Madeleine St John
| Madeleine St John | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 12, 1941 Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 18 June 2006 (aged 64) London, England |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable works | The Essence of the Thing |
| Years active | 1993-1999 |
Madeleine St John (12 November 1941 – 18 June 2006) was an Australian writer, the first Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction (in 1997 for her novel The Essence of the Thing).
St John was born in 1941 in Castlecrag, a suburb of Sydney, and schooled at Queenwood School for Girls, Mosman. She was born to Edward St John, the son of a Church of England clergyman. Her French mother, Sylvette (Cargher), committed suicide when St John was 12. Her maternal grandparents were Romanian Jews.
She went the University of Sydney to study arts where she was a contemporary of Bruce Beresford, John Bell, Clive James, Germaine Greer, Arthur Dignam, Robert Hughes and Richard Walsh whom her father defended in the first Oz obscenity trial in 1964.
She married Christopher Tillam, a filmmaker, with whom she moved to San Francisco to live while he studied film. The marriage ended after St John went to live in England during 1968, where she continued to live. She took a series of jobs in bookshops and offices. Eventually she stuck with a part-time job for two days a week at an antique shop in Kensington. During the following eight years she attempted to write a biography of Helena Blavatsky but was dissatisfied and destroyed the manuscript.
In the early 1990s she decided to write novels. Her first, The Women in Black was published in 1993.
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