Christina Stead

-
Over a period of fifty years in the twentieth century, Australian-born CS published a short-story volume (many more stories were posthumously collected), eleven novels (one also posthumous), three translations, and a volume of novellas. Her literary career, never at any stage without obstacles, fell into several sections. At first she drew positive responses from publishers and some reviewers, though her works were seen as uninviting and difficult, and never sold well. The Man Who Loved Children seemed to signal a breakthrough into fame, but after this Stead's prickly personality, refusal to compromise, and Communist politics consigned her to outer darkness again. For years she worked at revision (a task she hated) of texts which had been rejected in their first form, only to have them rejected again. Belated recognition involved acknowledgement that the literary world had been exceptionally slow to do her justice.
Photograph of a gold-coloured memorial plaque to Christina Stead in the Writers Walk, Sydney (near the Opera House), created in 1991 by the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts. The plaque is set against a grey brick wall, and headed with Stead's name and dates. Below, reading downwards, come a circular emblem of the NSW state flower, telopea speciosissima, a quotation from her "Seven Poor Men of Sydney", a brief summary of her works with special mention of "The Man Who Loved Children", an encircled cross,

Milestones

17 July 1902

CS was born in a modest, two-roomed cabin in Kimpton Street, Rockdale, New South Wales, a part of Sydney, Australia.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
5
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

11 October 1940

CS 's probably best-known novel, The Man Who Loved Children, based on her experiences growing up in Sydney, Australia, with her father and his second family of children, was published in New York.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
270
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

July 1955

Randall Jarrell 's article in the New York Times about CS 's The Man Who Loved Children (followed in August by another article, in New Republic, by Elizabeth Hardwick ) began to turn Stead's reputation around.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
403-4

31 March 1983

CS died in Balmain Hospital at Sydney, Australia.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
40: 414
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
560-1

Biography

Birth and Influences

17 July 1902

CS was born in a modest, two-roomed cabin in Kimpton Street, Rockdale, New South Wales, a part of Sydney, Australia.
Rowley, Hazel. Christina Stead: A Biography. Secker and Warburg.
5
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.

Please click on login button to check your access and/or enter your credentials. Alternatively if you don’t have access, please click on “Subscribe”.

Log inSubscribe