Richardson, Henry Handel

Richardson, Henry Handel,

pseud. of

Ethel Richardson Robertson,

1870–1946, Australian novelist, b. Melbourne. Her years of study at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, were reflected in her book The Getting of Wisdom (1910). After studying piano at Leipzig she turned to writing, living mainly in Germany until 1903 and then in England. Her first novel, Maurice Guest (1908), is the story of a music student's disastrous infatuation. The trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930), which presents an accurate and outstanding picture of Australian life, is considered her major work. Her writing, clear and austere in style, has been characterized as combining romantic insights with scientific attention to detail.

Bibliography

See her autobiographical fragment, Myself When Young (1948); study by D. Green (1973).

Richardson, Henry Handel

 

(pen name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson). Born Jan. 3, 1870, in Melbourne; died Mar. 20, 1946, in Hastings, Sussex. Australian writer.

Richardson graduated from a college in Melbourne and studied music in Leipzig. She lived in Europe beginning in 1888, settling in England in 1895. In the novels Maurice Guest (1908) and The Young Cosima (1939), Richardson combined a realistic depiction of man’s inner world with a Nietzschean idealization of the “strong” personality. The trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930) is set against a broad background of Australian and English life of the second half of the 19th century. It depicts the tragedy of a man of strong moral principles who is inwardly isolated. The work occupies an important place in the history of the Australian novel. Richardson also wrote the autobiography Myself When Young (published 1948).

REFERENCES

Palmer, N. H. H. Richardson: A Study. Sydney, 1950.
Buckley, V. H. H. Richardson. Canberra, 1963.
Howells, G. H. H. Richardson: 1870–1946; A Bibliography. Canberra, 1970.
Green, D. Ulysses Bound: Henry Handel Richardson and Her Fiction. Canberra, 1973.