Book Description
This is the first full-length British study on the work of the novelist Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946) who is attracting new and deserved attention. Born in Australia as Ethel Florence Richardson, and educated in Melbourne, she spent many years studying music and literature in Germany. From 1904 she lived in England where she published six novels and some short stories. The Getting of Wisdom (1910) was adapted as a much-praised Australian film in 1977. Her masterpiece, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1929) made her briefly famous. in Britain and the United States in the nineteen-thirties and is now being turned into an Australian television film epic. Karen McLeod's study contains a brief biography, a fuller description of the novelist's unusual cultural background, and a detailed critical account of all her novels and stories. Her links with European literature and her claim to be considered a major English novelist are also discussed. The book contains a number of previously unpublished photographs of Henry Handel Richardson. ... Read more

Book Description
Henry Handel Richardson is one of Australia's major novelists, and one of the most elusive. An expatriate for most of her life, she worked hard to maintain her privacy, and to conceal her personal views behind an impartial authorial style. This study explores the well-springs of her fiction, her abiding concerns, and the intellectual heritage which informs her major writing.An overview of her life is provided, and all her fiction discussed. The study focuses on her engagement with the sexual politics of the time, on inherited concerns, and on contemporary theories of gender. The impact on her fiction is demonstrated of writers as diverse as Hoffman and Wedekind, Weiniger, Freud and Schopenhauer. Ackland grounds her work in European thought, while also showing why she is of central importance to Australian and Women's Studies.Henry Handel Richardson adds significant dimension to our understanding of her achievement. ... Read more