Wyndham, former literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, was the perfect person to research and write this biography of one of Australia’s best authors.

She disputes reports of Harrower as an underestimated or neglected author, but as she stopped writing in the 1970s, her novels did fall out of print until reissued in 2012, so she is unfamiliar to many readers.

First published in the 1950s and 1960s, Harrower was at the heart of Australian literary life, particularly for her novel, The Watch Tower, which some critics claimed raised her to the status of Patrick White and Christina Stead. She became close friends with each of those stellar writers. Other great writer friends were Kylie Tennant and Judah Waten.

Wyndham became close to Harrower before her death at 92 in 2020, knew that she had many friends to whom she wrote letters, and worked with the biographer of author Shirley Hazzard on an edited collection of the Hazzard-Harrower letters, published in 2024.

Those letters persuaded Wyndham that there was enough material for a biography of Harrower, as well as papers lodged at the National Library of Australia.

Wyndham’s elegant prose echoes the persona of her subject, revealing Harrower’s unhappy youth in Newcastle, work in the UK and Sydney, and a fraught relationship with her stepfather. Her novels portray the psychological abuse of vulnerable women at the hands of manipulative male partners, but Harrower always denied that those characters were drawn from her own life.

Wyndham presents careful evidence to the contrary. She found Harrower mysterious, sensitive, tenacious and contradictory, active in Sydney’s literary and arts circles and the author of remarkable books.

Book review by Jennifer Somerville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Wyndham is a writer and journalist who has been New York correspondent for The Australian newspaper and literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.

In 2024 she was awarded a National Library of Australia Fellowship to research the life of Elizabeth Harrower.

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