Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO (4 June 1923 – 13 February 2007) was an English-born writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was also a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia, counting many well-known writers such as Tim Winton among her students.^[1]

Her novels explore "alienated characters and the nature of loneliness and entrapment."^[2]

Life[link]

Jolley was born in Birmingham, England as Monica Elizabeth Knight, to an English father and Austrian-born mother who was the daughter of a general. She grew up in the Black Country in the English industrial Midlands. She was educated privately until age 11, when she was sent to Sibford School, a Quaker boarding school. During the 1930s, as war loomed, her family's home was full of refugees from Europe, creating, she later said, "a mysterious world for us children".^[3]

At 17 she began training as nurse in London and was exposed firsthand to the horrors of World War II. She emigrated to Australia in 1959 with her husband Leonard (1914–1994) and three children, when Leonard was appointed chief librarian at the Reid Library at the University of Western Australia, a job he held from 1960-1979.

Writers from all over the world were dinner guests in their modest house, full of books and surrounded by trees, in the riverside Perth suburb of Claremont.^{[citation needed]} They also bought, in 1970, a small orchard in Wooroloo, a town in the Darling Ranges approximately 60 kilometres inland from Perth.^[4]

Jolley worked at a variety of jobs, including nursing, cleaning, door to door sales and running a small poultry farm, but through all this time she wrote fiction; short stories, plays and novels. However, she did not have a book published until 1976, when she was 53.

From the late 1970s, she taught writing at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, later Curtin University, and one of her students was another Australian novelist, Tim Winton.^[5] Her students have won many prizes including "several Australian/Vogel Awards (for a first novel), several different Premier's Awards, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Miles Franklin Award".^[1] A lecture theatre at Curtin University is named after her and since 1991 the University has held an annual lecture series in her name.^[6] Speakers have included Ruth Cracknell, Barry Humphries, Carmen Lawrence, Hilary McPhee, Pat Dodson and Robert Drewe.

As Riemer wrote in his obituary, "Everyone who knew her has a favourite Elizabeth Jolley story".^[7] He continues, later in the obituary, to say that "Jolley could assume any one of several personas - the little old lady, the Central European intellectual, the nurse, the orchardist, the humble wife, the university teacher, the door-to-door salesperson - at the drop of a hat, usually choosing one that would disconcert her listeners, but hold them in fascination as well".^[7]

She developed dementia in 2000, and died in a nursing home in Perth in 2007. Her death prompted many tributes in newspapers across Australia, and in The Guardian in the U.K. Her diaries, stored at the Mitchell Library, NSW, will be closed until after the deaths of her children or 25 years after her death.^[8]

On 16 November 2007, the performance of Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, chorus and soloists, under conductor Lothar Zagrosek, was dedicated to Jolley, for whom the Requiem had been a great source of joy and inspiration.^[9]

Literary career[link]

Jolley began writing early in her twenties, but was not recognized until much later. She had many rejections by publishers, 39 in one year alone. Delys Bird suggests that it was the post-modern features of her writing - "motifs repeated within and between novels and short stories, self-reflexivity and open-endedness"^[10] - that made it hard for them to be published at that time. She suggests that her eventual success owes a little to "the 1980s awareness of 'women's writing'".^[10]

In the 1960s some of her stories were accepted by the BBC World Service and Australian journals, but her first book Five Acre Virgin was not published until 1976. Soon following were Woman in a Lampshade and Palomino, but it would not be until much later that these books would receive either positive reviews or high circulation.

She lapsed in her writing, discouraged by earlier failures, and was only to be published again in 1983 with Miss Peabody's Inheritance and Mr Scobie's Riddle. The latter won The Age Book of the Year and high acclaim, especially in Australia and the United States. A year later, Milk and Honey was awarded Christina Stead Prize for fiction in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. In 1986, The Well won the top Australian literary prize - the Miles Franklin Award. The Sugar Mother was, as Riemer writes, "her characteristically idiosyncratic way of fulfilling a commission to write a novel commemorating the bicentenary of 1988".^[7]

Later in her career she wrote an autobiographical fiction trilogy, "My Father's Moon", "Cabin Fever" and 'The George's Wife". In an article in The Age newspaper, 20 February 2007, written after her death, literary critic, Peter Craven, was reported as saying, "She was a master of black comedy and she went on to write a wholly different form of autobiographical fiction that was lucid, luminous and calm".^[11]

Lovesong, her third last novel, is, Riemer suggests, "the riskiest book she wrote".^[7] It deals with the subject of pedophilia and demonstrates "an admirable refusal to be deflected from what she must have seen as the demands of her art and vocation".^[7]

In 1993 a diary she kept before her novels were published which recorded the experience of buying a hobby farm was published as Diary of a Weekend Farmer. A partly autobiographical collection of pieces, Central Mischief, appeared in 1992. She also wrote numerous radio plays broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, and several of her poetic works were published in journals and anthologies during the 1980s and 1990s.

