Australia Felix - Richardson, Henry Handel

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Biographie:
'Henry Handel Richardson' was the pen-name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, who was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1870. Her father was a medical graduate of Edinburgh University, and her mother was the daughter of a Leicester solicitor; they married after migrating to Australia during the Victorian goldrushes. After her father's death in 1879, her mother worked as a postmistress in country towns, but later she was able to take Ethel and her sister Lilian to Europe, to study music at Leipzig. Ethel, who became a skilled pianist, married John George Robertson, a science graduate turned philologist. Robertson was appointed Professor of German and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at London University in 1903, where he became one of the foremost scholars of his day. By this time Ethel had begun to write, having given up all thought of a musical career. Her first novel, Maurice Guest, was published in 1908 and had a number of imitators. Her second, The Getting of Wisdom, published in 1910 was described by H. G. Wells as the best school story he knew. Her most important work was The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, published in three volumes, comprising Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule, from 1917 to 1929.

Sommaire:
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, known by her literary name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author. Ethel Florence (who liked to be known as Et, Ettie, or Etta) was the eldest daughter of Walter Lindesay Richardson MD and his wife Mary (n?e Bailey). She was born in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, into a rich family that later struggled financially. Throughout Richardson's childhood and youth, the family moved about Victoria. These included Chiltern, Queenscliff, Koroit, and Maldon, where Richardson's mother was a postmistress (her father died of syphilis when she was nine). The Richardsons' home in Chiltern, Lake View, is now held by the National Trust and open to the public. Richardson left Maldon in 1883 to become a boarder at Presbyterian Ladies' College (PLC) in Melbourne, where she studied from the ages of 13 to 17. H. G. Wells appreciated the coming-of-age novel The Getting of Wisdom, which was inspired by this experience. At PLC, she began to hone her ability to blend fact and fiction convincingly, a technique she later employed to great effect in her novels....