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y separately published work icon Maurice Guest single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1908... 1908 Maurice Guest
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'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)

Exhibitions

18006817
18005672

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Rhapsody Ruth Goetz , Augustus Goetz , Fay Kanin , Michael Kanin , ( dir. Charles Vidor ) Hollywood : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , 1954 Z825776 1954 single work film/TV

Louise Durant is a rich young woman who follows the man she loves (and hopes to marry) to Zurich, where he has travelled to finish his study of the violin. Complications arise when a fellow piano student at the conservatory falls madly in love with Louise. The violinist loves his music first and Louise second, while the pianist loves Louise first and his music second. Louise must ultimately choose which man she wants. Inspired by Henry Handel Richardson's 1908 novel, this Hollywood adaptation see the story end happily, which is not the case in Richardson's novel.

Notes

  • For early reviews and criticism see also Gay Howells's bibliography Henry Handel Richardson.
  • Dedication: To Louise

Contents

* Contents derived from the St Lucia, Indooroopilly - St Lucia area, Brisbane - North West, Brisbane, Queensland,:University of Queensland Press , 1998 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Maurice Guest : Introduction, Clive Probyn , Bruce Steele , single work criticism (p. xxv-lxxi)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
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      England,
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      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Heinemann ,
      1908 .
      image of person or book cover 4186771874078874820.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 562p.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
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      Americas,
      :
      P. R. Reynolds ,
      1908 .
      image of person or book cover 617993079686555415.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 562p.
      Note/s:
      • A token publication under the name of the literary agent Paul R. Reynolds, designed to register William Heinemann's publishing rights in North America. Only two copies were issued.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
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      United States of America (USA),
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      Americas,
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      Duffield ,
      1908 .
      image of person or book cover 1410533585057836660.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 562p.
      Reprinted: 1918
    • London,
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      England,
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      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Heinemann ,
      1909 .
      image of person or book cover 4938829109323009761.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Note/s:
      • Although described by the publisher as a 'second impression', Heinemann's 1909 edition of Maurice Guest contains a number of corrections and revisions made by Richardson, along with some changes made by the publisher himself.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
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      United States of America (USA),
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      Americas,
      :
      Duffield ,
      1922 .
      image of person or book cover 8491998390930309062.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 562p.
      Note/s:
      • Preface by Hugh Walpole.
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Heinemann ,
      1922 .
      image of person or book cover 2253331372775732956.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 562p.
      Reprinted: 1929 , 1931 , 1935 , 1950
      Note/s:
      • Preface by Hugh Walpole.
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Sun Books , 1965 .
      image of person or book cover 3649757373386744543.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Amazon
      Extent: 493p.
      Reprinted: 1978
      Note/s:
      • Preface by A. N. Jeffares.
    • Portway, West Midlands,
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      England,
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      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Cedric Chivers ,
      1971 .
      Extent: 562p.
      Reprinted: 1974
      ISBN: 0855949317
    • London,
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      England,
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      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
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      Virago ,
      1981 .
      image of person or book cover 4380307799477640192.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 562p.
      Note/s:
      • Introduction by Karen MacLeod.
      ISBN: 0860681963
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Dial Press ,
      1983 .
      image of person or book cover 2742247749277829545.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 562p.
      ISBN: 0385277873
      Series: y separately published work icon Virago Modern Classics Virago (publisher), 1978- Z1498171 1978 series - publisher
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Minerva , 1992 .
      image of person or book cover 3655962387648574345.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 589p.
      Note/s:
      • Introduction by Karen McLeod.
      ISBN: 1863302344
    • London,
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      England,
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      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Echo Library ,
      2007 .
      image of person or book cover 8198620342813030037.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 432p.
      Note/s:
      • Published February 1st 2007
      ISBN: 9781406838718
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Sydney University Press , 2008 .
      image of person or book cover 2309759779816191193.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 630p.
      Note/s:
      • Includes Introduction by Clive Probyn.
      ISBN: 9781920899042
      Series: y separately published work icon Australian Classics Library Bruce Bennett (editor), Robert Dixon (editor), Sydney University Press (publisher), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2009- Z1613164 2009 series - publisher novel poetry short story

      The Australian Classics Library series is intended 'to make classic texts of Australian literature more widely available for the secondary school and undergraduate university classroom, and to the general reader. The series is co-edited by Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett of the University of New South Wales and Professor Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, in conjunction with SETIS, Sydney University Press, AustLit and the Copyright Agency Limited. Each text is accompanied by a fresh scholarly introduction and a basic editorial apparatus drawn from the resources of AustLit.'