Jolley was made a Professor of Creative Writing at Curtin University in 1998.

On 8 February 2008, Curtin University Library launched the online Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection, a virtual research centre for scholars interested in studying her and her work.

Literary style and themes[link]

Jolley's style comprises an "unusual mixture of ... late-twentieth century modernism ... and a neo-nineteenth century humanism."^[10] Bird suggests that this humanism provides "solace for readers whose equilibrium may be threatened by [her] deracinated wit and uncanny narrative techniques."^[10]

The characters of Jolley's stories and novels are in varying degrees society's misfits; whether they are old, foreign, lonely, eccentric, poor, or simply regarded as deviant; they are outsiders, dispossessed and diminished. The sadness of their lives is frequently moderated by the inventiveness of their strategies for survival – often described with a mix of wry affection, dark humour and satirical realism. The concept of alienation, displacement or exile is common to most of Jolley's novels.

Jolley said this about finding her characters: "I don't really know. I suppose I must see something, I might see somebody in a shop, doing something, taking something or choosing something and that interests me. And I then might go home and make a note about it. Miss Thorne in Miss Peabody's Inheritance, I actually saw at a dinner party. Well, it was a buffet dinner, really, not where you sit around a table. I never spoke to the woman, but she was sitting on the floor in a navy blue frock, a very big pile of dark hair, a very powerful woman. That kind of thing will give me a character"^[12]

Her characters often inhabit various forms of prisons – a gothic boarding house in Milk and Honey, a maternity home in Cabin Fever, an isolated farm in Palomino and The Well. Stories developed by Jolley usually centred on the protagonists' bizarre methods of coping and gritty convictions of significance.

Riemer suggests that her father's side "must have been held responsible for her wry sense of the subterranean anarchy of rigidly controlled British (and Australian) institutions - hospitals, boarding schools and old-age homes - which she evoked memorably in novel after novel" and that her Austrian heritage accounted for "her often nighmarish imagination and certainly for her fascination with German-language culture, the snippets of Goethe and Schubert lieder that crop up throughout her work".^[7]

Jolley commented that she was interested in the individual's particular form of loneliness or fear, which imposes life on the fringe. "I suppose I'm interested to explore the inside of people's survival – bitter knowledge, grief and unwanted realization often go side by side with acceptance, love and hope." Cruelty, emotional manipulation, territorial aggression and financial exploitation are also natural to a great many of her characters, and her underlying view of the human condition – although counterpointed somewhat with empathy and compassion – is necessarily bleak.

While Jolley is often thought of as a primarily urban writer, many of her works - particularly Palomino, The Newspaper of Claremont Street, The Well, and her nonfictional Diary of a Weekend Farmer - are "intensely permeated with the landscape" and include women farmers who choose to farm their land.^[13]

Her books are often interconnected by characters who appear again or in almost identical form in other novels, and certain incidents and situations recur in many of her stories – although the responses to these situations is are varied and drawn out in different ways amongst different texts. Helen Garner writes about this quality in her writing: "She will take a situation, a relationship, a moment of insight, a particular longing, and work on it in half a dozen different versions, making the characters older or younger, changing their gender or their class, gaoling or releasing a father, adding or subtracting a murder or a suicide; and these repetitions and reusings, conscious but not to the point of being orchestrated, set up a pattern of echoes which unifies the world, and is most seductive and comforting".^[14]

Garner also comments on the humour in Jolley's writing: "Elizabeth Jolley is a very funny writer ... she is droll, sly, often delicate ... she is offhand, with a batty sideways slip that I find hilarious".^[15]

Like other highly original Australian writers such as Patrick White and Les Murray, Elizabeth Jolley brought to her writing a profound love and understanding of the Australian climate, landscape, nature and people.

