Carey, Peter

The Australian author Peter Philip Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, where his parents ran a General Motors dealership. He was a boarder at Geelong Grammar School between 1954 and 1960 and went on to read chemistry and zoology at Monash University, Melbourne, without graduating. This was where he met Leigh Weetman, his first wife, who had also dropped out of university. They were married in 1964. Carey made a living from writing advertising copy for a few years beginning in 1962. During this period he befriended the Australian author Barry Oakley who inspired his own writing. Carey began to read Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner, Becket and García Márquez, and went on to write at least five novels that were all refused by publishers.