The Getting of Wisdom - Brossura

Richardson, Henry Handel

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1922079405 ISBN 13: 9781922079404

Casa editrice: Text Pub Co, 2012

Riassunto

Laura Rambotham, clever, precocious but naïve, leaves her home in the country for boarding school in turn-of-the-century Melbourne. She wants to fit in, but her artistic spirit chafes against the stuffy confines and minds of the ladies school. This is the quintessential girl's coming-of-age novel, by one of Australia's finest writers.

Su questo libro

L'autore

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson was born into an affluent Melbourne family in 1870. Her father Walter was a doctor of medicine. When Richardson was nine he died of syphilis after being admitted to Melbourne’s Kew mental asylum. His illness and suffering had a huge impact on his family.

After his death, Richardson’s mother took her children to Maldon where she worked as the postmistress.

Richardson was sent to board at the Presbyterian Ladies College in 1883—an experience that provided material for her novel The Getting of Wisdom. At school she developed into a talented pianist and tennis player.

In 1888, she travelled to Europe with her mother and studied at the Leipzig Conservatorium where she met John George Robertson, a Scottish expert in German literature. The pair married and settled in London. She published her first novel, Maurice Guest, in 1908. She took the pen name of Henry Handel Richardson and used it for all of her books.

Richardson made her only journey back to Australia in 1912 to complete her research for the trilogy that would become The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. Her final novel The Young Cosima appeared in 1939. Henry Handel Richardson died in Sussex in 1946.

Germaine Greer is a well-known feminist and writer. Her books include The Female Eunuch, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You, The Change, The Obstacle Race and The Boy. She is professor of English and comparative studies at Warwick University, England.

Product Description

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. The Getting of Wisdom, a wicked and satirical novel on the pain and confusion of growing up, first appeared in 1910. A century later it has lost none of its bite. 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'.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Text Pub Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1922079405
• ISBN 13: 9781922079404
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 260