Awards and nominations[link]

• 1983: The Age Book of the Year Award for Mr Scobie's Riddle
• 1983: Western Australian Premier's Book Awards for Mr Scobie's Riddle'
• 1985: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for Milk and Honey
• 1986: Miles Franklin Award for The Well
• 1987: Western Australia Citizen of the Year
• 1988: Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature^[16]
• 1988: Western Australian Institute of Technology Honorary Doctorate
• 1989: The Age Book of the Year Award, joint winner for My Father's Moon
• 1989: Canada/Australia Literary Award
• 1993: The Age Book of the Year Award, joint winner for The George's Wife
• 1993: Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, Premier's prize for Central Mischief
• 1994: National Book Council Award, Banjo for The George's Wife
• 1995: Macquarie University Honorary Doctorate
• 1997: Australian Living Treasure
• 1997: University of Queensland Honorary Doctorate
• 1998: Miles Franklin Award shortlist for Lovesong

Literary works[link]

Novels[link]

• Palomino (1980)
• The Newspaper of Claremont Street (1981)
• Miss Peabody's Inheritance (1983)
• Mr Scobie's Riddle (1983)
• Milk and Honey (1984)
• Foxybaby (1985)
• The Well (1986)
• The Sugar Mother (1988)
• My Father's Moon (1989)
• Cabin Fever (1990)
• The Georges' Wife (1993)
• The Orchard Thieves (1995)
• Lovesong (1997)
• An Accommodating Spouse (1999)
• An Innocent Gentleman (2001)

Short stories and plays[link]

• Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories (1976)
• The Well-Bred Thief (1977)
• The Travelling Entertainer and Other Stories (1979)
• Woman in a Lampshade (1983)
• Off the Air: Nine Plays for Radio (1995)
• Fellow Passengers: Collected Stories of Elizabeth Jolley (1997)

Non-fiction[link]

• Central Mischief: Elizabeth Jolley on Writing, Her Past and Herself (1992)
• Diary of a Weekend Farmer (1993)
• Learning to Dance: Elizabeth Jolley: Her Life and Work (2006)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Caldwell, Alison (2007) "Australian writer Elizabeth Jolley remembered", transcript of broadcast on The World Today, Tuesday, 20 February, 2007
• Bird, Delys (2000) "New narration: contemporary fiction" in Webby, Elizabeth (ed.) The Cambridge companion to Australian literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
• Craven, Peter (2007) "Black humour, Jolley heart" in The Age, 24 February, 2007
• Dibble, Brian (2007) ASAL mourns Elizabeth Jolley
• "Elizabeth Jolley (Obituary)" in The Times, 7 April, 2007
• Falkiner, Suzanne (1992) Wilderness (Series: Writers' Landscape), East Roseville, Simon and Schuster
• Garner, Helen (1983) "Elizabeth Jolley: an appreciation" in Meanjin Vol 42 No 2 (June 1983)
• Hacket, Jeanette (2007) VC's Note: Vale Elizabeth Jolley
• Jolley's diary to be kept a secret, 21 February 2007
• McCowan, Sandra (1995) Reading and Writing Elizabeth Jolley: Contemporary Approaches Fremantle Arts Centre P: Fremantle, Western Australia)
• Moran, Rod (2007) "Writer Elizabeth Jolley dead" in The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 2007
• Riemer, Andrew (2007) "A witty adventurer in fiction: Elizabeth Jolley, 1923-2007" in The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 February 2007
• Salzman, Paul (1993) Hopelessly Tangled in Female Arms and Legs: Elizabeth Jolley's Fictions U of Queensland P: St Lucia, Queensland
• Taylor, Paige and Gosch, Elizabeth (2007) "Author Elizabeth Jolley dies" in Perth Now
• Sorenson, (2007) "A prolific, peculiar voice" in The Australian, 20 February, 2007
• Steger, Jason (2007) "Literary peers mourn mischievous mistress of black humour" in The Age 20 February, 2007 Accessed: 13 July 2007
• Wilde, W., Hooton, J. & Andrews, B (2000) The Oxford Companion of Australian Literature 2nd Edition Oxford UP: Adelaide, South Australia

External links[link]

• Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection Accessed: 2008-02-23
• [1] Transcript of interview with Brian Dibble, Jolley's biographer on his book "Doing Life", by Ramona Koval, The Book Show, ABC Radio National, 2/12/08
• Delys Bird, 'Gertrude and Elizabeth: Letters, Lives and Fictions' JASAL 2 (2003)
• Barbara Milech 'Elizabeth Jolley, Mr Berringrton and the Resistance to Monogamy' JASAL 3 (2004)
• Brian Dibble 'Mothers, Daughters and Elizabeth Jolley's Ethic of Hope' JASAL 4 (2005)

Further reading[link]

• Bird, Delys, and Walker, Brenda (eds) (1991) Elizabeth Jolley: New Critical Essays Angus and Robertson: North Ryde, New South Wales

External links[link]

• Elzabeth Jolley Research Collection at Curtin University

Léo Delibes, photo from the collection of Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität

	Divertissement - Pizzicato Divertissement - Pizzicato from Sylvia — 3081 KB
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	En avril (for three-part children's choir) Performed by l'Atelier Vocal des Herbiers
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Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883).

Léo Delibes was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, now part of La Flèche (Sarthe), France, in 1836. His father was a mailman, his mother a talented amateur musician. His grandfather had been an opera singer. He was raised mainly by his mother and uncle following his father's early death. In 1871, at the age of 35, the composer married Léontine Estelle Denain. His brother Michel Delibes migrated to Spain; he was the grandfather of Spanish writer Miguel Delibes.

Starting in 1847, Delibes studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire as a student of Adolphe Adam. A year later he began taking voice lessons, though he would end up a much better organ player than singer. He held positions as a rehearsal accompanist and chorus master at the Théâtre Lyrique, as second chorus master at the Paris Opéra (in 1864), and as organist at Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot (1865–71). The first of his many operettas was Deux sous de charbon, ou Le suicide de Bigorneau ("Two sous-worth of coal"), written in 1856 for the Folies-Nouvelles.

A ceremonial cantata, Algers, for Napoleon III on the theme of Algiers, brought him to official attention; a collaboration with Léon Minkus resulted, in which his contribution of an act's worth of musical numbers for a ballet La source (1866) brought him into the milieu of ballet. Delibes achieved true fame in 1870 with the success of his ballet Coppélia; its title referred to a mechanical dancing doll that distracts a village swain from his beloved and appears to come to life. His other ballet is Sylvia (1876). It has been suggested that he also wrote the ballet music for Gounod's "Faust" which had been inserted ten years after the original performance of the opera.^[1]

Delibes also composed various operas, the last of which, the lush orientalizing Lakmé (1883), contains, among many dazzling numbers, the famous coloratura showpiece known as the Légende du Paria or Bell Song ("Où va la jeune Indoue?") and The Flower Duet ("Sous le dôme épais"), a barcarolle that Patricia Rozema made famous in her film "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" and later used by British Airways commercials. At the time, his operas impressed Tchaikovsky enough for the composer to rate Delibes more highly than Brahms—although this may seem faint praise when one considers that the Russian composer considered Brahms "a giftless bastard."^[2]

In 1867 Delibes composed the divertissement Le jardin animé for a revival of the Joseph Mazilier/Adolphe Adam ballet Le corsaire. He wrote a mass, his Messe brève, and composed operettas almost yearly and occasional music for the theater, such as dances and antique airs for Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, the play that Verdi turned into Rigoletto. Some musicologists believe that the ballet in Gounod's Faust was actually composed by Delibes.

Delibes died in in Paris in 1891, at the age of 54. He was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris. Delibes' work is known to have been a great influence on composers such as Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns and Debussy. His ballet Sylvia was of special interest to Tchaikovsky, who wrote of Delibes' score: ". . . what charm, what wealth of melody! It brought me to shame, for had I known of this music, I would have never written Swan Lake."

Excerpt from Delibes' score: The first few measures of Pizzicato from Sylvia

Works[link]

• List of compositions by Léo Delibes
  • List of operas and operettas by Delibes
  • List of ballets by Léo Delibes

References[link]

Notes

Cited sources

• Ballet Notes (2001). "Léo Delibes". Retrieved June 25, 2005.
• Allmusic (2001). Leo Delibes Retrieved July 1, 2005.

External links[link]

• Free scores by Delibes at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Léo Delibes in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Ballet Notes: "Léo Delibes"