Henry Handel Richardson: A Life

Description

Henry Handel Richardson is celebrated for her classic Australian novels The Getting of Wisdom and The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, yet her own life-story is still to be fully told. This enthralling 2004 book is a complete biography of this enigmatic Australian literary icon. Drawing on previously unavailable records, the book sheds light on Richardson's unconventional life. Beginning with her traumatic childhood, then tracing in detail the largely unknown story of the eleven formative years Richardson spent on the Continent, the book goes on to explore the personal and social forces that moved her during her long years as a London intellectual, concluding with her last ordeal as a frail spectator in the front-line of the Battle of Britain.

Michael Ackland is the author of Henry Kendall: the Man and the Myths and Damaged Men: the Precarious Lives of James McAuley and Harold Stewart. He was educated in Australia and Germany, where he attended secondary school and studied German literature at the University of Cologne. Currently he is Head of the English Department at Monash University.

'The private life and personality of Ethel Florence Richardson has an enduring fascination. This is partly because, under the pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson, she wrote one the few great Australian novels of the twentieth century, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. Equally enticing to readers and critics is the intertwining in her work of biography, autobiography and fiction. The author herself, who fiercely and sometimes mischievously guarded her privacy, was her own unreliable witness. This substantial and satisfying biography by Michael Ackland brings new discoveries and insights, most notably from Richardson's European years when the would-be musician changed course to become a writer. This is an important work, astute and persuasively argued.' Brenda Niall, award-winning biographer