Overview
Henry Handel Richardson
(1870—1946) novelist
Quick Reference
(1870–1946),
novelist, born in Melbourne, Australia; she studied music in Leipzig from 1888, and from 1904 she lived in England. Her novels include Maurice Guest (1908) a tale of grande passion set in Leipzig; The Getting of Wisdom (1910), describing her Australian schooldays in the person of Laura Rambotham, an intelligent child caught between ambition and reality; The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, a trilogy (Australia Felix, 1917; The Way Home 1925; and Ultima Thule, 1929), of which the last is rooted in the biography of her own parents. In its epic sweep it is at once the history of a man, a marriage, and a continent, capturing the landscapes, developing social attitudes, and growing prosperity and respectability of Australia. Her last novel, The Young Cosima (1939), is based on a life of Cosima Wagner.
Subjects: Literature
