A worthy winner of the 2023 Western Australian Premier's Book Award. This is very much a traditional biography (no criticism, I'm not a fan of the hybrid "faction" approach), well researched, chronological but not hagiographic, scholarly and readable. Nathan Hobby takes us through Prichard's life from her birth in Fiji in the last decades of the 19th century to her death in Greenmount in Perth in 1969. He doesn't shy away from the difficulty of her unrepentant loyalty to Communism and Stalin's Soviet Union, though there is no easy explanation for this. He also looks clearly at the difficulties that modern readers may have with her portrayal of Aboriginal people in Coonardoo and deals neatly with criticism of Prichard by a local conservative publisher. I had not realised how well researched her books were, and look forwards to re-reading Coonardoo and reading those I've not yet read (two of which, "Intimate Strangers" and "Working Bullocks" have been republished through the Untapped project - https://untapped.org.au/mbm-book-author/katharine-susannah-prichard/) . Prichard's extensive travels, both in Australia and overseas, and relationships with other Australian writers such as Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, are well documented and helps the reader place her within the broader context of 20th century Australian writing (not just Western Australian). I also gained a deeper understanding of Prichard's husband Hugo Throssel who I was only previously aware of as a war hero who was awarded a VC.
On the purely parochial level, and as a Western Australian librarian, I also enjoyed the passing references to local library and archive luminaries like Fred Alexander and Mollie Lukis, as well as the mention of Prichard's friendship with David Helfgott (who briefly was involved in the church I went to as a teenager, will have to re-watch Shine!).
This excellent book should appeal to the general reader as well as to scholars (there is an extensive bibliography and an excellent index). ( )

Having come to the end of Nathan Hobby's superb new biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969), I've come to the conclusion that I would have liked her very much — but I'm not sure that she would have liked me! Despite all the circumstances against her, she was brave in contesting the prevailing political climate, tenacious in pursuing her craft as an author and generous to a fault. But she fell out with longstanding friends who didn't share her political views and I probably would have been one of those.

But I would still have bought KSP's books. Indeed, I still am. Reading the bio prompted me to buy two more, so that in addition to those I've already reviewed, now I've added her last novel Subtle Flame (1967) and her second short story collection Potch and Colour (1944) to my existing Prichard TBR i.e. Working Bullocks (1926), and Intimate Strangers (1939).

The biography hasn't convinced me that I should track down Windlestraws (1916) or Moon of Desire (1941). Windlestraws, KSP's first novel, was published in the wake of The Pioneers (1915) after it won a major prize but if the publishers were hoping to cash in on her success, they were disappointed because it was soon forgotten. Moon of Desire was a potboiler, written when Prichard was short of money and hoping for a Hollywood option. Though the biography recognises some 'Prichardian' elements in it and it had some favourable reviews, she herself thought it was tedious. This is notable because she was not generally hard on her own work. From 1940 onwards she was more likely to ascribe her setbacks to politics. She had confidence in her own writing despite the criticism that came her way.

I mention my purchases here because, for an ordinary reader, the test of any literary biography is: is it good to read even if you're not familiar with the author who's the subject of the bio? And, while it's always a pleasure to see a biographer's coverage of books we know, does the bio work just as well when discussing the ones we haven't read? Does it inspire us to want to read more of the author's work?

Nathan Hobby's masterful biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard does all of that and more. It's in the same league of exceptional literary biographies as Jill Roe's bio of Miles Franklin (2008) David Marr's of Patrick White (1991), Hazel Rowley's of Christina Stead (1993, revised 2007), Karen Lamb's of Thea Astley (2015) and Brenda Niall's of The Boyds (2002). The Red Witch is a fine addition to the cultural capital of the nation, and Melbourne University Press has recognised that by publishing it in its prestige imprint, Miegunyah Press. As it says on their website:

The Miegunyah Press* is a special imprint of Melbourne University Publishing that publishes prestigious books of the highest printing and design quality at affordable prices. Miegunyah Press books are absorbingly original, visually grand and eminently collectable.

The Red Witch is a chronological biography, which begins by contesting some of KSP's childhood memories fictionalised in The Wild Oats of Han (1928) and in her autobiography Child of the Hurricane (1964). It was interesting to read later in the bio that both KSP and her son Ric Throssell lamented the time she spent on that autobiography... she felt compelled to write it in response to a PhD thesis about her work by Cyril Cook.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/04/22/the-red-witch-a-biography-of-katharine-susan... ( )