Maurice Guest

Maurice Guest

Henry Handel Richardson

Historical Fiction / Fiction

Maurice Guest (1908) is the debut novel by Australian writer Henry Handel Richardson. In turn-of-the-century Leipzig, Maurice Guest, a young English provincial, falls madly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. The novel follows this doomed affair to its tragic end. In turn-of-the-century Leipzig, Maurice Guest, a young English provincial, falls madly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. The novel follows this doomed affair to its tragic end.
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The Getting of Wisdom

The Getting of Wisdom

Henry Handel Richardson

Historical Fiction / Fiction

The Getting of Wisdom, a wicked and satirical novel on the pain and confusing of growing up, first appeared in 1910. A century later it has lost none of its bite.One of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction, Laura Rambotham, aged twelve, enters the portals of an exclusive girls' school eager to be accepted. But this precocious country girl is snubbed and ridiculed by her fellow students, who are richer, more attractive and more adept at dealing with life's hypocrisies.In her splendid introduction Germaine Greer describes this classic as 'Richardson's only great book precisely because the subject is, like the rest of us, ordinary, and therefore deeply important'.'The Getting of Wisdom races ahead of the reader, succeeding by force of narrative and sheer charm...spontaneity and skill; the values of a whole society are seen here in microcosm through the lives of pupils and teachers.' New Statesman
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The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

Henry Handel Richardson

Historical Fiction / Fiction

Richard Mahony is a restless man. Ballarat, England, Melbourne, Europe, the bush: elsewhere is always better. Searching for a place, a meaning, a life, Mahony and his wife Mary journey from wealth to poverty, order to chaos, sanity to the asylum. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a towering novel. This edition reproduces the text of the 1930 Heinemann edition, which gathered all three books in one volume. It includes a new introduction by Peter Craven.Henry Handel Richardson was born in Melbourne in 1870. She was was sent to board at the Presbyterian Ladies College in 1883—an experience that provided material for her novel The Getting of Wisdom. She published her first novel, Maurice Guest, in 1908, followed by the trilogy that would become The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. Her final novel The Young Cosima appeared in 1939.Peter Craven is one of Australia's best-known literary critics. He was a founding editor of...
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