Thea Astley
Encyclopedia
Thea Astley was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She was a prolific writer who was published for over 40 years from 1958. At the time of her death, she had won more Miles Franklin Award
s, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer. As well as being a writer, she taught at all levels of education - primary, secondary and tertiary.
Astley has a significant place in Australian letters as she was "the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the literary world was heavily male-dominated".
and educated at All Hallows' School
, Astley studied arts at the University of Queensland
then trained to become a teacher
. After marrying Jack Gregson in 1948, she moved to Sydney where she taught at various high schools, as well as kept up with her writing. She tutored at Macquarie University
from 1968 to 1980, before retiring to write full time, at which time she and her husband moved to Kuranda
in North Queensland. In the late 1980s they moved to Nowra on the NSW South Coast, and, after her husband's death in 2003, she moved to Byron Bay to be near her only child, Ed Gregson, a musician and television producer.
In addition to her passion for writing, Astley, along with her husband, had a great love of music, particularly jazz and chamber music.
Wyndham writes that "in person and in print, the chain-smoking Astley was unsentimental, wickedly funny and yet had a deep kindness and a loathing of injustice towards Aborigines, underdogs and misfits".
Thea Astley died at the John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast in 2004.
In 2005, the Thea Astley lecture was instituted at the Byron Bay Writers Festival
, with Kate Grenville
delivering the inaugural one.
s and in 1989 the author won the Patrick White Award
for services to Australian literature and was awarded an honorary doctorate
by the University of Queensland. Much of her writing, which draws heavily from her early childhood, is set in Queensland
, which she has described as "the place where the tall yarn happens, where it is lived out by people who are the dramatis personae of the tall yarns."
Astley nearly became a journalist, following her father's footsteps, but was refused a position by the Brisbane Telegraph for being too old when she applied after having finished her university degree. She sold her first poem under the name "Phillip Cressy" because men were paid ₤5, while women were only paid ₤3.
Her first book, Girl with a monkey was published in 1958. The author noted that "I wrote quite a bit of it before Ed was born and entered it in the Herald and got an honourable mention. So I thought. 'Oh well, I'll bung it into A&R's, which was the only published I knew'". After the publication of her third book, The Well-dressed Explorer, the Herald's reviewer, Sidney J. Baker, wrote "With this book, Miss Astley earns a place among the leaders of modern Australian fiction". He associated her with writers such as Patrick White
and Hal Porter
who wrote "poetic prose ... an important but by no means popular dimension to Australian fiction". Her early style, in particular, used "obscure polysyllables, formal syntax and lush imagery [which] divided critics and daunted many readers".
In 1997, Thea Astley wrote in a column for Australian House & Garden magazine that "For me the chief advantage of writing is that it can be done anywhere. I recall writing almost the whole of a short story in Hunting the Wild Pineapple on a plane coming down from Cooktown. I've taken copious notes at a luncheon table in Santo, in small pub rooms in Charleville and Roma when I was on the Writers' Train. I've written in a convent bedroom on Palm Island, on the wharf at Magnetic [Island]".
Two weeks before her death, Astley appeared at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival and gave "a brilliantly comic reading of 'Why I Wrote a Story Called the Diesel Epiphany', a short story about one of her many journeys by bus with all its annoyances".
, Hal Porter
and Thomas Keneally
. She had few female literary contemporaries until the 1980s.
Astley built a reputation as a 'metaphoric' writer, resulting in a style that alienated some readers and critics. In an interview with Candida Baker, Astley quotes Helen Garner
as saying "I simply hate her style" and goes on to say "I can't resist using imagistic language. I like it. I really don't do it to annoy reviewers". In her review of An Item from the Late News, Garner wrote "Great story, great characters ... Stylistically, however, this book is like a very handsome, strong and fit woman with too much makeup on ... This kind of writing drives me berserk".
Despite tepid reception among some, there were also many who admired Astley's writing for both its style and for the subject matter, such as writer Kerryn Goldsworthy
, who was quoted as saying, "I love its densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics, and its undimmed outrage at human folly, stupidity and greed". Goldsworthy continues to say that "her body of work [over four decades] adds up to a protracted study in the way that full-scale violence and tragedy can flower extravagantly from the withered seeds of malice and resentment ... The perps in Drylands are all her usual suspects: racists, developers, hypocritical gung-ho civic go-gooders, and assorted unreconstructed male-supremacist swine".
