'Two extraordinary writers, one difficult mother and a vanished literary world.
'Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower met in person for the first time in London in 1972, six years after they began a correspondence that would span four decades. They exchanged letters, cards and telegrams and made occasional phone calls between Harrower’s home in Sydney and Hazzard’s apartments in New York, Naples and Capri. The two women wrote to each other of their daily lives, of impediments to writing, their reading, politics, and in Hazzard’s case, her travels. And they wrote about Hazzard’s mother, for whose care Harrower took increasing – and increasingly reluctant – responsibility from the early 1970s (precisely the period when she herself virtually stopped writing).
'Edited by Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard’s official biographer, and Susan Wyndham, who interviewed both Hazzard and Harrower, this is an extraordinary account of two literary luminaries, their complex relationship, and their times.' (Publication summary)
'This collection of letters between the two grandes dames of Australian letters, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower, shows how the writing life is often a struggle between freedom and the hard choices writers make to sustain that freedom. Despite growing up in the same Sydney suburb, Hazzard and Harrower never did meet in Sydney. Although there were meetings later, in Europe, this was a friendship that was grounded in care, and particularly in the care of the difficult and elderly in Hazzard’s mother, Kit, and Harrower’s friend, the novelist Patrick White.' (Introduction)
'The publication of the letters between Australian writers Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) and Elizabeth Harrower (1928-2020), edited by literary scholar Brigitta Olubas and journalist Susan Wyndham, provides a picture of mid-century life from the perspectives of two exemplary and, for too long in this country, underappreciated novelists.' (Introduction)
'In her expansive biography of the New York–based Shirley Hazzard, published two years ago, Brigitta Olubas revealed that the writer corresponded for many years with the Sydney novelist Elizabeth Harrower. Harrower had never met Hazzard when they began writing to each other, but she had become friendly with Kit Hazzard, her difficult mother, in the 1960s and gradually found herself taking responsibility for her care in Sydney while Shirley stayed on in New York and Europe. The slightly shocking revelation that the relatively successful international writer had imposed her daughterly duties on the struggling local novelist reinforces a sense that Hazzard was rather haughty and self-centred.' (Introduction)
'‘Everyone allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.’ So said Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. Even allowing for Regency hyperbole, there is some truth in the sally. We think of the inimitable letters of Emily Dickinson, who once wrote to a succinct correspondent: ‘It were dearer had you protracted it, but the Sparrow must not propound his crumb.’ In 2001, Gregory Kratzmann edited A Steady Stream of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood, 1943-1995. Anyone who ever received a letter or postcard from Harwood – surely our finest letter writer – knows what an event that was. She was nonpareil: witty, astringent, frank, irrepressible. Now we have this welcome collection of letters written by Elizabeth Harrower and Shirley Hazzard (unalphabetised on the cover, in a possible concession to the expatriate Hazzard’s international fame).' (Introduction)
'‘Everyone allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female.’ So said Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. Even allowing for Regency hyperbole, there is some truth in the sally. We think of the inimitable letters of Emily Dickinson, who once wrote to a succinct correspondent: ‘It were dearer had you protracted it, but the Sparrow must not propound his crumb.’ In 2001, Gregory Kratzmann edited A Steady Stream of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood, 1943-1995. Anyone who ever received a letter or postcard from Harwood – surely our finest letter writer – knows what an event that was. She was nonpareil: witty, astringent, frank, irrepressible. Now we have this welcome collection of letters written by Elizabeth Harrower and Shirley Hazzard (unalphabetised on the cover, in a possible concession to the expatriate Hazzard’s international fame).' (Introduction)
'In her expansive biography of the New York–based Shirley Hazzard, published two years ago, Brigitta Olubas revealed that the writer corresponded for many years with the Sydney novelist Elizabeth Harrower. Harrower had never met Hazzard when they began writing to each other, but she had become friendly with Kit Hazzard, her difficult mother, in the 1960s and gradually found herself taking responsibility for her care in Sydney while Shirley stayed on in New York and Europe. The slightly shocking revelation that the relatively successful international writer had imposed her daughterly duties on the struggling local novelist reinforces a sense that Hazzard was rather haughty and self-centred.' (Introduction)
'The publication of the letters between Australian writers Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) and Elizabeth Harrower (1928-2020), edited by literary scholar Brigitta Olubas and journalist Susan Wyndham, provides a picture of mid-century life from the perspectives of two exemplary and, for too long in this country, underappreciated novelists.' (Introduction)
'This collection of letters between the two grandes dames of Australian letters, Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower, shows how the writing life is often a struggle between freedom and the hard choices writers make to sustain that freedom. Despite growing up in the same Sydney suburb, Hazzard and Harrower never did meet in Sydney. Although there were meetings later, in Europe, this was a friendship that was grounded in care, and particularly in the care of the difficult and elderly in Hazzard’s mother, Kit, and Harrower’s friend, the novelist Patrick White.' (Introduction)
