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22+ oeuvres 83 utilisateurs 1 Critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Crédit image: Autographed portrait by Disderi, c1870-90 (Library of Congress)

Œuvres de Rosa Praed

Oeuvres associées

Australian Ghost Stories (2010) — Contributeur — 35 exemplaires
The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction (2007) — Contributeur — 22 exemplaires
Australian Gothic: An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction (2007) — Contributeur — 20 exemplaires
Australian hauntings : colonial supernatural fiction (2011) — Contributeur — 9 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Autres noms
Murray-Prior, Rosa Caroline
Praed, Campbell, Mrs., 1851-1935
Praed, Rosa
Date de naissance
1851-03-27
Date de décès
1935-04-10
Sexe
female
Nationalité
Australia
Lieu de naissance
Bromelton, Queensland, Australia
Lieu du décès
Torquay, Devon, England, UK
Lieux de résidence
London, England, UK
Curtis Island, Queensland, Australia
Études
self-educated
Professions
novelist
autobiographer
Relations
Praed, Arthur Campbell (husband)
Courte biographie
Rosa Praed, née Murray-Prior, was born in Bromelton, on the Logan River in Queensland, Australia. She was educated at home by her mother and by her own reading. She began writing as a child. Her mother died in 1868 and, as the eldest daughter of the family, Rosa ran her father's house and served as hostess when he entertained. In 1872, she married Arthur Campbell Praed, the scion of a well-to-do English family who had come to Australia to make his fortune, with whom she had four children.

After the failure of her husband's cattle station, in 1876 the family moved to England, where Rosa established herself as a writer. In

1880, she published her first book, An Australian Heroine, under the name Mrs. Campbell Praed. It was well-received and prompted her to write in quick succession, Policy and Passion (1881), Nadine; the Study of a Woman (1882), Moloch; a Story of Sacrifice (1883), and Zero; a
Story of Monte Carlo (1884).

Rosa's success as a writer was her entrée to the society of other writers, playwrights, actors, artists, and politicians. She collaborated on three political novels with Justin McCarthy, an Irish politician and friend, as well as The Grey River (1889), a coffee-table sized book about the Thames.

In 1894–1895, Rosa traveled to Japan and returned to Australia for a visit. She then wrote the novel Madame Izàn: A Tourist Story (1899), which raised the then-daring subject of an interracial marriage between a Japanese man and an Irish woman.

In the 1890s, she became estranged from her husband and separated from him. A few years later, she began living with Nancy Harward, a psychic medium. Much of her later fiction, some of which was written with Nancy, reflects her belief in spiritualism, reincarnation, and the supernatural. In 1902, she published her autobiography, My Australian Girlhood. She has been described as the first Australian novelist to achieve an international reputation.

Membres

Critiques

The name ‘Praed’ speaks to me of home: because it is very much a Cornish name, and because we have a number of paintings of familiar places, painted by an artist of that name, in out home. That was why the name of Rosa Praed, 19th century author, caught my eye. I couldn’t find a Cornish connection, indeed she came from the opposite side of the world, but when I read about her, and about her books, I was intrigued.

Rosa Praed was an Australian author, maybe the first to be acclaimed at home and internationally, and though her husband’s career took them to England she continued to write novels set in her homeland. She published more than twenty books between 1880 and 1916, and I liked the look of any of the, but ‘Policy and Passion’ was the book that caught my eye. It filled a year in my 100 Years of Books project, and that title made me think of a certain Mr Trollope ….

It might well have been influenced by him, but Rosa Praed was the daughter of a cabinet minister and this story is firmly rooted in her world.

At its centre are a father and a daughter.

Thomas Longleat had risen from humble origins to become Premier of Leichardt’s Land (Queensland). He was charismatic, he was respected by his parliamentary colleagues, and he was popular, particularly with the working-classes. A knighthood from Queen Victoria should have been his for the taking, but he made a fatal misstep. He fell in love with the wife of a colleague, Constance Vallancy, and he made use of his position to send her husband away travelling so the he could spend time with his wife. Passion blinded his political judgement and of course there would be consequences ….

Honoria was the Premier’s elder daughter, and she was poised between childhood and womanhood. She was beautiful, she was headstrong, and she lacked a mother to guide her. She turned away an a very eligible suitor, a rising politician loyal to her father, when she was charmed by Hardress Barrington, a visiting English aristocrat. She didn’t know that he would never contemplate marrying the colonial daughter of a self-made man, and that he had it in mind to set her up as his mistress in an establishment of her own. She would find out …..

The characters of father and daughter, and the relationship between them, are beautifully drawn. They were utterly believable and understandable, the products of their lives, their circumstances and their times. I felt for them, and at ties I was infuriated by them. The dialogues between them – as each saw the failings of the other and their beloved that the other was blind to – were marvellous.

The others around them and the world that they moved through were just as well drawn. I never doubted that I had been pulled into a very real time and place.

I appreciated that nothing was too black and white. Hardress Barrington behaved badly, but he did care, he just hadn’t learned to think about and understand how others might feel. And, though Constance Vallancy behaved badly too, she was an abused and unhappy wife, and she found comfort in masculine attention and in lovely things ,,,,

The writing was both clear and lovely, the storytelling was wonderfully engaging, and so I had to keep turning the pages; I was always involved, always anxious to know what happened next.

The two storylines were distinctive, but of course they overlapped, and they were woven together, they worked together beautifully.

The father’s political crisis and the daughter’s coming of age would coincide. The story came dangerously close to melodrama, but it worked because everything that every character said and did rang true. It was fate that maybe overplayed its hand ….

‘Policy and Passion’ is a very fine drama – I’m not sure if it’s ever been dramatised, but it would work beautifully on stage or screen.

I loved it on the page, and I definitely plan to find out more about Rosa Praed and her other books.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
BeyondEdenRock | Oct 28, 2016 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
22
Aussi par
6
Membres
83
Popularité
#218,811
Évaluation
½ 3.6
Critiques
1
ISBN
25

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