AustLit
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Dorothy Blewett holds a very special place in the development of the Australian Drama Archive as the first playwright whose work was re-enlivened through the project.
Selected by Stephen Carleton, Bernadette Cochrane, Kerry Kilner, and Sue Rider as the play for the UQ Drama student performance season in 2016, The First Joanna , a manuscript version of which was held in The University of Queensland's Fryer Library, became the first play to open a cornucopia of material relating to a rich literary career that had been virtually ignored in the official literary histories of Australia.
Dorothy Blewett's work and career had been mentioned in passing by a number of reference works and, with approval, by theatre historians such as Leslie Rees but her full merit has not been fully assessed or recognised. It is incredibly fortunate that Dorothy's family had, in safe-keeping, her papers and manuscripts. Kerry Kilner, lead researcher on the Australian Drama Archive, is grateful to Mr Michael Rice and Mrs Prue Molnar, Dorothy's nephew and niece, for their help and trust in this project.
The plays published here have been transcribed by AustLit staff including Samantha McPherson, a dedicated 2017-2018 summer scholarship holder from the School of Communication and Arts. We will be progressively making available other works written by Dorothy Blewett; some of which were published in her lifetime and others that remained unpublished until now.
We gratefully acknowledge Dorothy Blewett's family for their permission to publish the plays. Please contact AustLit for further information: austlit@uq.edu.au
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Dorothy Blewett ca. 1940s. Image provided by Blewett family.See full AustLit entryDorothy Blewett was born in Northcote in 1898 and was educated at the Methodist Ladies College. She was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, and active promoter of Australian literature through her work with International PEN, as a literary agent, and as secretary of the London-based, Society of Australian Writers during the 1950s. She was also secretary of the Melbourne branch of the PEN club
Blewett worked as a teacher as a young woman, then as a secretary and stenographer for a number of large companies in Melbourne, including at the Melbourne Head Office of Thomas Cook Travel where she worked from 1947 to 1951.
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