ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Updated for the centenary of Elizabeth Jolley’s birth on June 4th, 1923. 

Monica Elizabeth Jolley (1923-2007) was born in England but she migrated to Australia in 1959 with her husband Leonard Jolley, and it was in Australia that she began writing and became one of our best-loved authors.  Her first book Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976) was published in 1976 when she was 53, and she went on to write six collections of short stories, fifteen novels and three works of non-fiction.

In 2018 ANZ LitLovers hosted Elizabeth Jolley Week and this page gathers together all the reviews shared by readers who participate, eventually forming a valuable resource for anyone who wants to find out more about Elizabeth Jolley and her work.

Novels (a couple of titles have links to Wikipedia)

Palomino (1980)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss

The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• see a Sensational Snippet at ANZ LitLovers
• see Bill’s review at The Australian Legend
• see Lisa’s review at ANZ LitLovers
• See Kim’s review at Reading Matters

Miss Peabody’s Inheritance (1983)

• See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review
• See Karen’s review at Booker Talk

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss

Mr Scobie’s Riddle (1983)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Kim’s review at Reading Matters

Milk and Honey (1984)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review

Foxybaby (1985)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss

The Well (1986)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Kim’s review at Reading Matters

The Sugar Mother (1988)

• See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review
• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Karen’s review at BookerTalk

My Father’s Moon (1989)

• See Sue’s review at Whispering Gums
• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Meg’s guest review at ANZ LitLovers
• See Carrie Tiffany’s thoughts at The Guardian

Cabin Fever (1990)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss (thanks to Meg for the link, which I used to locate all the other opening lines)
• See Meg’s guest review at ANZ LitLovers

The Georges’ Wife (1993)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Meg’s guest review at ANZ LitLovers
• see Bill’s review at The Australian Legend

The Orchard Thieves (1995)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• see Sue’s review at Whispering Gums

Lovesong (1997)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss
• See Guy’s review at His Futile Preoccupations
• see Bill’s review at The Australian Legend.

An Accommodating Spouse (1999)

• (opening lines not available at Middlemiss)

An Innocent Gentleman (2001)

• read the opening lines at Middlemiss 
• See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review
• See Sue’s review at Whispering Gums

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Short Stories

Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976)

• ‘A Gentleman’s Agreement’  from this collection is also reprinted in the Penguin Best Australian Short Stories, edited by Mary Lord, 1991, see Lisa’s brief thoughts about the story here.

The Well-Bred Thief (1977)

The Travelling Entertainer and Other Stories (1979)

• see the table of contents at Middlemiss

Woman in a Lampshade (1983)

• see the table of contents at Middlemiss
• See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review of the Penguin Special edition of ‘Adam’s Bride’ from this collection and a Sensational Snippet

Fellow Passengers: Collected Stories of Elizabeth Jolley (1997)

In The Oxford Books of Australian Short Stories (Ed. Michael Wilding) 1994

• see Sue’s review of ‘Poppy Seed and Sesame Rings’ at Whispering Gums

In the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (Ed. Nicholas Jose) 2009

• see Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers review of ‘Night Runner’

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Drama

Off the Air: Nine Plays for Radio (1995)

Non-fiction

Central Mischief: Elizabeth Jolley on Writing, Her Past and Herself (1992)

• see a Table of Contents at Middlemiss

Diary of a Weekend Farmer (1993)

• See Sue’s review at Whispering Gums and a Delicious Description

Learning to Dance: Elizabeth Jolley: Her Life and Work (2006)

Biographies of Elizabeth Jolley

Doing Life, a Biography of Elizabth Jolley by Leonard Dibble

• • See Lisa’s ANZ LitLovers Review
  • See Bill’s thoughts about the Jolley chapter in Tony Hughes-d’Aeth’s account of Western Australian Wheatbelt Writers, Like Nothing on this Earth (2017), at The Australian Legend

Other

See Sue’s Monday Musings at Whispering Gums

• ‘Late Bloomers’.
• Fascinating Fictional Fathers

*The image of Elizabeth Jolley is from Wikipedia where it appears to be available for Fair Use.