Wild Weeds and Windflowers
The life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard was a writer of novels internationally acclaimed for their realism and power, a foundation member of the Australian Communist Party, a feminist. Her son, Ric Throssell, has drawn on the memories of a lifetime and a deep and intimate knowledge of his subject in this full and moving account of his mother's life.
Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969) was one of Australia's most distinguished writers of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as one of its most politically engaged. A foundation member of the Western Australian branch of the Communist Party, she was also a fervent feminist, and her writing was informed by a broad-reaching socialism.
Prichard published many major novels, including Working Bullocks (1926), lauded on publication as the first properly Australian modern novel, and Coonardoo (1929), which attracted some hostile criticism for its portrait of a loving sexual relationship between a young Aboriginal woman and a white man.
As a public figure Prichard won acclaim, but she also suffered public abuse. She was an intensely private woman who requested that all her personal papers and letters be destroyed upon her death. This is the authoritative and intimate account of her life.
Author bio:
Ric Throssell, the son of Gallipoli Victoria Cross winner Hugo Throssell and the acclaimed writer and pioneer Communist, Katharine Susannah Prichard, was himself a writer and playwright. Born at Greenmount, Western Australia, in 1922, his father's suicide in the face of mounting debts blighted his early life. It also came to be dominated by his mother's commitment to the causes of socialism and feminism.
For forty years Ric Throssell fought a battle to climb through the ranks of the Department of Foreign Affairs at home and abroad, unaware that he was under surveillance by the Australian security services.
A committed anti-nuclear campaigner since World War II, he presented his father's Victoria Cross to People for Nuclear Disarmament in 1984.
1 Kattie
2 All Experience Is and Arch
3 As the Sea Loves
4 Not Frankincense or Myrrh
5 The Well in the Shadow
6 The Lightest, Brightest Show on Earth
7 For Valour
8 Mourn Not the Dead
9 Intimate Strangers
10 The Fire and the Fury Comes
11 the Art and Craft of the Short Story
12 Our Work is Where it Bleeds
13 Though Life Flows Strange
14 The Weaver and the Weft
15 Let the Dreamers Say
16 The Future Lives
17 With Half the World Behind Me
18 Child of the Hurricane
19 No Wreath is Worthy
20 Subtle Flame
21 Whereon My Eyes Have Rested
22 With Clenched Hands
23 To Nourish a Wild Flower
Notes
Bibliography
Index
