Cirrus@Austlit

'‘My books are all, in their different ways, voyages of discovery. I write books to learn, to stretch my horizons. These voyages of mine are full of risk and passion.’ Hazel Rowley

'Hazel Rowley was an award-winning biographer who was committed to telling the stories of people’s lives. This collection of short pieces—journal articles, essays, talks, diary entries – provides a wonderful insight into her craft. In these pages she talks honestly about the joys, the challenges, the highs and the lows of writing biography. Much of the material is previously unpublished and reveals Rowley’s lively ideas on a range of topics.

'Before her untimely death in 2011, Rowley wrote four acclaimed biographies: about Christina Stead, Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. This new collection gives a rich store of reflections on biography and draws the reader into Rowley’s passionate pursuit of stories and her search for new biographical subjects.

'Della and Lynn, along with Hazel’s friend Irene Tomaszewski, established the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship in her memory.' (Publication summary)

'Like the author herself, Christina Stead’s novels were challenging and engrossing. Raised by a narcissistic father, Stead left for London at the age of twenty-six and soon met William Blake, a writer, broker, and Marxist political economist who became her life partner. His personal ambitions and their politics resulted in a nomadic existence, with Stead sidestepping the traditional feminine role in exchange for a career. She struggled to find an audience for her work, however, only succeeding late in life with the reissue of The Man Who Loved Children. Hazel Rowley’s richly detailed and even-handed biography spans Stead’s life, expertly blending her encoded personal papers with interviews of her closest confidants. Masterfully written and researched, Christina Stead is a fascinating chronicle of one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Open Road ed.)