Myself When Young

by Henry Handel Richardson

The writer whom many of the critics call one of the greatest of novelists has here told the story of her own childhood and youth. When Henry (Ethel F. Lindesay Robertson) died she left all but completed a volume of autobiography concerned with her youth in Australia, her subsequent stay in Leipzig and the first years of her intensely happy marriage. Final details were available from the notes and diary of her husband, and these together with an essay on her work are added to complete the book.

Genres: Australia, 20th Century, Biography, Autobiography

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson Robertson for mixed motives used and adopted Henry Handel Richardson, a pen-name that probably militated against recognition especially when feminist literary history began. Maurice Guest was highly praised in Germany when it first appeared in translation in 1912, but received a bad press in England, though it influenced other novelists. The publishers bowdlerized the language for the second imprint. The trilogy suffered from the long intervals between its three volumes: Australia Felix (1917); The Way Home (1925) and Ultima Thule (1929). The last brought overnight fame and the three volumes were published as one in 1930. Her fame in England was short-lived; as late as 1977, when Virago Press republished The Getting of Wisdom, some London critics referred to the author as 'Mr Richardson'. Her short stories, The End of a Childhood (1934), and the novel, The Young Cosima (1939), had lukewarm receptions.

Henry Handel Richardson's place in Australian literature is important and secure. The Fortunes is an archetypal novel of the country, written about the great upsurge of nineteenth-century Western capitalism fuelled by the gold discoveries. With relentless objectivity it surveys all the main issues which were to define the direction of white Australian society from the 1850s onwards, within the domestic framework of a marriage. Powerfully symbolic in a realistic mode it is, as an English critic said in 1973, 'one of the great inexorable books of the world'.

Reviews

[Hermien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful classic writing describing an interesting life.

[John Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just wish HHR had started her memoir earlier so that she might have finished it as planned. Tantalising to think what she might have shared about the writing of her magnificent Maurice Guest. But I suppose if she had ended with the publication of Maurice Guest I would be here now wishing that she had written more, covering the rest of her work and life. I should be happy with this fragment. It is far better than the alternative. Nothing.

[Marie Belcredi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the unfinished memoir of Henry Handel Richardson who I found out from this book left Australia at a young age and never came back. I was amazed to read this as both The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney and The Getting of Wisdom take place in Australia with the Australian environment being central to the books.
I think the true hero of this book is HHR's mother who, after her husband died, faced penury. Undaunted, she accepted the job of postmistress in a regional city and worked her way out of poverty and got promoted. After working for enough time to save up enough money to take her daughters to Europe, the family left and HHR started learning music in Leipzig. HHR describes the working environment her mother faced, with some men just refusing to take orders from HHR's mother. We've come along way from that time, thank goodness.
The book finishes abruptly just as HHR's mother dies and it is completed by Olga Roncoroni who was a friend of the family. I think, from reading this book that HHR would not have been an easy person to live with. She seems to have lived without any scruples that her opinions and decisions could ever have been wrong. She seems to have fought anyone who could have stopped her from getting her way. She and her husband accepted a wedding gift of £300 from her mother's hard earned savings so that she could get married and work at her writing. I can only imagine how that much money would have meant to HHR's mother.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful autobiography. H.H.R. has a lovely light touch to her prose, reminiscent maybe of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her life was romantic—sitting across rural Victoria and outer Melbourne as her family’s fortunes waxed and waned, then to London, Germany, and finally back to London. There is a somewhere sad trajectory to the end of the book, as the rich wide expanses is her years on the continent close up with her arrival in England.

This is certainly a book for H.H.R.’s fans. It fully explains how this writer was able to write such varied books as Maurice Guest, The Getting Of Wisdom and The Fortunes Of Richard Mahoney. She had many strings to her bow: multilingual erudition, perfect pitch and a talent for tennis. She led a rich life of thought, travel and conversation, and yet she never lost a certain nationalist pride for her distant, vexed homeland. Myself When Young is an enchanting portrait of a young writer’s growth and adventures

[Broderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a great insight into the life and mind of Henry Handel Richardson. Not only does it include her autobiographical work, but also some further biographical information from her friend and companion Olga Roncoroni, and an essay on the work of Richardson by her husband (?). I was inspired to read it after reading Richardson's The Getting of Wisdom, and I'm now inspired to read more of her works.

[Glenn Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one for Henry Handel Richardson fans only. I found the section when she was living in Australia somewhat interesting, but the section while overseas dealt with trivial matters and became rather dull.

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book via this post: https://bronasbooks.com/2021/11/24/my...

[F. McGill · Rating 2 out of 5]

With the exceptions of a handful of scenes, it isn't interesting enough a biography to keep the attention of someone who isn't priorly familiar with Richardson as an author.