Frank Hardy and the making of Power without glory

the long version

"Frank Hardy's famous novel Power Without Glory was printed and published secretly in Melbourne in 1950. Its appearance and the subsequent criminal libel case became perhaps Australia's greatest literary cause celebre." "In this account, Pauline Armstrong shows that Hardy was commissioned to write the semi-fictional story as part of a deliberate Communist Party strategy. It was intended to discredit the shady power broker John Wren and, through him, to damage the Catholic Church's anti-Communist activities in the Labor Party and the Victorian industrial unions." "Armstrong's narrative shows the growing energy and excitement Hardy brought to the task of writing the manuscript. For the first time, too, she tells the stories of those most closely involved in the campaign - the rank and file Party members who, in small work groups at secret locations, typeset, printed and bound the scandalous novel."--Jacket.