Cirrus@Austlit

'Membership of the Adam Lindsay Gordon Society was a step on the path of literary aspiration. We stayed back after school under the tutelage of the English master and read from our own work in a deserted classroom. But the invitation to the Shakespeare Reading Society was the mark of acceptance, reading from the works of Shakespeare on a Sunday evening in the Headmaster’s house. This was the entrée to the higher world of culture and French words. French windows, too, opening out onto the croquet lawn from the long, low Georgian house, the trace of medieval monastic ruins beyond the grass at one end, the stand of horse chestnut trees at the other, and the Headmaster intoning Hamlet, Prince Hal, Lear, Macbeth, Othello. This was as the world would be, privilege, exclusivity: and the girls from the private school over the wall brought in to read the few girls’ parts. Knees together on the long, low couch. The Headmaster opposite in his arm chair. We attendant lords from the sixth form on straight-backed, hard, auxiliary seating.' (Introduction)