer History Ellen Smith , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 19 December vol. 34 no. 2 2020;

'This essay argues that we need ways to read unexpressed queer desire and the absence of sex in writing by gay authors that don’t fall back on the trope of the closet. It makes this argument through pairing Sumner Locke Elliott’s 1948 play Rusty Bugles with his 1990 ‘coming out’ novel Fairyland, two texts that draw upon Elliott’s time at an ordinance depot during the Second World War. Elliott’s work has often been read as out of step with the politics of gay liberation. However I will argue that both these texts reflect upon the queer potential of not having sex. In Elliott’s writings about the Second World War the structured sexual abstinence of the ordinance depot provides his protagonists with an escape from the burden of homosexual identity in the twentieth century and allows for new modes of queer intimacy and exchange.' (Publication abstract)

‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;

'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)

'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192)
'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7)
Book Reviews Fiction James E. Cook , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: Library Journal , 1 February vol. 115 no. 2. 1990; (p. 105)

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel
In Short Christopher Bram , 1990 single work review
— Appears in: The New York Times Book Review , 20 May 1990; (p. 30)

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel
Untitled 1990 single work review
— Appears in: West Coast Review of Books , vol. 15 no. 4 1990; (p. 32)

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel
Coming Out with Gay Abandon Giles Hugo , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Mercury , 28 September 1991; (p. 20)

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel
How a Lonely Good Sport Survived Homophobic Sydney Alan Wearne , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 21 September 1991; (p. 9)

— Review of Fairyland : A Novel Sumner Locke Elliott , 1990 single work novel
Careful, He's Made Himself Heard at Last Susan Wyndham , 1990 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 June 1990; (p. 4)
Pleasing Yourself Kate Jennings (interviewer), 1991 single work interview
— Appears in: Island , Spring no. 48 1991; (p. 24-29)
New from New York Susan Wyndham , 1990 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 June 1990; (p. rev 6)
'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192)
'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7)
‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;

'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 27 May 2013 13:23:48
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