The Countess from Kirribilli

Author: Joyce Morgan
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1761062166
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 395

Book Description
She was Australian born, an international bestselling author and a member of the glamorous literary, intellectual and society salons of late nineteenth and early twentieth century London and Europe She was 'amused, cynical, ironic, loving, gay, ferocious, cold, ardent but never gentle'. She was a whirlwind. She created around her the atmosphere of a Court at which her friends were either in disgrace or favour, a butt or a blessing. Elizabeth von Arnim may have been born on the shores of Sydney Harbour, but it was in Victorian London that she discovered society and society discovered her. She made her Court debut before Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, was pursued by a Prussian count and married into the formal world of the European aristocracy. It was the novels she wrote about that life that turned her into a literary sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and had her likened to Jane Austen. Her marriage to the count produced five children but little happiness. Her second marriage to Bertrand Russell's brother was a disaster. But by then she had captivated the great literary and intellectual circles of London and Europe. She brought into her orbit the likes of Nancy Astor, Lady Maud Cunard, her cousin Katherine Mansfield and other writers such as E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham and H.G. Wells, with whom it was said she had a tempestuous affair. Elizabeth von Arnim was an extraordinary woman who lived during glamorous, exciting and changing times that spanned the innocence of Victorian Sydney and finished with the march of Hitler through Europe. Joyce Morgan brings her to vivid and spellbinding life.

The Countess from Kirribilli

Author: Joyce Morgan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780369367624
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
She was Australian born, an international bestselling author and a member of the glamorous literary, intellectual and society salons of late nineteenth and early twentieth century London and Europe. She was 'amused, cynical, ironic, loving, gay, ferocious, cold, ardent but never gentle'. She was a whirlwind. She created around her the atmosphere of a Court at which her friends were either in disgrace or favour, a butt or a blessing. Elizabeth von Arnim may have been born on the shores of Sydney Harbour, but it was in Victorian London that she discovered society and society discovered her. She made her Court debut before Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace, was pursued by a Prussian count and married into the formal world of the European aristocracy. It was the novels she wrote about that life that turned her into a literary sensation on both sides of the Atlantic and had her likened to Jane Austen. Her marriage to the count produced five children but little happiness. Her second marriage to Bertrand Russell's brother was a disaster. But by then she had captivated the great literary and intellectual circles of London and Europe. She brought into her orbit the likes of Nancy Astor, Lady Maud Cunard, her cousin Katherine Mansfield and other writers such as E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham and H.G. Wells, with whom it was said she had a tempestuous affair. Elizabeth von Arnim was an extraordinary woman who lived during glamorous, exciting and changing times that spanned the innocence of Victorian Sydney and finished with the march of Hitler through Europe. Joyce Morgan brings her to vivid and spellbinding life.

Journeys on the Silk Road

Author: Joyce Morgan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0762787333
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
When a Chinese monk broke into a hidden cave in 1900, he uncovered one of the world’s great literary secrets: a time capsule from the ancient Silk Road. Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.

Martin Sharp

Author: Joyce Morgan
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1925575012
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 435

Book Description
'Martin wore tight pants that were striped red, white and blue, like a Union Jack, and an embroidered Afghan vest. In front of his face he carried, like a lollipop, a smile on a stick. As he went, he bowed to passers-by. Even on King's Road, he stood out.' Martin Sharp's art was as singular as his style. He blurred the boundaries of high art and low with images of Dylan, Hendrix and naked flower children that defined an era. Along the way the irreverent Australian was charged with obscenity and collaborated with Eric Clapton as he drew rock stars and reprobates into his world. In this richly told and beautifully written biography, Joyce Morgan captures the loneliness of a privileged childhood, the heady days of the underground magazine Oz as well as the exuberant creativity of Swinging London and beyond. Sharp pursued his quixotic dream to realise van Gogh's Yellow House in Australia. He obsessively championed eccentric singer Tiny Tim and was haunted by Sydney's Luna Park. Charismatic and paradoxical, he became a recluse whose phone never stopped ringing. There was no one like Martin Sharp. When he died, he was described as a stranger in a strange land who left behind a trail of stardust.

Only Happiness Here

Author: Gabrielle Carey
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702264482
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
&‘When I discovered Elizabeth von Arnim, I found, for the first time, a writer who wrote about being happy.' Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the early twentieth century's most famous &– and almost forgotten &– authors. She was ahead of her time in her understanding of women and their often thwarted pursuit of happiness. Born in Sydney in the mid-1800s, she went on to write many internationally bestselling novels, marry a Prussian Count and then an English Lord, develop close friendships with H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster, and raise five children. Intrigued by von Arnim's extraordinary life, Gabrielle Carey sets off on a literary and philosophical journey to learn about this bold and witty author. More than a biography, Only Happiness Here is also a personal investigation into our perennial obsession with finding joy.

