AustLit

'In 1922, when Katharine Susannah Prichard’s son, Ric, was born, she had him placed in what she called his Bolshevik gown, ‘the little gown I had embroidered with wheat ears and a hammer and sickle.’ It’s a cute story, but also a prescient gesture towards Prichard’s decades-long, unwavering loyalty to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Prichard’s writing, Nathan Hobby’s biography reveals, was matched in intensity by her political activities. With these two pillars of interests set alongside each other in detailed accounts of her literary habits (in her early career she was a frequent submitter to writing prizes), and later her political organising (setting up CPA branches, travelling the country to give rousing speeches about the fight for communism in Australia), we see the broader picture emerge of a woman who was intensely engaged with her world, and with a seemingly unstoppable energy to pour back into it. Her prolific writing practice only seemed to be interrupted when her party duties took over. Even towards the end of her life, she reignited a writing habit: two hours per day. Prichard remained active in her political party until late into life and, even towards the end, living as an elderly eccentric, she managed to hold court, frequently hosting friends and visitors. There is a felt sense, in this biography, of her boundless energy.' (Introduction)