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Francis Joseph Hardy |
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When Frank Hardy died in 1994, Australia lost one of its great larrikins. He was Australia's most famous communist writer: he published six novels, three books of nonfiction, and more than a dozen collections of stories. In the process, he cultivated a reputation as the country's most celebrated working-class writer, yarn spinner, and despiser of authority, debt collectors, and parking police. His first novel, Power Without Glory, self-published in 1950, remains his most influential work. It generated an unprecedented level of literary controversy and scandal. Hardy was charged with criminal libel, and the resultant trial was fought in the heady atmosphere of the attempted banning of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) by Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies. The book, the trial, and their aftermath have attained near-mythical status in Australian culture. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) television series adapted from the novel and broadcast nationally in 1976 contributed to that status by introducing the story to another medium and a younger generation.
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