Barbara Hanrahan

Elaine Stuart Lindsay (Australian Catholic University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 9.1.1: Australian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Susan Kossew (Monash University)

Dates

Born 6 Sep 1939
Died 1 Dec 1991
Activity 1973-1991

Places

Born in Australia
Active in Australia

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Hanrahan's Works

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Barbara Hanrahan is a singular voice in Australian fiction. She stood apart from those of her contemporaries who situated themselves within an Australian literary tradition and documented the times in which they lived. She took her inspiration from the Elizabethan poets, William Blake, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, William Blake, and, later, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner. Her Gothic or fantastic fictions were set in Victorian London or in New Zealand and South Australia between 1890 and the 1930s, while her biographical fictions gave voice to working-class women and men born early in the twentieth century, and her autobiographical fictions did not extend beyond 1972. More than any other Australian writer she memorialised suburban life,…

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1787 words

Citation: Lindsay, Elaine Stuart. "Barbara Hanrahan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1972, accessed 25 November 2024.]