Henry Handel Richardson

Henry Handel Richardson

Henry Handel Richardson , actually Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson , married Robertson (born January 3, 1870 in Melbourne , † March 20, 1946 in Fairlight , Sussex ) was an Australian writer.

Life

In the 1890s, after the death of her father, she traveled with her mother and sister to Leipzig , where she studied piano at the conservatory, where she met her future husband John Robertson (who later became the first professor of German studies at University College, London) and gathered the experiences that are processed in her first novel Maurice Guest . After completing her diploma and completing his doctorate in Leipzig, Robertson married Robertson and initially went to Strasbourg with him , where Robertson worked for a while as an academic lecturer and his wife also became a women's tennis champion at the university.

From then on she lived with her husband until his early death in London , then for the rest of her life with a long-time younger friend, also a musician, in Fairlight near Hastings (Sussex). After the outbreak of World War II , she was no longer allowed to dispose of the income from her American investments and became impoverished. Shortly after the war, she died despite emergency surgery to cancer . Her ashes were thrown into the sea with that of her husband off Hastings.

Artistic creation

After Maurice Guest , she mainly wrote military novels about life in Australia around the middle of the 19th century. In her early work, her naturalistic descriptions were still characterized by realism , later works were created in an impressionistic style.

Best known is her trilogy Australia Felix , which is considered one of the most important works in Australian literature.

Works

• Maurice Guest , 1908, ISBN 978-1406838718 , (German 1912)
• The Getting of Wisdom , 1910, ISBN 978-1103636327
• Australia Felix , 1917, ISBN 978-1406926958
• The Way Home , 1926
• Ultima Thule , 1929, ISBN 978-1417927517 , later also as: The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
• The End of a Childhood , Short Stories, 1934
• The Young Cosima , 1939
• Myself When Young , Autobiography , 1948

Film adaptations

• 1954: Symphony of the Heart ( Rhapsody , based on Maurice Guest )
• 1977: Laura's Girl Years ( The Getting of Wisdom )
• 2006: Documentary about Laura's girl years: Telling Schoolgirl Tales: The Making of 'The Getting of Wisdom'

literature

• Michael Ackland: Henry Handel Richardson. A life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 2004. ISBN 0-521-84055-4
• Axel Clark: Henry Handel Richardson. Fiction in the Making. Schuster, Brookvale, Australia 1990. ISBN 0-7318-0138-5
• Eva Jarring Corones: The Portrayal of Women in the Fiction of Henry Handel Richardson. Gleerup, Lund 1983. (= Lund studies in English; 67) ISBN 91-40-04879-9
• Karen McLeod: Henry Handel Richardson. A critical study. Cambridge Univ. Pr., Cambridge et al. a. 1985. ISBN 978-0521303040
• Sigrun Meinig: Witnessing the Past. History and Post-colonialism in Australian historical Novels. Narr, Tübingen 2004. (= Mannheim contributions to linguistics and literary studies; 62) ISBN 3-8233-6116-3
• Catherine Pratt: Resisting fiction. The novels of Henry Handel Richardson. Univ. of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Qld. 1999. ISBN 0-7022-3053-7

Web links

• Literature by and about Henry Handel Richardson in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Getting of Wisdom in the Internet Movie Database (English)
2. ↑ Telling Schoolgirl Tales: The Making of 'The Getting of Wisdom' in the Internet Movie Database (English)