Henry Handel Richardson
| Henry Handel Richardson | |
|---|---|
Henry Handel/Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson in 1945, a year before her death
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| Born | Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson 3 January 1870 East Melbourne, Victoria |
| Died | 20 March 1946 (aged 76) Hastings, East Sussex, England |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable works | The Fortunes of Richard Mahony |
| Years active | 1895-1940 |
Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (3 January 1870 – 20 March 1946), known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author.
Born in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, into a prosperous family that later fell on hard times, Ethel Florence (who preferred to answer to Et, Ettie or Etta) was the elder daughter of Walter Lindesay Richardson MD (c. 1826–1879) and his wife Mary (née Bailey).
The family lived in various towns across Victoria during Richardson's childhood and youth. These included Chiltern, Queenscliff, Koroit and, most happily, Maldon, where Richardson's mother was postmistress (her father having died when she was nine, of syphilis). The Richardsons' home in Chiltern, "Lake View", is now owned by the National Trust and open to visitors.
Richardson left Maldon to become a boarder at Presbyterian Ladies' College (PLC) in Melbourne in 1883 and attended from the ages of 13 to 17. This experience was the basis for The Getting of Wisdom, a coming-of-age novel admired by H. G. Wells. At PLC she started to develop her ability to credibly mix fact with fiction, a skill she used to advantage in her novels.
Richardson excelled in the arts and music during her time at PLC, and her mother took the family to Europe in 1888, to enable Richardson to continue her musical studies at the Leipzig Conservatorium. Richardson set her first novel, Maurice Guest, in Leipzig.
In 1894 in Munich Richardson married the Scot John George Robertson, whom she had met in Leipzig where he was studying German literature and who later briefly taught at the University of Strasburg, where his wife became ladies' tennis champion. In 1903, the couple moved to London, where Robertson had been appointed to the first chair of German at University College, London. Richardson returned to Australia in 1912, in order to research family history for The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, but after her return to England, she remained there for the rest of her life. She and her sister Lillian were ardent supporters of the suffragette movement, Lillian even being imprisoned for destroying public property. She was involved in psychic research, and after her husband's death, she claimed she maintained daily contact with him via seances.
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