AustLit

(Publication summary)

'Female performers at the turn of the 20th century found both joy and frustration in theatre, writes Helen Elliott n a book crammed with photographs, one is notably arresting. Languid in a chair, her hand up to her frizzy hair, a woman looks straight into the camera. She’s amused, eternally amused. It is a publicity shot for Sarah Bernhardt taken in Sydney in 1891. Bernhardt, always in need of money, was on a world tour and Australians, like the rest of the world, fawned. She was the most famous actress in the world and, scandalously, lived unconventionally both on and off stage. Other women might aspire to be her but there was only one Bernhardt.' (Introduction)

(Introduction)

'Eliza Grayling is tall, capable, smart. It is 1830, so tall, capable, smart aligns with unmarriageable. Never mind. She is happy enough being thought about in Sydney Town as the tall spinster. She lives alone, in rather slatternly style, and earns her living teaching some appealing young children. She is also looking out for her father, blind and alcoholic, who lives alone on the edge of the bush.'  (Introduction)

'Connor is an Australian bloke in his early 30s living by his wits in India. He’s in India but he has knocked about the world for so long it could just as easily be Thailand, or Cambodia, or Colombia.' (Introduction)

'An anthology of essays by twenty-four Australian women, edited by Helen Elliott, about the many aspects of being a grandmother in the 21st century. It seems so different from the experience we had of our grandmothers. Although perhaps the human essential, love, hasn’t shifted much? In thoughtful, provoking, uncompromising writing, a broad range of women reflect on vastly diverse experiences. This period of a woman’s life, a continuation and culmination, is as defining as any other and the words ‘grand’ and ‘mother’ rearrange and realign themselves into bright focus.

'The contributors: Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer, Judith Brett, Jane Caro, Elizabeth Cheung, Cresside Collette, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Helen Garner, Anastasia Gonis, Glenda Guest, Katherine Hattam, Celestine Hitiura Vaite, Yvette Holt, Cheryl Kernot, Ramona Koval, Alison Lester, Joan London, Jenny Macklin, Auntie Daphnie Milward, Mona Mobarek, Carol Raye and Gillian Triggs.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.