Curtin academics Brian Dibble and Barbara Milech began their Elizabeth Jolley bibliography project in about 1985, intending to construct a “complete” record of every published work by Elizabeth Jolley, and each and every work about her – criticism, reviews, news articles and anything else. By the time of Jolley’s death in 2007, the project had grown to fill 35 lever arch files. Jolley was a collaborator in the project, and some of the items carry post-it notes she stuck to items she was contributing to the collection.
Image: Brian Dibble in 1973. Courtesy Curtin University Archives.
Looking over the collection gives a sense of the heights of Jolley’s career and its breadth. There are glowing reviews in British and American newspapers, with the acclaimed novelist Angela Carter calling Foxybaby ‘delicious and sustaining’ in the New York Times Book Review. Jolley published a book most years in the 1980s and 1990s, and was also an active writer in many other forms, with the collection including her insightful book reviews, letters to the editor on a suitably bewildering range of subjects, occasional addresses and essays of various kinds, as well as a stream of short stories.
Image: items from the Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection
As a measure of just how thorough the collection is, it includes a photocopy of Cooking by Degrees, the recipe book Jolley edited in 1962 as a fundraiser for the UWA branch of Save the Children. The bibliography records, ‘Jolley’s suggestion for its title, with suitable cover illustration, was Greasy Joan, from the song in Shakespeare’s … Love’s Labour’s Lost. Lost Jolley’s only culinary contribution was her recipe for Onion Soup.’
Donated to the Curtin University Library as a Special Collection, the Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection was published online in 2008, allowing patrons to view bibliographical details for all items grouped by type, and also digitised versions of selected items for which we secured copyright permission. The PDF version of the bibliography offers annotations on selected items and a chronology of publications. The physical files are held with Special Collections at the John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library.
Image: A rare copy of Travelling Notebook Three by Elizabeth Jolley, with Jolley’s annotation. Elizabeth Jolley Research Collection, CUL00001/2/3.
The collection is a valuable resource for anyone researching Elizabeth Jolley. The online home of the collection is here, and includes the pdf version of the bibliography and the full story of the project. You can view highlights from the collection in the Centenary of Elizabeth Jolley Centenary exhibition on level 3 of the Robertson Library until 31 August.