      Source: Sydney University Press website, http://www.sup.usyd.edu.au/
      Sighted: 11/08/2009

    • London,
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      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Capuchin Classics ,
      2010 .
      image of person or book cover 7273988468230342769.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 300p.
      Note/s:
      • Foreword by David Pryce-Jones.
      • Publication date: May 2010.
      ISBN: 9781907429026
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2012 .
      image of person or book cover 8917812489518273047.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: 768p.
      Note/s:
      ISBN: 9781922079473
      Series: y separately published work icon Text Classics Text Publishing (publisher), Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012- Z1851461 2012 series - publisher novel 'Great books by great Australian storytellers.' (Text website.)
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Wildwood Publishing , 2013 .
      image of person or book cover 7924687205929106039.png
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 420p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 30 November 2013.
      • Introduction by Elodie Conrad.
      ISBN: 9780992370589, 0992370582
    • New York (City), New York (State),
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      United States of America (USA),
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      Americas,
      :
      Skyhorse Publishing ,
      2015 .
      image of person or book cover 3037398013145588535.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Booktopia
      Extent: 564p.
      Note/s:
      • Published October 20th 2015
      ISBN: 9781634505079
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Henry Handel Richardson Collection Henry Handel Richardson , Australia : Transport Publishing , 2017 27517799 2017 selected work novel

    'Henry Handel Richardson was the pen name of Australia Author, Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (3 January 1870 - 20 March 1946). This collection comprises all her Short Stories and 5 of her novels, including all three novels from her famous trilogy "The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" which details the slow decline, of a successful Australian physician and businessman and the effect this has on his family.' (Publication summary)

    Australia : Transport Publishing , 2017
    • c
      Hungary,
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      Eastern Europe, Europe,
      :
      Kypros Press ,
      2017 .
      image of person or book cover 1625308773690036466.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 585p.
      Note/s:
      • Published January 2nd 2017
      ISBN: 9781406838718
    • Whitefish, Montana,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Kessinger Publishing ,
      2019 .
      image of person or book cover 6030332640774722089.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Goodreads.
      Extent: 1vp.
      Note/s:
      • Published December 6th 2019
      ISBN: 2940003691554
Alternative title: Maurice Guest : Roman
Language: German
    • Berlin,
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      Germany,
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      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      S. Fischer Verlag ,
      1912 .
      image of person or book cover 217322491136667359.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 2 vols.p.
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Essential Novelists - Henry Handel Richardson Early Modern Australian Fiction Henry Handel Richardson , August Nemo (editor), Vachendorf : Tacet Books , 2020 21006536 2020 selected work novel 'Welcome to the Essential Novelists book series, were we present to you the best works of remarkable authors. For this book, the literary critic August Nemo has chosen the two most important and meaningful novels of Henry Handel Richardson which are The Getting of Wisdom and Maurice Guest.
    'Henry Handel Richardson, pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson, Australian novelist whose trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, combining description of an Australian immigrant's life and work in the goldfields with a powerful character study, is considered the crowning achievement of modern Australian fiction to that time.' (Publication summary)
     
    Vachendorf : Tacet Books , 2020

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Addiction, Fire and the Face in The Catherine Wheel Brigitta Olubas , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Elizabeth Harrower : Critical Essays 2017; (p. 101-111)
'My point of departure for this discussion of The Catherine Wheel is the connection (observed, in passing, by D.R. Burns)  between Elizabeth Harrower’s 1960 novel and Henry Handel Richardson’s Maurice Guest, published nearly half a century earlier (1908). The points of similarity between the two novels are instructive: both trace the inexorable decline of moderate talent and ambition in the face of searing obsession; both treat the question of performance, musical or theatrical, which trumps the force of words and language; both displace their narratives away from Australia to northern cities, reflecting in a further shift their authors’ own departures from Australia; and both focus narrative attention on the impossible, liminal promise of youth and talent, on student life, life without parents or family, pursuing a mode of living where adult maturity is barely imaginable. But while both are heavily invested in melodramatic incident, the dramas of The Catherine Wheel are largely internal, unvoiced, or they take place off-stage, or in the novel’s unimaginable future. And Harrower’s characters are remarkable not for their external acts so much as for their interactions; it is in their relationships rather than their individual personalities that we find the crackle and hum, the pyrotechnics promised by the novel’s title. There is also a dramatic scaling back of narrative scope in Harrower’s mid-century setting compared to Richardson’s: we move from Wagner’s Leipzig to Clemency James’ London bedsit, and much of The Catherine Wheel’s action takes place over the telephone, a mediation working as a further and technologically specific kind of displacement. And while Maurice Guest resolves tempestuously with the suicide of its protagonist, Clem’s narrative (as always with Harrower) concludes bleakly, with the opaque, inconclusive conviction that it is “too late”.' (Introduction)
Etty and Nettie : When Nettie Palmer Visited Henry Handel Richardson Brenda Niall , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , February no. 348 2013; (p. 28-35)
'Dostoyevsky Understood Newcastle!' : Reading John Hughes's Citational Autobiographies Stephen Mansfield , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Scenes of Reading : Is Australian Literature a World Literature? 2013; (p. 168-177)
Scenes of Reading : Is Australian Literature a World Literature? Robert Dixon , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Republics of Letters : Literary Communities in Australia 2012; (p. 71-83)
'Robert Dixon explores how Australian literature can negotiate between provincial, national and world literary space. At what appears to be a lime of unprecedented internationalisation, can Australian literature be considered a world literature, or does it remain a relatively minor national literature embedded uncertainly in world literary space?' (Kirkpatrick, Peter and Dixon, Robert: Introduction xiv)
“I Must Have a Mask to Hide Behind” : Signature, Imposture and Henry Handel Richardson Fiona Morrison , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue vol. 11 no. 1 2011;
'If the archive is, according to Derrida, a site of revelation and concealment, so too is the pseudonym, the 'false' proper name used to sign and thereby guarantee the 'true' authenticity of original works. This paper concerns itself with the double possibilities of the true writer and the fake name instantiated by Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson's use of the pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson, and the concomitant economy of the secret and the disclosed in all that related to her authorial signature. Richardson's deployment of her male pseudonym (and the other signatures she used to distinguish and manage different literary labour) will be considered in the context of expatriate literary production and reception. This paper will suggest that where the masculine proper name was one way in which nineteenth century British women writers negotiated their literary marketplace, Richardson's pseudonym more particularly allowed her to mediate and control proliferating complexities of genre, mode and national identity.

