The Dyehouse

'Vivid, fresh and utterly unsentimental...Calthorpe's own experience of factory and office work provides The Dyehouse with many authentic touches (including much detail about the dyeing process) but that is not what generates this novel's compelling power. What is so remarkable is how it captures and presents a microcosmic world, in which the human elements are all parts of a moving whole: the brutal economy of manual labor, where workers are kept barely above the poverty line, where there is almost no chance of escape, improvement, education, promotion. Yet the focus is always on the personal, the individual.’—Sydney Morning Herald

Written with unerring skill and insight, a masterly portrait of postwar Australia. As industrial work was radically transformed by new technologies, society changed with it. Mena Calthorpe—who herself worked in a textile factory—takes us inside this world, vividly bringing to life the people of an inner-Sydney company in the mid-1950s: the bosses, middlemen and underlings; their dramatic struggles and their loves.

This powerful and affecting novel was first published in 1961, and is the hundredth book in the Text Classics series. Introduced by Fiona McFarlane, acclaimed author of The Night Guest.