Academic and literary editor, Delys Bird, summarises the author's themes as follows: "Astley's novels and stories typically present a sceptical view of social relationships among ordinary people, one often coloured by her former Catholicism, and directed through the struggles of her self-conscious protagonists to find an expressive space within their uncongenial surroundings". In several novels, such as A Kindness Cup and The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, she explores the relationships between white and Indigenous Australian societies. Leigh Dale writes that A Kindness Cup "focuses on the massacre of a group of Aborigines and the efforts made to forget and to remember this violence at a town reunion twenty years later, is marked largely by the rage and frustration felt by its central character who seems to mirror Astley's horror at the genial amorality that pervades some rural communities."
Astley found her material in newspaper stories and through her travels, but mostly in the various communities she and her husband lived in. In north Queensland, for example, she "found a wealth of stories and 'screwball' characters by listening to people in the small towns and wilderness of the tropics". In 1997, she wrote "Sadly, the north has changed. As we say up there: beautiful one day, developed the next. I keep writing about it. I can't help myself".
Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
s, Australia's major literary award, than any other writer. As well as being a writer, she taught at all levels of education - primary, secondary and tertiary.
Astley has a significant place in Australian letters as she was "the only woman novelist of her generation to have won early success and published consistently throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the literary world was heavily male-dominated".
Life
Born in BrisbaneBrisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
and educated at All Hallows' School
All Hallows' School
All Hallows' School is a Catholic day school for girls, located close to the central business district of Brisbane, Queensland.Founded in 1861, the school follows in the tradition of the Irish Sisters of Mercy, and caters for over 1,300 girls from years five to 12...
, Astley studied arts at the University of Queensland
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...
then trained to become a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
. After marrying Jack Gregson in 1948, she moved to Sydney where she taught at various high schools, as well as kept up with her writing. She tutored at Macquarie University
Macquarie University
Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...
from 1968 to 1980, before retiring to write full time, at which time she and her husband moved to Kuranda
Kuranda
Kuranda or Koranda, may refer to:Place name:* Kuranda, Queensland, a town on the Atherton Tableland in Far North Queensland, Australia** Kuranda Range Highway** Kuranda Range road...
in North Queensland. In the late 1980s they moved to Nowra on the NSW South Coast, and, after her husband's death in 2003, she moved to Byron Bay to be near her only child, Ed Gregson, a musician and television producer.
In addition to her passion for writing, Astley, along with her husband, had a great love of music, particularly jazz and chamber music.
Wyndham writes that "in person and in print, the chain-smoking Astley was unsentimental, wickedly funny and yet had a deep kindness and a loathing of injustice towards Aborigines, underdogs and misfits".
Thea Astley died at the John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast in 2004.
In 2005, the Thea Astley lecture was instituted at the Byron Bay Writers Festival
Byron Bay Writers Festival
The Byron Bay Writers Festival is a literary event taking place annually in Byron Bay, New South Wales. The festival commenced in 1997, and is run over a weekend. As of 2010 it included presentations by over 100 participants...
, with Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published nine novels, a collection of short stories, and four books about the writing process....
delivering the inaugural one.
Career
Astley's novels won four Miles Franklin AwardMiles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
s and in 1989 the author won the Patrick White Award
Patrick White Award
The Patrick White Award is an annual literary prize established by Patrick White. White used his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature award to establish a trust for this prize....
for services to Australian literature and was awarded an honorary doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
by the University of Queensland. Much of her writing, which draws heavily from her early childhood, is set in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, which she has described as "the place where the tall yarn happens, where it is lived out by people who are the dramatis personae of the tall yarns."
Astley nearly became a journalist, following her father's footsteps, but was refused a position by the Brisbane Telegraph for being too old when she applied after having finished her university degree. She sold her first poem under the name "Phillip Cressy" because men were paid ₤5, while women were only paid ₤3.
