Henry Handel Richardson: The music

Abstract

The acclaimed Australian novelist, Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946), best known as the author of The Getting of Wisdom, was by all accounts a very private person. Her adoption of a male nom de plume with her first novel, Maurice Guest (1908), went beyond a savvy ploy to avoid critical condescension and prejudgment of her writing as the product of a ‘lady novelist’, initiating what was to become an enduring barrier between her creative persona and her private life. As Henry Handel Richardson, Mrs Ethel Robertson produced novels and short stories, but these were not the only products of her creativity, as this edition of her songs bears testimony.