Elizabeth Jolley

Elizabeth Jolley (born June 4, 1923 in Birmingham , England , † February 13, 2007 in Perth , Australia ) was an Australian writer .

Early years

Elizabeth Jolley was as Monica Knight , child of Charles Wilfrid Knight (* 1890, † 1977) and his wife Margarethe Johanna Carolina ( "Grete") (born Fehr) (* 1896, † 1978) the center of the British in Birmingham Midlands born . Elizabeth's father was a teacher, her mother of Austrian descent, daughter of a high-ranking railway official. Both were Quakers , staunch pacifists . Her father met her mother when he was working for a Quaker aid organization in Vienna after the end of the First World War . Charles Wilfrid Knight was of the opinion that "school only spoils childlike innocence" and so Elizabeth (Monica) and her younger sister, Madelaine Winifred (* 1924) were initially raised privately by French, Swiss and German governesses . It was not until the age of 11 that she was sent to Sibford School , a Quaker school in Banbury , Oxfordshire .

When after the so-called seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany and the 1938 occupation of Austria, the refugees from these two countries to England intensified, Elizabeth's parents took in numerous persecuted people.

"My mother and father were both pacifists and they welcomed exiles into our home. It created a mysterious world for us children. My sister and I had to sleep on a slippery horsehair rug. We resented it, partly because we did not know what was happening and also because the needs of the family came second to performing good deeds for these unfortunates. My parents were idealists. "

“My mother and father were both pacifists and took in refugees. That had strange consequences for us children. My sister and I had to sleep on a damp horsehair blanket. We hated that, partly because we didn't know what was going on, but also because the needs of the family took second place in what had to be done for these unfortunate ones. My parents were idealists. "

In 1940, at the age of 17, she began training as a nurse at St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth (Waterloo), in central London, and was confronted with the terrible wounds suffered by soldiers and victims of the bombing of London . Here she met her future husband, Leonard Jolley (* 1914, † 1994), ten years her senior, who had been admitted to this hospital with a diagnosis of tuberculosis (which later turned out to be a misdiagnosis. In fact, he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis ). In 1943 the two met again. This time in Birmingham, where Elizabeth worked as a nurse at Queen Elizabeth Hospital . Leonard Jolley was now married and worked as a librarian at the Selly Oak Colleges of the University of Birmingham . In 1945, Monica Knight (Elizabeth Jolley) was expecting a child from Leonard Jolley. In 1946 their first daughter was born and she had to retire from Queen Elizabeth Hospital that same year. She was a single mother (Leonard Jolley's first marriage was not yet divorced) and worked for several years as a live-in domestic (housekeeper) for various families until she found a job as a housekeeper at a school in Pinewood, Herfordshire . In 1950 Leonard Jolley accepted a position as a librarian at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in Edinburgh . Elizabeth soon followed him to Scotland, and after Leonard Jolley's first marriage was divorced, the two married. Two more children were born. In 1956 Leonard Jolley got a job as a librarian at the University of Glasgow , but the low wages, the unsuitable weather for his illness, as well as quarrels with Elizabeth's parents led him to a position as senior librarian at the Reid Library at the University of Western Australia in Perth to adopt. (He worked here from 1960 to 1979). In November 1959, Elizabeth and Leonard Jolley and their three children Richard, Ruth and Sarah arrived in Perth , Australia . In order to supplement the family's income, Elizabeth Jolley tried herself as a representative for cosmetics, as a real estate agent, as a housekeeper, at times also worked again in the profession of nurse she had learned from, tried herself as a farmer. Experiences that would later flow into her literary work.

