The Intoxicating History of Australia's Female Publicans. The author's award-winning research challenges the myth that the Australian pub is a male domain, revealing the enduring and dynamic presence of female publicans behind the bar. Wright takes the reader on a pub crawl through this history: from Sarah Bird, the 27-year-old convict who was Australia's first female licensee, to Big Poll the Grog Seller, the miners' darling on the goldfields, to Cheryl Barassi and Dawn Fraser today.
Handsomely illustrated and weaving oral history interviews, archival sources, folk songs, bush ballads and other popular literature throughout the narrative, this groundbreaking book exposes the remarkable visibility and dominance of women in Australian hotelkeeping culture.
Contents:
Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgements
A Note on Terminology and Spelling
1. A Colonial Pub Crawl
Part 1: 'Likely to Keep Orderly Houses': Female Publican and the Law
2. A Monument to Her Enterprise
3. Traditions: From 'Shebeen' to 'He or She'
4. Property and Marriage: An Unholy Alliance
5. Person or Woman?
Part 2: 'The Very Nature of Things': The Politics of Public Housekeeping
6. Minogue's Case
7. The Fallout: Press and Parliament
8. The Licensed Victuallers' Association
9. The Brewers
Part 3: 'A First Class Family Hotel ... Furnished Like a Home': Hotel Space, a Woman's Place
10. Mapping Elizabeth Wright
11. 'Open House'
12. The Hotel as a Family Home: An Inside Story
13. Pub-licity
Part 4: 'She Knows what she's About': Controlling the Public House
14. Making an Impression
15. Women's Temperance, Class and Social Power
16. 'The Buxom Matron Behind the Bar'
17. 'Dignity is the Right Word'
18. The More Things Change
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Review:Beyond the Ladies Lounge presents fresh insights into the Aussie pub, that cultural icon so much a part of our life and consciousness. Beyond the Ladies Lounge is anything but a dry argument, thanks largely to Wright's interviews with numerous women publicans. Larger than life characters all of them, they give vibrancy and colour to the book and, for Wright, opened the doors to the world beyond the lounge. - The Age, 23 September 2003
This is one of those simple ideas that illuminate the corners of history: Clare Wright's detailed examination of the lot of the lady publican speaks volumes about the way women have negotiated private and professional life for the past 200 years. - The Age, 15 November 2003