Her first book, Girl with a monkey was published in 1958. The author noted that "I wrote quite a bit of it before Ed was born and entered it in the Herald and got an honourable mention. So I thought. 'Oh well, I'll bung it into A&R's, which was the only published I knew'". After the publication of her third book, The Well-dressed Explorer, the Herald's reviewer, Sidney J. Baker, wrote "With this book, Miss Astley earns a place among the leaders of modern Australian fiction". He associated her with writers such as Patrick White
Patrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
and Hal Porter
Hal Porter
Harold Edward Porter was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet and short-story writer.Porter was born in Albert Park, Victoria, grew up in Bairnsdale, Victoria and worked as a journalist, teacher and librarian. A car accident just before the outbreak of war prevented him from serving in World...
who wrote "poetic prose ... an important but by no means popular dimension to Australian fiction". Her early style, in particular, used "obscure polysyllables, formal syntax and lush imagery [which] divided critics and daunted many readers".
In 1997, Thea Astley wrote in a column for Australian House & Garden magazine that "For me the chief advantage of writing is that it can be done anywhere. I recall writing almost the whole of a short story in Hunting the Wild Pineapple on a plane coming down from Cooktown. I've taken copious notes at a luncheon table in Santo, in small pub rooms in Charleville and Roma when I was on the Writers' Train. I've written in a convent bedroom on Palm Island, on the wharf at Magnetic [Island]".
Two weeks before her death, Astley appeared at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival and gave "a brilliantly comic reading of 'Why I Wrote a Story Called the Diesel Epiphany', a short story about one of her many journeys by bus with all its annoyances".
Influences
In her early years she was friends with Patrick WhitePatrick White
Patrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
, Hal Porter
Hal Porter
Harold Edward Porter was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet and short-story writer.Porter was born in Albert Park, Victoria, grew up in Bairnsdale, Victoria and worked as a journalist, teacher and librarian. A car accident just before the outbreak of war prevented him from serving in World...
and Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally
Thomas Michael Keneally, AO is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor...
. She had few female literary contemporaries until the 1980s.
Style and themes
According to the AustLit Gateway News Astley was "revered for her meticulous and controlled use of language and her portrayals of the Queensland landscape and character, [and] was renowned for her quick wit, raspy voice, and ever-present cigarettes". Many of her books explore the "geography and politics of the small community".Astley built a reputation as a 'metaphoric' writer, resulting in a style that alienated some readers and critics. In an interview with Candida Baker, Astley quotes Helen Garner
Helen Garner
Helen Garner is an award-winning Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.-Life:Garner was born in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six children. She attended Manifold Heights State School, Ocean Grove State School and then The Hermitage in Geelong...
as saying "I simply hate her style" and goes on to say "I can't resist using imagistic language. I like it. I really don't do it to annoy reviewers". In her review of An Item from the Late News, Garner wrote "Great story, great characters ... Stylistically, however, this book is like a very handsome, strong and fit woman with too much makeup on ... This kind of writing drives me berserk".
Despite tepid reception among some, there were also many who admired Astley's writing for both its style and for the subject matter, such as writer Kerryn Goldsworthy
Kerryn Goldsworthy
Dr. Kerryn Lee Goldsworthy is an Australian freelance writer and former academic.Kerryn Goldsworthy has a B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide. She taught at the University of Melbourne from 1981 to 1997 as a tutor and lecturer and has also worked briefly at Deakin, Flinders and Adelaide...
, who was quoted as saying, "I love its densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics, and its undimmed outrage at human folly, stupidity and greed". Goldsworthy continues to say that "her body of work [over four decades] adds up to a protracted study in the way that full-scale violence and tragedy can flower extravagantly from the withered seeds of malice and resentment ... The perps in Drylands are all her usual suspects: racists, developers, hypocritical gung-ho civic go-gooders, and assorted unreconstructed male-supremacist swine".
Academic and literary editor, Delys Bird, summarises the author's themes as follows: "Astley's novels and stories typically present a sceptical view of social relationships among ordinary people, one often coloured by her former Catholicism, and directed through the struggles of her self-conscious protagonists to find an expressive space within their uncongenial surroundings". In several novels, such as A Kindness Cup and The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, she explores the relationships between white and Indigenous Australian societies. Leigh Dale writes that A Kindness Cup "focuses on the massacre of a group of Aborigines and the efforts made to forget and to remember this violence at a town reunion twenty years later, is marked largely by the rage and frustration felt by its central character who seems to mirror Astley's horror at the genial amorality that pervades some rural communities."