Career as a writer

Elizabeth Jolley started writing early, but her manuscripts were consistently rejected by publishers for a long time. Sometimes she got up to forty rejections in a single year. It was not until 1960 that some of her short stories were published by BBC World , the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and in Australian magazines. In 1965, she won the State of Victoria Short Story Award with one of her short stories ( A Hedge of Rosemary ) and received the first major attention. In 1974 she began on Fremantle Arts Center in creative writing teaching. Her very first book - Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories - a collection of short stories - was not published until 1976 by Fremantle Arts Center Press . Many experiences that Elizabeth had had on a small weekend farm that the dinghies in Wooroloo - approx. 60 kilometers east of Perth - bought. Life on the farm, solitude, beauty, even implacable hardness of the Western Australian landscape were the subject of the 1993 published, largely autobiographical , Diary of a Weekend Farmer , formed but also the background of many other novels Jolley. In addition to her own literary work, she began teaching creative writing in 1978 at the Western Australia Institute of Technology (WAIT) (predecessor of today's Curtin University of Technology ) in Perth . She was popular with her students - and taught very successfully: many writers who became famous later - such as Tim Winton or Deborah Robertson - were among her students.

Her first novel - Palomino - which she had already written in the late 1950s, was not due to be published until 1980 . Jolley broke too many taboos , was too far ahead of her time. All the publishers she offered her manuscript to refused to publish it. The book was about the lesbian relationship between the aging doctor Laura and Andrea, a much younger woman who was also impregnated by her own brother. The novel, The Newspaper of Claremont Street , which followed in 1981 , was highly praised by critics for its humor and the author's great empathy for the psyche of the individual characters. With her next two novels, Mr. Scobie's Riddle and Miss Peabody's Inheritance (both published in 1983), Jolley also gained recognition beyond Australia - for her successful narrative style. She received The Age Book of the Year Award for the novel Mr. Scobie's Riddle , which also received widespread attention in the USA , and she was awarded the Christina Stead Prize for fiction in the New for the novel Milk and Honey , published in 1984 South Wales Premier's Literary Awards . In 1986 she had her final breakthrough when she received Australia's highest literary prize - the Miles Franklin Award - for her novel The Well . The Well was filmed in 1997 under the direction of Samantha Lang and shown at the Cannes International Film Festival . In her later career she wrote the autobiographical trilogy My Father's Moon (1989), Cabin Fever (1990) and The Georges' Wife (1993).

When Elizabeth Jolley was asked in an interview whether it had not hurt her that the recognition she was entitled to came so late, she replied: “No, it doesn't worry me at all. I'm rather glad it's come, but I was writing for many years before my work was acceptable because I was writing about things that were not acceptable in Australia, in literature. And things have changed a lot. The climate of acceptance has changed a lot, and that has been very fortunate for me. " ( " No, that doesn't affect me at all. I'm very happy that the success has come, but I've been writing many years before mine Work could be accepted because I wrote about things that were not accepted in Australia (back then) in literature. But things have changed a lot. The social climate, the willingness to accept has changed a lot. And that was a big one Lucky for me. " )

subjects

In her numerous novels and short stories, Elizabeth Jolley was passionately committed to the so-called “misfits” of society: the old, the stranger and the uprooted, the eccentric, the outsider, the poor and the impoverished, the humiliated and the crazy for a variety of reasons. However, they were all understood by Jolley as completely normal, because she examined the background, the history of the origins of this madness and described it sensitively. Tied to individual characters, she also dealt with broader topics such as: The breakup of families, single women and men, childlessness, loneliness, illness, old age and death.

Jolley wrote that considerable parts of her literary work “spring from the feelings of being uncherished and excluded. They spring too from the cruelties in human life. Bitter knowledge, grief and unwanted realization, often in greater proportion, go side by side with acceptance, love and hope ” . ( "... arise from the feeling of being unloved, excluded. They also arise from the atrocities that occur in human life. Bitter experiences, pain and unfortunate developments, often on a large scale. But all of this goes hand in hand with acceptance, with the acceptance of fate, with love, with hope. ” ) She added: “ I suppose I'm interested to explore the inside of people's survival. ” “ I think I'm interested in seeing how people cope with such blows of fate become."

Sexuality also took up a large space in her works: bigamy , bisexuality , homosexuality , incest , pedophilia , the difficulties of intimacy and human closeness were recurring themes in her novels and short stories.

