Henry Handel Richardson, pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson, Australian novelist whose trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, combining description of an Australian immigrant’s life and work in the goldfields with a powerful character study, is considered the crowning achievement of modern Australian fiction to that time.
Check out this seven short stories by this author carefully selected by critic August Nemo:
– The End of a Childhood.
– The Bathe.
– Succedaneum.
– Mary Christina.
– ‘And Women Must Weep’.
– Sister Ann.
– The Coat.
Circa l’autore
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (3 January 1870 20 March 1946), known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is Richardson’s famous trilogy about the slow decline, owing to character flaws and an unnamed brain disease, of a successful Australian physician and businessman and the emotional/financial effect on his family. It was highly praised by Sinclair Lewis, among others, and was inspired by Richardson’s own family experiences. The central characters were based loosely on her own parents. Richardson also produced a single volume of short stories and an autobiography that greatly illuminates the settings of her novels, although her Australian Dictionary of Biography entry doubts that it is reliable.