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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The final book by Sumner Locke Elliott, the award-winning author of Careful, He Might Hear You.
Drawing heavily on Locke Elliott's own experiences, Fairyland charts the life of Seaton Daly, an aspiring writer coming to terms with his homosexuality in the repressive atmosphere of inner-city Sydney during the 1930s and '40s. Lonely and naive, Daly dreams of escaping to the 'promised land' of the United States.
Fairyland is an intimate, affecting, sometimes harrowing portrayal of a lifelong search for love. Sumner Locke Elliott's 'coming out' novel, it was first published in 1990, the year before his death.' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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Dedication: For Frances Lindley with love
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Semi-autobiographical novel.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Australia in Three Books
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2021; Meanjin , Summer vol. 80 no. 4 2021;
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel ; Dancing on Coral 1987 single work novel ; Wild Abandon 2021 single work novel -
On Not Having Sex : Sumner Locke Elliott and Queer History
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 19 December vol. 34 no. 2 2020;'This essay argues that we need ways to read unexpressed queer desire and the absence of sex in writing by gay authors that don’t fall back on the trope of the closet. It makes this argument through pairing Sumner Locke Elliott’s 1948 play Rusty Bugles with his 1990 ‘coming out’ novel Fairyland, two texts that draw upon Elliott’s time at an ordinance depot during the Second World War. Elliott’s work has often been read as out of step with the politics of gay liberation. However I will argue that both these texts reflect upon the queer potential of not having sex. In Elliott’s writings about the Second World War the structured sexual abstinence of the ordinance depot provides his protagonists with an escape from the burden of homosexual identity in the twentieth century and allows for new modes of queer intimacy and exchange.' (Publication abstract)
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‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)
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'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192) 'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7) -
[Untitled]
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 6 no. 1 2013;
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel
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Book Reviews Fiction
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: Library Journal , 1 February vol. 115 no. 2. 1990; (p. 105)
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel -
In Short
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: The New York Times Book Review , 20 May 1990; (p. 30)
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel -
Untitled
1990
single work
review
— Appears in: West Coast Review of Books , vol. 15 no. 4 1990; (p. 32)
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel -
Coming Out with Gay Abandon
1991
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Mercury , 28 September 1991; (p. 20)
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel -
How a Lonely Good Sport Survived Homophobic Sydney
1991
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 21 September 1991; (p. 9)
— Review of Fairyland : A Novel 1990 single work novel -
Careful, He's Made Himself Heard at Last
1990
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 June 1990; (p. 4) -
Pleasing Yourself
Kate Jennings
(interviewer),
1991
single work
interview
— Appears in: Island , Spring no. 48 1991; (p. 24-29) -
New from New York
1990
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 June 1990; (p. rev 6) -
'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192) 'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7) -
‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)
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cUnited States of America (USA),cAmericas,
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- 1930s
- 1940s