Works

• Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976)
• The Traveling Entertainer and Other Stories (1979)
• Palomino (1980), German A woman and a woman , transl. Heidrun Schoppelrey, Goldmann Verlag 1993
• The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981)
• Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1983)
• Mr Scobie's Riddle (1983)
• Woman in a Lampshade (1983)
• Milk and Honey (1984), German milk and honey , transl. Sabine Lohmann, Goldmann 1990
• Foxybaby (1985), German Foxy Baby , translator Franz Schrapfeneder, Goldmann 1991
• The Well (1986), German man in the fountain , transl. Franz Schrapfeneder, Goldmann 1990
• The Sugar Mother (1988), German late guests , transl. Ulrike Becker & Claus Varrelmann, Kunstmann-Verlag 1993
• My Father's Moon (1989), first part of the 'Vera Wright Trilogy', German moon of my father , transl. Ulrike Becker & Claus Varrelmann, Fischer Verlag 1996
• Cabin Fever (1990), part two of the 'Vera Wright Trilogy'
• New Critical Essays , ed. V. Delys Bird et al. Brenda Walker (1991)
• Central Mischief: Elizabeth Jolley on Writing, Her Past and Herself (1992)
• The Georges' Wife (1993), third part of the 'Vera Wright Trilogy'
• Diary of a Weekend Farmer (1993)
• The Orchard Thieves (1995)
• Off the Air: Nine Plays for Radio (1995)
• Fellow Passengers: Collected Stories of Elizabeth Jolley (1997)
• Lovesong (1997)
• An Accommodating Spouse (1999)
• To Innocent Gentleman (2001)

Her works have been translated into numerous other languages, including a. into Spanish, German, Dutch, French and Greek.

Awards / prizes

• 1965 State of Victoria Short Story Award for the Short Story A Hedge of Rosemary
• 1982 Writer-in-Residence at the Western Australia Institute of Technology (WAIT) (predecessor of today's Curtin University of Technology ), Perth
• 1983 The Age Book of the Year Award for Mr. Scobie's Riddle
• 1985 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award (Christina Stead Prize for fiction) for Milk and Honey
• 1986 FAW (Fellowship of Australian Writers) Award - Book of the Year for The Well
• 1986 Miles Franklin Award for The Well
• 1986 Honorary doctorate from the Western Australia Institute of Technology (WAIT) (predecessor of today's Curtin University of Technology ), Perth
• 1987 Western Australia Citizen of the Year Award
• 1987 Honorary Writer in Residence at Curtin University of Technology , Perth
• 1988 Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for Services to the Arts
• 1989 The Age Book of the Year Award for My Father's Moon
• 1989 3M Talking Book Award (New South Wales) for My Father's Moon
• 1989 Canada / Australia Literary Award
• 1990 FAW Award for Cabin Fever
• 1991 ALS (Australian Literature Society / Association for the Study of Australian Literature) Gold Medal for Cabin Fever
• 1993 The Age Book of the Year Award for The Georges' Wife
• 1993 France-Australia Award for the translation of The Sugar Mother into French
• 1994 National Book Council Banjo Fiction Award for The Georges' Wife
• 1995 Honorary Doctorate from Macquarie University , Sydney
• 1997 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Queensland , Brisbane
• 1998 Appointment as Living National Treasure by the National Trust of Australia ( New South Wales )
• 1998 Appointment as Professor of Creative Writing at Curtin University of Technology , Perth
• 2000 Honorary Doctorate from the University of New South Wales

Literature (via E. Jolley)

• Bird, Delys, and Walker, Brenda (Eds.): Elizabeth Jolley: New Critical Essays , Angus and Robertson, North Ryde, New South Wales 1991
• Salzman, Paul: Hopelessly Tangled in Female Arms and Legs: Elizabeth Jolley's Fictions , University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland 1993
• McCowan, Sandra: Reading and Writing Elizabeth Jolley: Contemporary Approaches , Fremantle Arts Center Press, Fremantle 1995
• H. Thomson: Bio-fictions: Brian Matthews, Drusilla Modjeska, and Elizabeth Jolley , 1994

Web links

• Literature by and about Elizabeth Jolley in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituary in the Guardian
• Obituary in the Times
• Obituary in The Age
• Helen Garner : Obituary , in: The Age