Summary
‘I know it’s a daring suggestion, but I’ll make it anyway.’
Charmian Clift was a writer ahead of her time. Lyrical and fearless, her essays seamlessly the personal and the political.
In 1964, Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston returned to Australia after living and writing for many years in the cosmopolitan community of artists on the Greek island of Hydra. Back in Sydney, Clift found her opinions were far more progressive than those of many of her fellow Australians.
This new edition of Charmian Clift’s essays, selected and introduced by her biographer Nadia Wheatley, is drawn from the weekly newspaper column Clift wrote through the turbulent and transformative years of the 1960s. In these ‘sneaky little revolutions’, as Clift once called them, she supported the rights of women and migrants, called for social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, opposed conscription and the war in Vietnam, acknowledged Australia’s role in the Asia-Pacific, fought censorship, called for an Australian film industry — and much more. In doing so, she set a new benchmark for the form of the essay in Australian literature.
Author Biography
NADIA WHEATLEY is the author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as ‘one of the greatest Australian biographies,’ this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001 and won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer. Nadia Wheatley’s other works include the award-winning memoir Her Mother’s Daughter. Her most recent book, Radicals – Remembering the Sixties, written in partnership with Meredith Burgmann was published by NewSouth in 2021.
CHARMIAN CLIFT was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. Fleeing the political claustrophobia of Australia under the Menzies government, in 1952 Charmian headed to London. Two years later, they escaped even further, to the Greek islands, where over the next decade they raised three children and created a legend. During this period, Clift wrote the memoirs, Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honour’s Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents:
1. Contents
2. Introduction
3. Editor’s Note
4. Coming Home
5. Social Drinking
6. Second Class Citizens
7. Youth Revisited
8. On Debits and Credits
9. On Painting Bricks White
10. On Lucky Dips
11. Christmas
12. The Joys of a City
13. The Sounds of Summer
14. The Law of the Stranger
15. The Rare Art of Inspiring Others
16. An Exile’s Return
17. A Death in the Family
18. Things That Go Boomp in the Night
19. A Birthday in the Kelly Country
20. On Letting Asia In
21. On Living for Love Alone
22. Getting with the Forward-Lookers
23. Living in a Neighbourhood
24. On Waiting for Things to Turn Up
25. On Being Unable to Write an Article
26. News of Earls Court—Fifteen Years Ago
27. Saturnalias, Resolutions and Other Christmas Wishes
28. On Being a Home-Grown Migrant
29. On a Lowering Sky in the East
30. On Being Middle-Aged
31. Taking the Wrong Road
32. The Show Behind the Show
33. Banners, Causes and Convictions
34. The Magic of Mornings
35. On Turning Slightly Sepia
36. Read Any Good Books Lately?
37. The Jungle at the Bottom of the Street
38. The Right of Dissent
39. Goodbye to a Skyline
40. Where My Caravan Has Rested
41. Other People’s Houses
42. A Room of One’s Own
43. Report from a Migrant, Three Years After
44. On Trouble in Lotus Land
45. Uncrating Mr Nolan
46. The Centre
47. The Rock
48. The Olgas
49. The Gulf
50. Karumba Observed
51. The Island
52. The Outer Limits
53. The Hippy Warriors
54. The Great South Land
55. On Coming Home
56. On England, My England
57. The Voices of Greece
58. What Are You Doing It For?
59. Long Live Democracy!
60. The Borrowers
61. A Matter of Conscience
62. The Habitual Way
63. On Being a Culture Vulture
64. A New Generation of Protestants
65. Betrothing a Daughter
66. A Portrait of My Mother
67. On Not Answering Letters
68. Bewildered on the Bourse
69. Death by Misadventure
70. A Pride of Lions?
71. I Shall Not Want
72. The Rule of the Olds
73. On Being Alone with Oneself
74. Last of the Old?
75. On Flying the Coop
76. On Tick and Tock
77. The Loftiest Form of Springtime
78. Hallelujah for a Good Pick-Up!
79. The Joys of Holidays
80. Royal Jelly?
81. On Clean Straw for Nothing
82. Anyone for Fish and Chips?
83. Winter Solstice
84. Notes