Osborne, Roger (2021) Jon Cleary and Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd: The Making of a Textual Craftsman. Script and Print, 45 (4). pp. 141-155.

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Abstract

[Extract] Sixty years separates the publication of Jon Cleary’s first novel, You Can’t See Round Corners (1947), and his last, Four-Cornered Circle (2007). During those sixty years, Cleary published more than fifty novels, a novel a year at the peak of production, receiving early critical recognition in Australia with the ALS Gold Medal for Just Let Me Be (1950), and, later, in the USA, with the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award for Peter’s Pence (1974). A winner of multiple Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing, he was honoured in 2004 for his lifetime contribution to that genre. The number of copies of Cleary’s novels doubles when English and American editions are considered, and increases further with counts of adaptations, translations, serialisations, and abridgements. Cleary himself moved as far as his books, travelling widely, while maintaining Australia as his homebase for increasingly extended periods of time as he grew older. His cultural and professional networks connected him with significant figures in trans-national publishing, particularly through his long connection with literary agents Paul R. Reynolds in New York and John Farquharson in London, and with publishers William Collins, Sons, in Britain, and William Morrow and Company in the USA.

Item ID:	79607
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1834-9013
Keywords:	Australian literature; print culture; book history; editing; Jon Cleary
Copyright Information:	Past issues of Script & Print are added below, with a five-year embargo between publication and free public access. Please note that users with institutional credentials can access all past issues of Script & Print and the BSANZ Bulletin at Informit / APA-FT.
Additional Information:	Despite the citation year of 2021, this article was first published in August 2023.
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2023 01:53
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1307 Understanding past societies > 130703 Understanding Australia’s past @ 100%
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