Charmian Clift

Charmian Clift
Born	Kiama
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, essayist
Spouse(s)	George Johnston
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Charmian Clift (30 August 1923 – 8 July 1969) was an Australian writer and essayist during the mid 20th century. She was the second wife and literary collaborator of George Johnston.

Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales in 1923. She married George Johnston in 1947. They had three children, the eldest of whom was the poet Martin Johnston. After Clift and Johnston's collaboration High Valley (1949) won them recognition as writers, they left Australia with their young family, working in London before relocating to the Greek island of Hydra to try living by the pen.

Johnston returned to Australia to receive the accolades of his Miles Franklin Award-winner My Brother Jack. Clift moved back to Sydney with their children in 1964, after which her memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus and her novel Honour's Mimic became successes.

She was also well known for the 240 essays she wrote between 1964 and 1969 for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Herald in Melbourne. They were collected in the books Images in Aspic and The World of Charmian Clift. In the meantime, Clift and Johnston's marriage was disintegrating under the pressures of their drinking habits and the problems their children had settling into life in Sydney.

On 8 July 1969, the eve of the publication of Johnston's novel Clean Straw for Nothing, Clift committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates in Mosman, a Sydney suburb. In her posthumously-published article My Husband George in that month's edition of POL Magazine, she wrote:

Her ashes were later scattered in the rose garden of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Sydney.

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