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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)
Adaptations
-
form
y
Rhapsody
( 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
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For early reviews and criticism see also Gay Howells's bibliography Henry Handel Richardson.
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Dedication: To Louise
Contents
- Maurice Guest : Introduction, single work criticism (p. xxv-lxxi)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Addiction, Fire and the Face in The Catherine Wheel
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
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
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?
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
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)
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[Review ] The Getting of Wisdom
1930
single work
review
— Appears in: The North Queensland Register , 15 February 1930; (p. 40)
— Review of Maurice Guest 1908 single work novel ; The Getting of Wisdom 1910 single work novel ; The Fortunes of Richard Mahony 1917 single work novel -
Untitled
1908
single work
review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 24 October 1908; (p. 20)
— Review of Maurice Guest 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 1908 single work novel ; Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow 1928 single work novel -
A Faithful Picture of Life in Leipzig
1998
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 8 August 1998; (p. 21)
— Review of Gertrude the Emigrant : A Tale of Colonial Life 1857 single work novel ; Maurice Guest 1908 single work novel -
A Slouch-Hatted Canon
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 1859 single work novel ; The Journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin : July 1858 - May 1868 1998 single work autobiography ; Maurice Guest 1908 single work novel -
To the Bitter End
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
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
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 18 no. 2 2004; (p. 147-152) -
Henry Handel Richardson : Her Reputation
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.
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Henry Handel Richardson
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)
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Leipzig,
cGermany,cWestern Europe, Europe,
- 1890