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Henry Handel Richardson [Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson] Frederick McCubbin, illustrator |
THE GETTING OF WISDOM | ||
THE GETTING
OF WISDOM
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The classic literary account, called a “masterpiece” by H.G. Wells, of a girl’s coming of age in turn-of-thecentury Australia, now back in print in a fine illustrated edition.
“Richardson’s carefully paced dramatic style, exploiting every rise and dip in the girl's spirits, produces a page-turner.… Thanks to Mercury House … we have a handsome new unexpurgated edition of the novel (first published in 1910), complete with … an engaging, informative introduction to Richardson’s life and oeuvre by Mercury House executive director Thomas Christensen.” This classic coming-of-age novel examines the trials and tribulations of a young girl learning the ropes of conformity in an all-girls’ school in Melbourne in the 1880’s. Germaine Greer has hailed it as “profound” yet “gracefully and unself-consciously so,” a work whose freshness and originality seemed to usher in the twentieth century. Illustrated with eight full-color reproductions of period paintings by Frederick McCubbin, and further enhanced by a ribbon bookmark, three-piece case, and colored endpages. |
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ETHEL FLORENCE LINDSEY RICHARDSON was born in Melbourne in 1870. Objecting to the notion that the marks of female authorship are easily detected in literary works, she adopted the pen name of Henry Handel Richardson, which she retained long after her identity was revealed. In 1932 she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for The End of Childhood in which “Growing Pains” focused on the problems of sexuality and the human body faced by girls. She died in 1946.
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