In Quisling's Shadow

Author: Alexandra Yourieff
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
ISBN: 0817948333
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Book Description
Alexandra Andreevna Voronine Yourieff, wife of Vidkun Quisling, reveals firsthand in this detailed memoir the tragedy, betrayals, misunderstandings, and happiness of her fascinating life. Not just a tale of saints and sinners, but of three people—Alexandra, Quisling, and his second wife, Maria—whose fates were intertwined under the extreme conditions created by revolution, war, and famine in Russia. She discloses every particular of her long and tumultuous life, from her happy early childhood on the Crimean peninsula thorough the horrors of the revolution, her marriage to Quisling and his ultimate betrayals of both her and his country, to her later life in France and California.

Byobu

Author: Ida Vitale
Publisher: Charco Press
ISBN: 1913867145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 61

Book Description
Byobu reveals a rich inner world, one driven by its meticulous attention to our rich outer one. "a story’s existence, even if not well defined or well assigned, even if only in its formative stage, just barely latent, emits vague but urgent emanations." Byobu's every interaction trembles with possibility and faint menace. A crack in the walls of his house, marring it forever, means he must burn it down. A stoplight asks what the value of obedience is, what hopefulness it contains, and what insensible anarchy it defies. In brief episodes, aphorisms, and moments of spiritual turbulence and gentle scrutiny, reside a wealth of habits, worries, curiosities, pleasures, peculiarities, and efforts to understand. Representative of the modesty and complexity of Ida Vitale’s poetic universe, Byobu flushes the world with meaning and playfully offers another way of inhabiting the every day.

Vera

Author: Elizabeth Von Arnim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description

Daughter of Calabria

Author: Tania Blanchard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1760852090
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
Previously published as Echoes of War 'Blanchard at her breathtaking best. Rich in every sight, taste and smell.' Australian Women’s Weekly _________________ Set in Mussolini’s Italy amid great upheaval, this is the story of one woman’s determination to find her place in a world that men are threatening to tear apart. Another heart-rending novel inspired by a true story from Australia's bestselling author of The Girl from Munich. Calabria, Italy, 1936 In a remote farming village nestled in the mountains that descend into the sparkling Ionian Sea, young and spirited Giulia Tallariti longs for something more. While she loves her home and her lively family, she would much rather follow in her nonna’s footsteps and pursue her dream of becoming a healer. But as Mussolini’s focus shifts to the war in Europe, civil unrest looms. Whispers of war are at every corner and her beloved village, once safe from the fascist agenda of the North, is now in very real danger. Caught between her desire to forge her own path and her duty to her family, Giulia must draw on the passion in her heart and the strength of her conviction. Can she find a way to fulfill her dreams without sacrificing all she holds dear? _________________ ‘Richly imagined, heartbreaking and utterly captivating ... yet another outstanding piece of historical fiction from Blanchard, cementing her place at the top of this genre.’ Better Reading ‘This is emotional reading for anyone born of immigrant stock as it explores the pain of leaving your homeland and your family to find opportunity elsewhere … an entertaining tale of fiction that will make your heart melt and sing and shatter.’ Glam Adelaide ‘A powerful novel about powerful women … a powerful evocation of a time, a place and a cultural vision which provided a significant boost to Australia’s population and its development as a multi-cultural destination of choice for refugees – both voluntary and choiceless.’ Carpe Librum

Destiny in Sydney

Author: D. Manning Richards
Publisher: Aries Books
ISBN: 0984541004
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 493

Book Description
DESTINY IN SYDNEY is an epic, multicultural novel of convicts, Aborigines, and Chinese embroiled in the birth of Sydney, Australia. Adventurous and opportunistic, Scottish marine Lieutenant Nathaniel Armstrong is in charge of convicts on one of eleven ships sent in 1787 on a perilous voyage from England to the other side of the world to establish a British penal colony. He lusts after fiery Irish convict Moira O Keeffe and surprises himself when he falls in love with her. Together they nearly starve in Sydney Cove while learning to farm the harsh land and deal with the Aborigines, whose lot is disease and unequal warfare. Armstrong descendants deny their convict heritage and oppose the Chinese who come for the gold rush. Three Fong brothers suffer violence and despair as they fight to forge a place for themselves. Duncan Armstrong, rich and powerful, helps pass the White Australia Policy in 1901 to keep out the Chinese, while his cousin Eleanor works for women s suffrage and a fair go for the Aborigines. Impeccably researched, this gripping dramatization of the true history of Sydney, Australia, is drawn from the writings of Australian leaders, soldiers, explorers, and settlers. Richards has mined Australian history for its action-adventure and applied his incomparable storytelling skills for a powerful, fast-paced read. The sequel novel A GIFT OF SYDNEY, available in late 2013, will continue the story of the Armstrongs and Fongs, and add the Hudson Aboriginal family, ending with the Summer Olympic Games held in Sydney in the year 2000.