Bruce Steele Bruce Steele i(A20734 works by)
Gender: Male
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1 2 y separately published work icon Walter Lindesay Richardson MD : A Victorian Seeker Bruce Steele , Melbourne - North : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2013 Z1925176 2013 single work biography 'The eponymous doctor is best known as Richard Mahony, father of Henry Handel Richardson (H. H. R) and the key character in her epic trilogy. Bruce Steele, a Richardson specialist from Monash University, has drawn on a wide variety of sources for this portrait of the figure behind the fiction. It traces Richardson's life from his birth in Dublin in 1825, to Bristol and on to Edinburgh, where he qualified as a doctor; migration to Victoria during the gold rush; marriage and children (including daughter Ethel; that is, H. H. R.); fortune, travel and financial ruin (mining investments); and mental decline and death.' (Publisher's blurb)
4 14 y separately published work icon The Way Home: Being the Second Part of the Chronicle of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1925 Z55593 1925 single work novel historical fiction
3 157 y separately published work icon The Fortunes of Richard Mahony : Comprising Australia Felix, The Way Home, Ultima Thule Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1930 Z472111 1930 selected work novel historical fiction

The Fortunes of Richard Mahony was 'first published as a sequence. Australia Felix, the first volume, which covers twelve years of Richard Mahony’s life from the early 1850s, was published in 1917; The Way Home, which deals with his subsequent eight years, appeared in 1925; and Ultima Thule, the final volume covering his last four years, in 1929. The novel was first published as a trilogy in 1930.'

Australia Felix 'begins the story of Richard Mahony, a 28-year-old medical graduate of Edinburgh University and now the keeper of a general store in Ballarat'. Part one of the novel 'follows Mahony’s career until his marriage; the second part deals with the Eureka Stockade, the growth of the varied society of Ballarat and legal hearing in Melbourne'. It 'concludes with Mahony’s decision to start a practice in Ballarat instead of returning to England'. In parts three and four, 'Richardson extends her panoramic picture of a dynamic colonial society in which individuals are subject to great reversals or advances of fortune'.

The Way Home begins with Mahony’s 'arrival in England and concludes with his final, second return to Australia, as a ruined man. In the intervening years he grows disillusioned with English society, returns to Australia to find his investments have made him suddenly rich, attempts to settle into the wealthy community of Melbourne and becomes the father of three children'. His sojourn in England leads to the discovery that he is uncomfortable with the ‘offensive and cramping’ English social hierarchy.

Ultima Thule picks up the story with Mahony’s 'return to Australia, his attempts to establish himself as a medical practitioner, first in Melbourne and then at Barambogie, a small town in northern Victoria'. When Mahony’s skills as a doctor as increasingly questioned, the family moves to the coast and later to Gymgurra where Mahony’s wife, Mary, 'secures a position as postmistress'. Mahony is moved to a private nursing home, then to a government asylum and finally returns home. He is 'devotedly cared by Mary, until paralysis incapacitates his body. After his death he is buried in the local cemetery, within sound of the sea'.

Source: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. 2nd. ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994: 294-295.

6 32 y separately published work icon Ultima Thule : Being the Third Part of the Chronicle of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1929 Z430784 1929 single work novel historical fiction
4 54 y separately published work icon The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Australia Felix Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1917 Z430677 1917 single work novel historical fiction

'He had never got within measurable distance of what he called life, at all…deep down in him, he knew, was an enormous residue of vitality…It was like a buried treasure, jealously kept for the event of his one day catching up with life: not the bare scramble for a living that here went by that name, but Life with a capital L.

'Richard Mahony is a restless man. Ballarat, England, Melbourne, Europe, the bush: elsewhere is always better.

'Searching for a place, a meaning, a life, Mahony and his wife Mary journey from wealth to poverty, order to chaos, sanity to the asylum. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is a towering novel.' (Publication summary)

5 32 y separately published work icon The Young Cosima Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1939 Z472926 1939 single work novel
4 8 y separately published work icon Niels Lyhne : Roman J. P. Jacobsen , Copenhagen : Gyldendal , 1880 Z1133530 1880 single work novel
1 'Numerous Little Songs in My Drawer' : Editing and Publishing the Music of Henry Handel Richardson Bruce Steele , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin , vol. 25 no. 3-4 2001; (p. 75-81)
6 103 y separately published work icon The Getting of Wisdom Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1910 Z901329 1910 single work novel (taught in 25 units)

'A coming-of-age story of a spontaneous heroine who finds herself ensconced in the rigidity of a turn-of-the-century boarding school. The clever and highly imaginative Laura has difficulty fitting in with her wealthy classmates and begins to compromise her ideals in her search for popularity and acceptance.' (From the publisher's website.)

1 15 y separately published work icon Henry Handel Richardson : The Letters Henry Handel Richardson , Clive Probyn (editor), Bruce Steele (editor), Rachel Solomon (editor), Patrick O'Neill (editor), Carlton : Miegunyah Press , 2000 Z541434 2000 selected work biography correspondence
1 Maurice Guest : Introduction Clive Probyn , Bruce Steele , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Maurice Guest 1998; (p. xxv-lxxi)
5 100 y separately published work icon Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , London : Heinemann , 1908 Z821550 1908 single work novel (taught in 6 units)

'A passionate and controversial novel set in turn-of-the-century Europe

'Henry Handel Richardson’s debut, published in London in 1908, is set in the music scene of Leipzig, a cosmopolitan centre for the arts drawing students from around the world—among them Maurice Guest, a young Englishman, who falls helplessly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer. Maurice Guest is the story of this overwhelming passion.

'The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.' (Publication summary)

12 139 y separately published work icon Kangaroo D. H. Lawrence , 1923 New York (City) : Thomas Seltzer , 1923 Z120344 1923 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

Kangaroo, set in Australia, is D. H. Lawrence's eighth novel. He wrote the first draft in just forty-five days while living south of Sydney, in 1922, and revised it three months later in New Mexico. The descriptions of the country are among the most vivid and sympathetic ever penned, and the book fuses lightly disguised autobiography with an exploration of political ideas at an immensely personal level. His anxiety about the future of democracy, caught as it was in the turbulent cross currents of fascism and socialism, is only partly appeased by his vision of a new bond of comradeship between men based on their unique separateness. Lawrence's alter ego Richard Somers departs for America to continue his search.

1 Maurice Guest Bruce Steele , 1994 single work column
— Appears in: Academy Editions Newsletter , October no. 3 1994; (p. 4-5)
1 2 Kangaroo: Fiction and Fact Bruce Steele , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meridian , May vol. 10 no. 1 1991; (p. 18-34)
1 Misfit to Patriarch Bruce Steele , 1991 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 123 1991; (p. 88-90)

— Review of The Boy in the Bush D. H. Lawrence , M. L. Skinner , 1924 single work novel
1 Sacred Site i "It is no place for words -", Bruce Steele , 1984 single work poetry
— Appears in: A Garland for Joan : Poems by Divers Hands being a Miscellany on the Occasion of Joan Elvins' Retirement 1984; (p. 20)
1 A Real Feast of Cook Bruce Steele , 1970 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian , 11 July 1970; (p. 23)

— Review of James Cook, Royal Navy George Finkel , 1970 single work children's fiction
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