The Countess Of Kirribilli

by Joyce Morgan

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Heather Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an exploration of a woman writer I did not know, who in the twentieth century achieved great fame, and who had an affair with HG Wells. It is said of Wells’s writings that she provided her Swiss chalet as a place to forge the famous War of the Worlds. So I read this researched biography with its many direct quotes of her letters and diaries and learned with interest about her childhood from Australia to England to Europe, of her living through two world wars. She married into high German society, hence becoming a Countess and two of her children were born in Germany, making a complication when war erupted.

It’s written as a research style so there’s not much emotional connection for the reader - well that’s my take on it. I was fascinated by her life choices, her relationships, as evidenced through letters, and would like to follow on with reading at least a couple of her books. What a great but challenging life she had: a long marriage, another short hostile take-over of a marriage, affairs of the heart. More, it was her independent spirit and her ability to run a farm, buy property, live in various countries, have children whom she visited both in Germany and the United States, and the hints of what made her tick, that kept my interest. Her life would make a good episodic television drama: full of famous people and high society to a backdrop of political and economic changes, not to mention the health issues of these eras.

[Joni Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this biography of a mysterious writer I had never heard of. Yet she was famous and wrote best sellers in the early 20 th century Europe. A life stranger than fiction. A life well lived. A pioneer for women writers.