48 Facts About Dorothy Hewett

Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian playwright, poet and author.

Dorothy Hewett wrote in a number of different literary styles: modernism, socialist realism, expressionism and avant garde.

Dorothy Hewett was a member of the Australian Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which informed her work during that period.

Dorothy Coade Hewett was born on 21 May 1923 in Perth, Western Australia.

Until the age of 12, Hewett lived on a sheep and wheat farm, Lambton Downs, in the Western Australian wheat belt.

Dorothy Hewett's father survived the Gallipoli campaign and the Western Front in World War I, and he was twice decorated for bravery.

Dorothy Hewett began writing poetry at the age of six, and her parents would wake in the night to write down her poems.

Dorothy Hewett's mother had severe early-onset menopause symptoms and beat the wilful and imaginative young Hewett.

Dorothy Hewett attended Perth College, where she had to wear shoes, hat and gloves for the first time, a shock after her ragamuffin life on the farm.

Dorothy Hewett excelled at English and received the State Exhibition award in English in 1941.

Dorothy Hewett enrolled at the University of Western Australia in 1942, where she participated eagerly in university life.

Dorothy Hewett won the national Meanjin poetry award that year, aged 17.

Dorothy Hewett received high distinctions in English, but failed French for several years and did not graduate.

Dorothy Hewett rejected the lifestyle and aspirations of her wealthy parents and eventually joined the Communist Party of Australia.

Dorothy Hewett briefly edited the Communist Party newspaper The Workers' Star.

Dozens of articles authored by Dorothy Hewett appear in the Worker's Star from 1945 to 1947.

Dorothy Hewett's enthusiasm was such that she kept the journal 'politically pure' by writing most of the contents herself under various noms de plume.

Dorothy Hewett covered the 1946 Pilbara Strike for the Worker's Star, and wrote the epic ballad, Clancy and Dooley and Don McLeod, which cemented her position as a radical author and a supporter of Indigenous rights.

Dorothy Hewett worked for a year as a mill hand in a cotton spinning mill, which gave her the material for her first novel, Bobbin Up.

Dorothy Hewett was one of the founders of the left-wing organisation the Union of Australian Women, editing the first edition of their journal, and she participated enthusiastically in Realist Writers groups in Sydney and Perth.

Dorothy Hewett took a job as a copywriter on the catalogue of Walton Sears Department Store to support the family, and then with Leyden Publishing.

The house had no water or sewerage and Dorothy Hewett caught an intestinal bug.

Dorothy Hewett began to publish new poems in Tribune, mostly paeans to socialism.

In Perth, Dorothy Hewett completed her Arts degree and obtained a position as a university tutor in English at the University of Western Australia, which she held until 1973.

Dorothy Hewett financially supported her family with some help from Lilley and her parents.

Dorothy Hewett made a trip to a Weimar Writer's Conference in 1965, and was treated for thrombosis in the Soviet Union.

Dorothy Hewett arranged protests on behalf of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial in 1965, after which she became increasingly disillusioned with Communism.

Dorothy Hewett was attacked by former friends who remained Stalinist hardliners.

Dorothy Hewett followed it in 1972 with Bonbons and Roses for Dolly, a musical play about failed dreams set in an idealised Regal Theatre.

In 1973, Dorothy Hewett received the first of eight grants from the new Literature Board of the Australia Council.

Dorothy Hewett was over 50 years old when she was at last enabled to become a full-time professional writer.

Dorothy Hewett returned in late 1973 to her "city of marvellous experience" Sydney, where she bought a rambling terrace in Woollahra with her share of her recently deceased mother's estate.

Dorothy Hewett completed the book during a trip to Oxford, England.

Dorothy Hewett moved at the end of 1991 to an old coach house at Faulconbridge in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

Dorothy Hewett wrote two moderately successful novels, and a poetry collection Halfway Up the Mountain, but struggled to get new theatre work onto the stage until she wrote the successful play Nowhere, which was staged in 2001.

Dorothy Hewett was disabled by osteoarthritis and was progressively reliant on a wheelchair and then bedridden.

Dorothy Hewett died from recurring breast cancer on 25 August 2002.

Dorothy Hewett paid scant attention to convention or literary fashion, following her own muse on topics she believed were important.

When most plays of the time were naturalistic along the style of TV dramas, Dorothy Hewett's plays incorporated allusion, mystery, landscape, poetry, songs and music, with lashings of ironic humour that saved her characters from excessive posturing.

Dorothy Hewett worked directly with most of the major directors and actors of the time, and was her own dramaturg during first-time performances.

Dorothy Hewett was appointed as Writer in Residence in eight Australian universities and one in the USA between 1975 and 1990, where she participated fully in university life, giving encouragement to younger writers.

For much of her life after 1960, Dorothy Hewett struggled with ill-health, apart from a very active period in the 1970s.

Dorothy Hewett only became a full-time writer from the age of 51, with the aid of Literature Board grants, intermittent earnings from writing and from university fellowships, and an ongoing bequest from her father's estate.

Dorothy Hewett was outspoken in defence of Australian literature, especially in her later years.

In 2000 Dorothy Hewett launched a broadside at lack of support for writers by publishing houses and governments, saying independent publishing houses were being taken over by big overseas companies, that the price of books was rising, and only generous public funding would enable experimental writing and young, unknown writers to find a place.

Dorothy Hewett has been called "one of Australia's best-loved and most respected writers".

Dorothy Hewett is regarded as one of the success stories of the Australia Council programme of government grants to writers.

Dorothy Hewett was awarded eight grants including a lifetime Emeritus Grant from the Literature Fund of the Australia Council.