Astley found her material in newspaper stories and through her travels, but mostly in the various communities she and her husband lived in. In north Queensland, for example, she "found a wealth of stories and 'screwball' characters by listening to people in the small towns and wilderness of the tropics". In 1997, she wrote "Sadly, the north has changed. As we say up there: beautiful one day, developed the next. I keep writing about it. I can't help myself".
Influence
Astley encouraged many friends and students to pursue careers in writing, and is regularly quoted by other teachers, particularly her advice that writing one page a day "adds up to a book in a year".Adaptations
- 1983: Descant for gossips (ABCAustralian Broadcasting CorporationThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, miniseries) - 2004: Drylands optioned by Anthony BuckleyAnthony BuckleyAnthony Buckley is an Australian film editor and producer, and prominent member of the Australian film industry.As an editor he was acclaimed for his work with Michael Powell and Rudolf Nureyev...
(but not made as of 2008)
Awards and nominations
- 1962: Miles Franklin AwardMiles Franklin AwardThe Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
for The Well Dressed ExplorerThe Well Dressed ExplorerThe Well Dressed Explorer is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley. This novel shared the award with The Cupboard Under the Stairs by George Turner.-Plot summary:... - 1965: Miles Franklin AwardMiles Franklin AwardThe Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
for The Slow Natives - 1965: Moomba Award for The Slow Natives
- 1972: Miles Franklin AwardMiles Franklin AwardThe Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
for The Acolyte - 1975: The Age Book of the Year Fiction AwardThe Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...
for The Kindness Cup - 1980: Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple
- 1980: Member of the Order of Australia (OAM)Order of AustraliaThe Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
- 1986: ALS Gold MedalALS Gold MedalThe Australian Literature Society Gold Medal is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for “an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year.” From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the Australian Literature Society, then from 1983 by the Association for...
for Beachmasters - 1989: Patrick White AwardPatrick White AwardThe Patrick White Award is an annual literary prize established by Patrick White. White used his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature award to establish a trust for this prize....
- 1990: New South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsNew South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsThe New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Reaching Tin River - 1992: Officer of the Order of Australia (OA)Order of AustraliaThe Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...
- 1996: The Age Book of the Year Fiction AwardThe Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...
for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow - 1999: Miles Franklin AwardMiles Franklin AwardThe Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
for Drylands - 2000: Queensland Premier's Literary AwardsQueensland Premier's Literary AwardsThe Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were inaugurated in 1999 and have grown to become a leading literary awards program within Australia, with $225,000 in prizemoney over 14 categories. One of Australia's richest prizes, top categories offer up to $25,000 for 1st prize.-Fiction Book...
, Fiction Book Award for Drylands - 2002: New South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsNew South Wales Premier's Literary AwardsThe New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards were established in 1979 by the New South Wales Premier Neville Wran. Commenting on its purpose, Wran said: "We want the arts to take, and be seen to take, their proper place in our social priorities...
, Special Award for being "a trailblazer"
Novels
- Girl with a Monkey (1958)
- A Descant for Gossips (1960)
- The Well Dressed ExplorerThe Well Dressed ExplorerThe Well Dressed Explorer is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley. This novel shared the award with The Cupboard Under the Stairs by George Turner.-Plot summary:...
(1962) - The Slow NativesThe Slow NativesThe Slow Natives is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley, the first of her record number of four wins...
(1965) - A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968)
- The AcolyteThe Acolyte (novel)The Acolyte is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author Thea Astley.It is told in the first person by “the acolyte,” Paul Vesper. The novel traces the career of a fictional Australian musician and composer named Jack Holberg...
(1972) - A Kindness Cup (1974)
- An Item from the Late News (1982)
- Beachmasters (1985)
- It's Raining in Mango (1987)
- Reaching Tin River (1990) REVIEW
- Vanishing Points (1992)
- Coda (1994)
- The Multiple Effects of RainshadowThe Multiple Effects of RainshadowThe Multiple Effects of Rainshadow is Thea Astley's second last novel. It won The Age Book of the Year in 1996.-Plot summary:The novel is based on a violent event that took place on Palm Island, Queensland in 1930, in which the white Superintendent of the settlement, Robert Curry , ran amok,...
(1996) - Drylands (1999)
External links
- Thea Astley at middlemiss.org
- AustLit entry on Thea Astley