Sex and the City: New Novels by Women and Middlebrow Culture at Mid-Century

Abstract

‘Central to developments in Australian literature during the period from the end of Second World War until the mid-1960s—what might be called the ‘long 1950s’—was the emergence of the kind of modernist novel written by Patrick White as the benchmark of modern fiction. This was the outcome of a struggle among opinion-makers in the literary field, which during this period came to be dominated for the first time by academic critics. They, by and large, favoured the new forms of postwar modernism and rejected that literary nationalism which had drawn the loyalty of most influential writers during the 1930s and 940s.’ (Author’s introduction)