'The first biography of Shirley Hazzard, the author of The Transit of Venus and a writer of "shocking wisdom" and "intellectual thrill" (The New Yorker).
'Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life tells the extraordinary story of a great modern novelist. Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard's authorized biographer, has drawn, with great subtlety and understanding, on her fiction (itself largely based on Hazzard's own experience); on an extensive archive of letters, diaries, and notebooks; and on the memories of surviving friends and colleagues to create this resonant portrait of an exceptional woman.
'This biography explores the distinctive times of Hazzard's life, from her youth and middle age to her widowhood and years of decline, and traces the complex and intricate processes of self-fashioning that lay beneath Hazzard's formidable, beguiling presence. Olubas shows us the places of Hazzard's life, of which she wrote with characteristic lyricism: her childhood in Depression-era Sydney; her youth in postwar Hong Kong, New Zealand, and London; her years in New York in the 1950s, working at the United Nations and The New Yorker. Olubas also describes Hazzard's long marriage to the writer Francis Steegmuller and their deep involvement in postwar Naples and Capri. Rare photographs from Hazzard's collection and elsewhere accompany the text.
'Hazzard was the last of a generation of selftaught writers, devotees of a great literary tradition, and her depth of perception and expressive gifts have earned her iconic status. Brigitta Olubas has brought her brilliantly alive, enhancing and deepening our understanding of the singular woman who created some of the most enduring fiction of the past sixty years.
'As Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, "Hazzard's stories feel timeless because she understands, as she writes in one of them: 'We are human beings, not rational ones.'" Here, in Shirley Hazzard, is the story of a remarkable human being.' (Publication summary)
Reggie's daughter : 1931-1947 -- A first glimpse of the unknown : 1947-1948 -- Sea-girt, southerly, sundered : 1948-1951 -- New York : 1951-1957 -- A larger life : 1957-1958 -- Sì, Scrivo! : 1958-1963 -- Francis : 1906-1963 -- Amitié littéraire : 1963-1966 -- Small masterpieces : 1966-1970 -- The transit of Venus : 1970-1980 -- A fated connection : 1980-1985 -- The room not as I thought it was : 1981-1994 -- Sola solissima : 1995-2016.
Selected as one of the Guardian Australia best Australian books of 2022
Selected as one of the ABR Podcast's best books of 2022
Why Michelle de Kretser Wants You to Read Shirley Hazzard
Michael Williams
(interviewer),
2023
27242334
2023
single work
podcast
interview
'Michelle de Kretser began reading Shirley Hazzard well before she herself would become a writer, but she felt an early kinship, and two decades later it exploded into a full obsession. This week, Michael speaks with Michelle and Hazzard's biographer Brigitta Olubas about one of Australia's most underrated and underread authors.' (Publication abstract)
Shirley Hazzard : A Writing Life
Peter Rose
(interviewer),
2023
25906490
2023
single work
podcast
interview
'Shirley Hazzard is widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists, even though she published only four novels during her long lifetime. Now, Professor Brigitta Olubas from the University of New South Wales has written the first major literary biography of the writer in Shirley Hazzard: A writing life (Virago/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In this week’s ABR podcast, ABR Editor Peter Rose interviews Professor Olubas about her study of the ‘complex, alluring, peripatetic artist’. Listen to the interview here.' (Production summary)
'Shirley Hazzard challenged Auden’s line that poetry makes nothing happen. In her case, she said, poetry made everything happen. It was because she learned Italian as a teenager in order to read Leopardi in the original that she was sent, aged twenty-six, by the United Nations, to Italy, where she wrote ‘Harold’, the story about the awkward young poet that was published in the New Yorker in 1960, after which ‘everything changed’.' (Introduction)
'How Shirley Hazzard resisted provincialism'
'A new biography by Brigitta Olubas is the first to examine the life of the Australian novelist celebrated for her refined poetic fiction and acute moral vision.'
'When Shirley Hazzard received the National Book Award in 2003 for The Great Fire in the Marriot Ballroom in Times Square, the other guest of honour was Stephen King, who was there to receive a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The contrast of acclamations and models of value could not have been more profound. King took the opportunity to speak of popularity and populism as the marks of literary success; Hazzard feistily defended reading across time, the nuanced experiences literature affords, and the private and complex pleasures that are irreducible to sales, fame or notoriety.' (Introduction)
'Shirley Hazzard challenged Auden’s line that poetry makes nothing happen. In her case, she said, poetry made everything happen. It was because she learned Italian as a teenager in order to read Leopardi in the original that she was sent, aged twenty-six, by the United Nations, to Italy, where she wrote ‘Harold’, the story about the awkward young poet that was published in the New Yorker in 1960, after which ‘everything changed’.' (Introduction)
'How Shirley Hazzard resisted provincialism'
Shirley Hazzard : A Writing Life
Peter Rose
(interviewer),
2023
25906490
2023
single work
podcast
interview
'Shirley Hazzard is widely regarded as one of Australia’s finest novelists, even though she published only four novels during her long lifetime. Now, Professor Brigitta Olubas from the University of New South Wales has written the first major literary biography of the writer in Shirley Hazzard: A writing life (Virago/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). In this week’s ABR podcast, ABR Editor Peter Rose interviews Professor Olubas about her study of the ‘complex, alluring, peripatetic artist’. Listen to the interview here.' (Production summary)
Why Michelle de Kretser Wants You to Read Shirley Hazzard
Michael Williams
(interviewer),
2023
27242334
2023
single work
podcast
interview
'Michelle de Kretser began reading Shirley Hazzard well before she herself would become a writer, but she felt an early kinship, and two decades later it exploded into a full obsession. This week, Michael speaks with Michelle and Hazzard's biographer Brigitta Olubas about one of Australia's most underrated and underread authors.' (Publication abstract)
