| Thea Beatrice May Astley | |
|---|---|
| Born | 25 August 1925 Brisbane |
| Died | 17 August 2004 (aged 78) Byron Bay |
| Other names | Phillip Cressy |
| Occupation | Novelist and short story writer |
| Spouse | Jack Gregson |
| Children | Ed Gregson |
Thea Astley (25 August 1925 - 17 August 2004) 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 Awards, 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.
Contents |
Life
Born in Brisbane and educated at All Hallows' School, Astley studied arts at the University of Queensland then trained to become a teacher.[1] 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, she, with her husband, had a great love of music, particularly jazz and chamber music.[2] 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".[3] Thea Astley died in Byron Bay in 2004.
Career
Her novels won four Miles Franklin Awards and in 1989 she won the Patrick White Award for services to Australian literature. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Queensland in 1989. Much of her writing is set in and influenced by her childhood 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.”[1] She nearly became a journalist, following her father's footsteps, but was knocked back by the Brisbane Telegraph as being too old when she applied after she had 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.[4] Her first book, Girl with a monkey was published in 1958. She said 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'".[4] 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".[4] 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".[4] Her early style, in particular, used "obscure polysyllables, formal syntax and lush imagery [which] divided critics and daunted many readers".[3] Two weeks before her death, she 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".[3]
Style and themes
According to AusLit Gateway News she was "revered for her meticulous and controlled use of language and her portrayals of the Queensland landscape and character; she was renowned for her quick wit, raspy voice, and ever-present cigarettes".[5] Her reputation is one of being a 'metaphoric' writer, which resulted in a style which didn't suit all readers. In an interview with Candida Baker, Astley quotes Helen Garner as saying "I simply hate her style"[6] and goes on to say "I can't resist using imagistic language. I like it. I really don't do it to annoy reviewers".[7] 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".[4] However, there are many who love Astley's writing - for its style and for the subject matter - such as writer Kerryn Goldsworthy, who said "I love its densely woven grammar, its ingrained humour, its uncompromising politics, and its undimmed outrage at human folly, stupidity and greed".[8]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".[9] Academic and literary editor, Delys Bird, summarises her 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".[10] She 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".[3]
Influence
She encouraged many friends and students, and is regularly quoted by other writing teachers, particularly her advice that writing one page a day "adds up to a book in a year".[3]
Awards and Nominations
- 1962: Miles Franklin Award for The Well-Dressed Explorer
- 1965: Miles Franklin Award for The Slow Natives
- 1965: Moomba Award for The Slow Natives
- 1972: Miles Franklin Award for The Acolyte
- 1975: The Age Book of the Year Fiction Award for The Kindness Cup
- 1980: Australian Literature Studies Award for Hunting the Wild Pineapple
- 1980: Member of the Order of Australia (OAM)[11]
- 1986: ALS Gold Medal for Beachmasters
- 1989: Patrick White Award
- 1990: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Reaching Tin River
- 1992: Officer of the Order of Australia (OA)[12]
- 1996: The Age Book of the Year Fiction award for The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
- 1999: Miles Franklin Award for Drylands
- 2000: Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Fiction Book Award for Drylands
- 2002: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Special Award for being "a trailblazer"[4]
Bibliography
Novels
- Girl with a Monkey (1958)
- A Descant for Gossips (1960)
- The Well Dressed Explorer (1962)
- The Slow Natives (1965)
- A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968)
- The Acolyte (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 Rainshadow (1996)
- Drylands (1999)
Short stories
- Hunting the Wild Pineapple (1979)
- Collected Stories (1997)
Notes
- ^ a b Thea Astley (Jessie Street National Women's Library) Accessed: 22 January 2007.
- ^ Baker (1986) p. 32
- ^ a b c d e Wyndham (2004) p. 79
- ^ a b c d e f cited by Wyndham (2004) p. 79
- ^ AusLit Gateway News 2004
- ^ Baker (1986) p. 37
- ^ Baker (1986) p. 47
- ^ Goldsworthy (1999)
- ^ Goldsworthy (1999)
- ^ Bird (2000) p. 187
- ^ http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/index.cfm
- ^ http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/index.cfm
References
- AusLit Gateway News September/October 2004
- Baker, Candida (1986) Yacker: Australian writers talk about their work
- Bird, Delys (2000) "New narrations: contemporary fiction" in Webby, Elizabeth (ed.) The Cambridge companion to Australian literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
- Goldsworthy, Kerryn (1999) Undimmed outrage: Thea Astley 'Drylands' (Incomplete article available on website)
- Sheridan, Susan and Genoni, Paul (Eds) (2006), Thea Astley’s Fictional Worlds, Cambridge Scholars ISBN 1-84718-015-9
- "Thea Astley + Steven Galloway" (2004) on Books and writing with Michael Shirrefs ABC Radio National, Sunday 22/08/2004Accessed 25 August 2006
- Wyndham, Susan (2004) "Journey of a literary trailblazer: Thea Astley, author, 1925-2004", The Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition, August 21-22, 2004, p. 79
External links
- Thea Astley at middlemiss.org
- Literary World Mourns Thea Astley from Sydney Morning Herald
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Astley, Thea |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Twentieth century Australian novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 25 August 1925 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| DATE OF DEATH | 17 August 2004 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia |
