Dorothy Hewett was a respected Australian playwright and poet known for her lively storytelling and engaging characters. Her notable works include The Chapel Perilous and This Old Man Comes Rolling Home, capturing vivid aspects of Australian life and culture.
If you enjoy reading books by Dorothy Hewett then you might also like the following authors:
Thea Astley is known for exploring Australian life, often showing communities facing isolation and social pressures. She writes clearly and sharply, focusing on complicated personal stories and tough moral questions.
Her novel Drylands portrays the struggles and loneliness of characters in a rural town, dealing honestly with themes like loss, regret, and the search for meaning.
Elizabeth Jolley writes with honesty, humor, and a bit of darkness about the lives of outsiders and people at society's edges. Her narratives are unsettling at times but heartfelt, making readers think deeply about loneliness, friendship, and hope.
In The Well, Jolley creates an eerie yet touching story about friendship, hidden desires, and secrets in rural Australia.
Helen Garner's style is personal and direct, exploring relationships and social issues with insight and honesty. Her themes often involve how people navigate through love, family dynamics, and emotional struggles.
In her powerful narrative Monkey Grip, Garner portrays vividly the experiences of a woman caught up in a difficult relationship and the complexity of modern friendships.
Drusilla Modjeska combines memoir and analytical writing to explore women's lives, identity, and creativity. She thoughtfully examines relationships and life's contradictions.
Her book The Orchard is a profound and intimate reflection on memory, self-discovery, and how storytelling shapes personal history.
Christina Stead writes detailed and psychologically insightful novels about complicated family dynamics and human relationships. Her style is honest and perceptive, offering unflinching views of family conflict, emotions, and desires.
In her novel The Man Who Loved Children, Stead exposes the claustrophobic tensions within a dysfunctional family, presenting a powerful picture of human complexity and struggle.
Dymphna Cusack writes passionately about Australian society, exploring social justice, women's rights, and working-class struggles. Her style is direct and empathetic, bringing readers close to her characters' lives and highlighting inequalities.
Her novel, Come in Spinner, co-written with Florence James, vividly explores the lives of women during wartime Sydney, presenting their challenges with warmth and realism.
Katharine Susannah Prichard's storytelling is honest, heartfelt, and deeply attuned to Australia's landscapes and people. Many of her novels highlight ordinary people coping with hardship and social injustice.
Coonardoo is bold and moving, depicting the complex relationship between Indigenous Australians and white settlers, and examining themes of race, prejudice, and forbidden love.
Judith Wright’s poetry is thoughtful, sensitive, and deeply connected to the Australian environment. Often she touches upon human relationships with nature, Aboriginal rights, and environmental issues.
Her collection Birds is a wonderful entryway into her work, showcasing her ability to beautifully combine personal experience with broader social and environmental themes.
Gwen Harwood's poetry blends wit with deep emotional insight, exploring family life, childhood memories, gender roles, and identity. She often adopts carefully controlled forms and subtle irony.
In her collection The Lion’s Bride, readers can find poems that are both playful and sharply observant, capturing life's contradictions and complexities in accessible, moving verse.
Dorothy Porter writes strong, vivid poetry that blurs the line between poetry and narrative storytelling. With passion and brevity, she delves into themes of desire, fear, death, and obsession.
Her verse novel The Monkey's Mask offers a unique, visceral exploration of love and mystery, utilizing poetry to tell a detective story with immediacy and emotional intensity.
Jean Rhys wrote fiction that explored the lives of women who felt displaced and alienated. Her language is simple yet deeply emotional, focusing on loneliness, identity, and struggles against societal expectations.
Her book Wide Sargasso Sea retells the story of Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, giving voice to a character who had been dismissed and silenced.
Sylvia Plath was a poet and novelist well-known for her intense, sharp, and personal style. Her writing openly confronted issues of identity, depression, and women's roles in both family and society.
Her novel The Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical and frankly portrays a young woman's struggle with mental illness and societal pressures in the 1950s.
Anaïs Nin expressed bold and honest views on women's inner lives, relationships, sexuality, and emotional freedom. She often wrote lyrical prose rich in supercharged imagery and thoughtful reflections.
Her extensive diaries remain popular, as does her powerful collection of stories, Delta of Venus, which speaks openly about women's desires at a time when such topics were usually ignored.
Kate Jennings brought a bold, fresh voice to Australian literature with her honest, straightforward writing style and keen social awareness. She tackled feminism, politics, and the challenges women face head-on.
Her novel Snake is short, sharp, and deeply moving, detailing a complex portrait of a troubled marriage in rural Australia.
Beverley Farmer wrote fiction that reflected a deeply poetic style and careful attention to the emotional lives of women. She often portrayed quiet domestic scenarios full of unspoken tensions, dreams, and detailed observations.
Her short-story collection Milk explores emotional landscapes, everyday struggles, and moments of quiet revelation with sensitivity and depth.