Emerging from these material considerations, several other questions will be considered in light of Richardson's fiction, letters and autobiography. The question of pseudonym as a form of cross-gender disguise or performance and the attendant possibilities of female spectatorship/authorship will be addressed in light of Richardson's early naturalism and its relation to decadence and aestheticism.' (Author's abstract)
[Review ] The Getting of Wisdom Freda Barrymore , 1930 single work review
— Appears in: The North Queensland Register , 15 February 1930; (p. 40)

— Review of Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , 1908 single work novel ; The Getting of Wisdom Henry Handel Richardson , 1910 single work novel ; The Fortunes of Richard Mahony Henry Handel Richardson , 1917 single work novel
Untitled 1908 single work review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 24 October 1908; (p. 20)

— Review of Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , 1908 single work novel
New And Recent Publications 1929 single work review
— Appears in: Desiderata , August no. 1 1929; (p. 27-28)

— Review of Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , 1908 single work novel ; Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1928 single work novel
A Faithful Picture of Life in Leipzig Ralph Elliott , 1998 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 August 1998; (p. 21)

— Review of Gertrude the Emigrant : A Tale of Colonial Life Louisa Atkinson , 1857 single work novel ; Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , 1908 single work novel
A Slouch-Hatted Canon Nicolas Rothwell , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , February vol. 2 no. 1 1997; (p. 10-13)

— Review of The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn Henry Kingsley , 1859 single work novel ; The Journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin : July 1858 - May 1868 Annie Maria Baxter Dawbin , 1998 single work autobiography ; Maurice Guest Henry Handel Richardson , 1908 single work novel
To the Bitter End Russell Wenholz , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: Canberra Sunday Times , 25 April 2004; (p. 19)
The Argument of the Broken Pane : Henry Handel Richardson's Response to the Suffragette Movement Michael Ackland , 2004 single work biography
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 174 2004; (p. 51-57)
Passion by Proxy: Henry Handel Richardson's Sapphic Investment in Her Early Fiction Michael Ackland , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 147-152)
Henry Handel Richardson : Her Reputation Nettie Palmer , 1929 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian Woman's Mirror , 5 March vol. 5 no. 15 1929; (p. 11, 30)

Nettie Palmer hails Henry Handel Richardson as a gifted and important writer. She discusses The Getting of Wisdom at some length, pointing out that it was Richardson's understanding of female psychology that revealed that the writer was in fact a woman.

Palmer describes Ultima Thule as a 'work of genius' and comments on an article in a London paper entitled 'Melbourne Woman's Leap to Fame' – Palmer points out that the leap took twenty years.

Palmer also notes that the first two novels in Richardson's eventual trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony : Comprising Australia Felix, The Way Home, Ultima Thule are now hard to obtain, especially the first, Australia Felix, as it was published during the war. She expresses the hope that Heinemann will produce an omnibus of the trilogy.

Henry Handel Richardson Jane Mander , 1929 single work biography
— Appears in: The Home , 1 June vol. 10 no. 6 1929; (p. 28, 72)
'A further emphasis on the significance of this Australian novelist, together with an interview with her for "The Home".' (appears under title)
Last amended 15 Feb 2024 13:01:54
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