Thea Astley was one of Australia’s most awarded fiction-writers in the second half of the twentieth century. While it is true that early literary critics who read her books through the prism of realism were baffled by her writing style, Astley was in fact rare among women writers of her generation, achieving commercial success and publishing consistently through the 1960s and 1970s, a period when Australian literature was dominated by male writers (Sheridan and Genoni, 2006: xii). By the early-1980s her work was the subject of sustained critical attention in Australia and subsequently in the United States, with Robert L. Ross noting that “just as Astley’s individualistic and original body of work adds to the possibilities of Australian literature, it also belongs fully to…
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Citation: Lindsay, Elaine Stuart. "Thea Astley". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=169, accessed 24 April 2024.]
