Letter writing is almost a lost art, but this collection of letters exchanged for 40 years between two of Australia’s most erudite authors shows what an important part of social history it is.
Shirley Hazzard, who was born in Sydney in 1931, spent her adult life living in New York and Italy, and Elizabeth Harrower, born in 1928, who lived in Sydney for most of her life, filed the letters they had received from each other with their papers lodged in state, university and national libraries. Consider how difficult it would be to find such correspondence between contemporary writers, with emails most commonly used.
Hazzard is best known for The Transit of Venus, and Harrower for The Watch Tower, but what brought them together in the 1960s was Hazzard’s mother, Kit, who lived in Potts Point, and was introduced to Harrower. It seems Kit was bipolar, and her mental state concerned the two correspondents deeply, with Harrower taking on a lot of on-the-ground care for her.
The two women did not meet in person until 1972, but they wrote about their lives, their friends, their writing and reading, politics and world affairs … as well as Hazzard’s mother.
The editors reveal that they had to drop whole letters and cut others dramatically, working with almost 400 000 words of correspondence.
Each had strong opinions about the arts, and their country’s politics, expressing them forthrightly, so dipping into this book provides a window onto the lives and thoughts of two unique women.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Brigitta Olubas is professor of English at the University of New South Wales. She is the acknowledged expert on the writing of Shirley Hazzard and is Hazzard’s authorised biographer. She coedited the first collection of essays on the writing of Elizabeth Harrower and is the author of Shirley Hazzard: A writing life and Shirley Hazzard: Literary expatriate and cosmopolitan humanist.
Susan Wyndham is a journalist and writer. As New York correspondent for The Australian newspaper and literary editor of the Sydney Morning Heraldshe interviewed Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower. She is the author of Life in His Hands: The true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist and editor of My Mother, My Father: On losing a parent.
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