ASTLEY, Thea (Beatrice May) 1925-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 25, 1925, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; died August 17, 2004, in Byron Bay, Australia. Educator and author. Astley was an award-winning Australian novelist who often wrote satirically about small-town life in her native country. After graduating from the University of Queensland in 1947 with a degree in art, she married, became a mother, and continued the career as English teacher that she had begun in 1944; she would later teach at the Macquarie University School of English in Sydney, where she became a fellow in Australian literature, retiring in 1980. Her first novel, Girl with a Monkey, appeared in 1958 and would be followed by fifteen more novels and three short story collections. Writing on such themes as self-delusion, the cultural clashes between English settlers and Australian Aborigines, and the hypocrisy of the middle class, Astley often commented critically on the state of society in Australia, employing satire as her weapon of choice. Her writing was critically acclaimed, though her challenging style sometimes limited her audience; she received numerous prizes for her work, including four Miles Franklin awards—her country's highest literary honor—for The Well-Dressed Explorer (1962), The Slow Natives (1965), The Acolyte (1972), and Drylands: A Book for the World's Last Reader (2000). Other honors included a Gold Medal Award from the Australian Literature Society and, most recently, a special award in 2002 from the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Although she originally planned to stop writing after the 1994 publication of Coda, she won a fellowship that led her to write her two final novels, The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow (1996) and Drylands, the latter of which has been optioned for a film adaptation.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Post (Liverpool, England), August 25, 2004, p. 13.

Daily Telegraph (London, England), August 28, 2004.

Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, MI), August 29, 2004, p. A26.

Times (London, England), August 24, 2004, p. 27.

ONLINE

Sydney Morning Herald,http://www.smh.com/ (August 18, 2004).