Author | Norman Lindsay |
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Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Publisher | Faber and Faber [1] |
Publication date | 1930 |
Pages | 317 pp. |
Preceded by | A Curate in Bohemia |
Followed by | Miracles by Arrangement |
Redheap, also published as Every Mother's Son, is a 1930 novel by Norman Lindsay.[ citation needed ] It is a story of life in a country town in Victoria, Australia in the 1890s. Lindsay portrays real characters struggling with the social restrictions of the day. Snobbery and wowserism are dominant themes. In 1930 it became the first Australian novel to be banned in Australia. [2] The novel forms the first part of a trilogy (together with Saturdee and Halfway to Anywhere).
The novel was adapted for television in 1972.
The central character is Robert Piper, a nineteen-year-old man engaging in love affairs with the publican's daughter and the parson's daughter next door. In an attempt to prevent him falling into immorality and dragging the family along with him, Piper's mother arranges for him to be tutored by Mr Bandparts, a recovering alcoholic school teacher. The arrangement soon backfires and Mr Bandparts is soon drinking beer with his young pupil and chasing the corpulent barmaid at the Royal Hotel.
The reader is introduced to the rest of the Piper family: Mr Piper, a draper who continuously measures objects to calm his mind; his eldest son Henry who has high hopes of taking over the business one day; the awful oldest daughter Hetty and her domineering ways in the drawing room, and her attempts to control the family morals and standing; Ethel the quiet younger daughter who uses her shyness to cover her various seductions of young men around town; and Grandpa Piper, who made the family fortunes only to be treated with contempt by the rest of the family in his dotage (his small acts of revenge make some of the most comic moments of the book).
The book was banned in Australia for 28 (until 1958) years after it was first published in 1930. [3] [4]
The novel was optioned for the movies in the 1930s for £1,000 but no movie was made. [5]
Redheap | |
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Based on | novel by Norman Lindsay |
Written by | Eleanor Witcombe |
Directed by | Brian Bell |
Starring | Peter Flett Michael Boddy Pamela Stephenson Norman Yemm June Salter Kate Fitzpatrick |
Country of origin | Australia |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 3 |
Production | |
Producer | Alan Burke |
Original release | |
Network | ABC |
Release | 27 October 1972 |
The novel was adapted into a three-part mini series by the ABC in 1972. [6] [7] It screened as part of Norman Lindsay Theatre on the ABC, where works for Lindsay were screened over nine weeks. Three of the weeks were devoted to Redheap. [8]
Joan à Beckett Weigall, Lady Lindsay was an Australian novelist, playwright, essayist, and visual artist. Trained in her youth as a painter, she published her first literary work in 1936 at age forty under a pseudonym, a satirical novel titled Through Darkest Pondelayo. Her second novel, Time Without Clocks, was published nearly thirty years later, and was a semi-autobiographical account of the early years of her marriage to artist Sir Daryl Lindsay.
Francis Michael Forde was an Australian politician who served as the 15th prime minister of Australia from 6 to 13 July 1945. He was deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1932 to 1946 and served as prime minister in a caretaker capacity following the death of John Curtin. He is the shortest-serving prime minister in Australia's history.
Norman Alfred William Lindsay was an Australian artist, etcher, sculptor, writer, art critic, novelist, cartoonist and amateur boxer. One of the most prolific and popular Australian artists of his generation, Lindsay attracted both acclaim and controversy for his works, many of which infused the Australian landscape with erotic pagan elements and were deemed by his critics to be "anti-Christian, anti-social and degenerate". A vocal nationalist, he became a regular artist for The Bulletin at the height of its cultural influence, and advanced staunchly anti-modernist views as a leading writer on Australian art. When friend and literary critic Bertram Stevens argued that children like to read about fairies rather than food, Lindsay wrote and illustrated The Magic Pudding (1918), now considered a classic work of Australian children's literature.
Kenneth Bernard Cook was an Australian journalist, television documentary maker, and novelist best known for his works Wake in Fright, which is still in print five decades after its first publication, and the humorous Killer Koala trilogy.
London Belongs to Me is a British film released in 1948, directed by Sidney Gilliat, and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins, which was also the basis for a seven-part series made by Thames Television shown in 1977.
The Survivor is a 1969 novel by Australian author Thomas Keneally.
Robbery Under Arms is a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne, published under his pen name Rolf Boldrewood. It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888. It was abridged into a single volume in 1889 as part of Macmillan's one-volume Colonial Library series and has not been out of print since.
William Percy Lipscomb was a British-born Hollywood playwright, screenwriter, producer and director. He died in London in 1958, aged 71.
Upsurge is a novel by Australian writer J. M. Harcourt. Set in Perth, Western Australia, during the Great Depression, it was the first novel to be banned by the then Commonwealth Book Censorship Board and the first to be prosecuted by police in Australia.
Francis William Thring III, better known as F. W. Thring, was an Australian film director, producer, and exhibitor. He has been credited with the invention of the clapperboard.
Seven Little Australians is a 1939 Australian film directed by Arthur Greville Collins and starring Charles McCallum. It is an adaptation of Ethel Turner's 1894 novel in a contemporary setting.
Eleanor Katrine Witcombe was an Australian writer who worked extensively in radio, film and television.
The Cousin from Fiji (1945) is a novel by Australian writer and artist Norman Lindsay.
Dust or Polish? (1950) is a novel by Australian writer and artist Norman Lindsay.
A Curate in Bohemia is a 1972 Australian TV play based on the 1913 novel by Norman Lindsay of the same name. It was one of a series of adaptations of Lindsay works on the ABC in 1972.
Halfway to Nowhere is a 1972 Australian TV play based on the novel by Norman Lindsay. It was part of a series of five Lindsay adaptations on the ABC.
Saturdee is an Australian children's television series that first screened on the Seven Network in 1986, adapted from the novel by Norman Lindsay. The ten part series is set in the small town of Redheap in the 1920s and tells the story of 12-year-old Peter Gimble and his friends.
Norman Lindsay Festival is a 1972 Australian anthology television series on the ABC based on the works of Norman Lindsay. It was filmed at the ABC's Gore Hill studios in Sydney.
Age of Consent is a 1938 Australian comic novel written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay, in which the central character is a middle-aged painter, based loosely on the author, who travels to a rural township of New South Wales in search of scenic inspiration, but who meets instead a wild adolescent girl who serves as his model and muse. Age of Consent is dedicated to Howard Hinton. The book, first published in the United Kingdom and simultaneously in the United States, was briefly banned in Australia. It was adapted for the screen in 1969.
Halfway to Anywhere is a 1947 novel written and illustrated by Norman Lindsay. It is a humorous novel dealing with Australian adolescents. It the final part of a trilogy which began with Redheap and was continued in Saturdee. According to The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, "these novels, with their sexually vigorous young protagonists, comically depict small town life." The novel was adapted for the screen in 1972.