Power Without Glory
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Includes list of characters and their real names. Minor stains on boards; light bumping on corners. Binding slightly shaky.
One of the most controversial and consequential novels in Australian literary history, Power Without Glory chronicles the ruthless rise of John West, a fictional titan whose iron grip on Melbourne's political and criminal underworld mirrors the real-life ascent of gambling magnate John Wren. Published originally in 1950 under the pseudonym Ross Franklyn, Frank J. Hardy's monumental three-part saga traces West's journey from the back-street betting shops of working-class Collingwood to the corridors of federal power — a journey paved with corruption, intimidation, and moral compromise on an epic scale. Hardy's unflinching, documentary-style prose reads like a prosecutorial brief against the entanglement of money and political power in twentieth-century Australia, drawing on meticulous research and Hardy's own experience as a committed socialist journalist. The novel's publication triggered a criminal libel trial against the author — itself a remarkable chapter in Australian legal and cultural history — and cemented the work's status as a landmark of social realism in the antipodean literary canon. Power Without Glory remains a towering indictment of unchecked ambition, asking its reader a question that still resonates: at what price does power come, and who truly pays it?
Author: Frank J. Hardy
Format: Hardback
Published: 1950, Realist Printing and Publishing, Melbourne
Genre: Australian history
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket - some marks on spine and corners
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Includes list of characters and their real names. Minor stains on boards; light bumping on corners. Binding slightly shaky.
One of the most controversial and consequential novels in Australian literary history, Power Without Glory chronicles the ruthless rise of John West, a fictional titan whose iron grip on Melbourne's political and criminal underworld mirrors the real-life ascent of gambling magnate John Wren. Published originally in 1950 under the pseudonym Ross Franklyn, Frank J. Hardy's monumental three-part saga traces West's journey from the back-street betting shops of working-class Collingwood to the corridors of federal power — a journey paved with corruption, intimidation, and moral compromise on an epic scale. Hardy's unflinching, documentary-style prose reads like a prosecutorial brief against the entanglement of money and political power in twentieth-century Australia, drawing on meticulous research and Hardy's own experience as a committed socialist journalist. The novel's publication triggered a criminal libel trial against the author — itself a remarkable chapter in Australian legal and cultural history — and cemented the work's status as a landmark of social realism in the antipodean literary canon. Power Without Glory remains a towering indictment of unchecked ambition, asking its reader a question that still resonates: at what price does power come, and who truly pays it?