Frank Hardy

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For the Frank Hardy in the Hardy Boys novels, see Frank Hardy (The Hardy Boys).

Frank Hardy (21 March 1917–28 January 1994) was a left-wing novelist and writer from Australia. He was also a political activist bringing the plight of Aboriginal Australians to international attention with the publication of his book The Unlucky Australians in 1968. He ran for the Australian parliament twice.

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[edit] Career

Frank Hardy was born in 1917 at Southern Cross in Western Victoria and later shifted with his family to Bacchus Marsh, west of Melbourne. (Hocking, Armstrong, Adams). His mother was a Catholic and his father, Thomas, a non-believer from Welsh and English extraction. In 1931 Hardy left school at the age of 14 and started a series of manual jobs. According to Armstrong (p.8), "his first job was as a messenger/bottlewasher at the local chemist's shop" and then he worked at the local grocer. He later also did manual work "in and around Bacchus Marsh in the milk factory, digging potatoes, picking tomatoes and fruit" (Ibid).

There is some debate amongst Hardy's biographers about the relative extent Hardy personally suffered from hardships during the 1930s depression. Hardy claimed himself that he left home when he was 13 because "his dad couldn't get the dole" with me at home (Interview entitled "Hardy declares war on poverty" in The Herald (Melbourne) of 7th October 1983). Jim Hardy, Frank's eldest brother as Armstrong notes, however, wrote to the Melbourne Herald (6th November 1983) to correct this assertion, claiming that Frank had never had to leave home, and further noting that their "father never lost a day's work in his life." According to Hocking (p.11) in a more recent biography, however, Tom Hardy, had indeed lost his job at the Federal milk factory at the start of the depression, and the family had had to move into a small rented house in Lerderderg Street. Whatever the nitpicking details of Hardy's background, there can be little doubt, however, that coming from a struggling, large Catholic family, dependent mostly on the sole income of their father, Hardy knew quite well what poverty was. Even Armstrong (p.10), who is easily Hardy's most hostile biographer, is quite clear that Hardy's future career and political views as a writer were largely shaped by his own personally felt experiences of poverty and the constraints of living in a small country town during the Depression.

As a result of his experiences during the Depression, Hardy joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1939. According to Armstrong, Hardy enlisted in the Australian armed forces on 10 May 1943. (Armstrong, p.18; Hocking, p. 30.). He was later posted to Matranka in the Northern Territory which was under "perpertual anticipation" of attack from the Japanese.(Hocking, p.31) Initially editing and writing a unit newspaper for the Australian army, he was employed as an artist for the army journal Salt. He continued to work in journalism for most of his life. Although he opposed the foundation of the Australian Society of Authors for political reasons in 1963, he later joined the Society and served on its Management Committee. He played an active role in assisting the Gurindji people in the Gurindji strike in the mid to late '60s.

His most famous work, Power Without Glory, initially published by Hardy himself with the assistance of Communist Party members, was filmed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 1976. The novel was a fictionalised version of the life of a Melbourne businessman, John Wren, and was set in the fictitious Melbourne suburb of Carringbush (based on the actual suburb Collingwood). In 1950, Hardy was arrested for criminal libel and had to defend the book in a celebrated case shortly after the publication of Power Without Glory. Hardy detailed the case in his book The Hard Way.

Hardy was a member of the Realist Writers Group, who he represented at the Third World Youth Festival for Peace in Berlin.

Hardy's sister, Mary Hardy was a popular radio and television personality in the 1960s and 1970s in Australia.

Frank Hardy died at his home in North Carlton, a suburb of Melbourne, from a heart attack on 28 January 1994 aged 76.

Hardy's granddaughter Marieke Hardy is a writer in Melbourne.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books about Frank Hardy

  • Frank Hardy Politics Literature Life, Jenny Hocking, Lothian Books, South Melbourne 2005 ISBN 0-7344-0836-6
  • Frank Hardy and the Literature of Commitment, edited by Paul Adams & Christopher Lee is (The Vulgar Press, North Carlton, Vic 2003)
  • Frank Hardy and the Making of Power without Glory, Pauline Armstrong (Melbourne University Press)ISBN 0-522-84888-5
  • The Stranger From Melbourne: Frank Hardy - A Literary Biography 1944 - 1975, Paul Adams, University of West Australia Press, 1999 ISBN 1-876268-23-9

[edit] External links

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