Wild Weeds and Windflowers: The life and letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard

(Paperback)

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In this moving biography, Ric Throssell, who was himself an accomplished writer, brings to life the story of his mother Katharine Susannah Prichard, drawing on his close personal relationship and his memories of her lifetime.

Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969) was one of Australia's most distinguished writers of the first half of the twentieth century, as well as one of its most politically engaged. A foundation member of the Western Australian branch of the Communist Party, she was also a fervent feminist, and her writing was informed by a broad-reaching socialism.

Prichard published many major novels, including Working Bullocks (1926), lauded on publication as the first properly Australian modern novel, and Coonardoo (1929), which attracted some hostile criticism for its portrait of a loving sexual relationship between a young Aboriginal woman and a white man.

As a public figure Prichard won acclaim, but she also suffered public abuse. She was an intensely private woman who requested that all her personal papers and letters be destroyed upon her death. This is the authoritative and intimate account of her life.

Author Bio

Ric Throssell, the son of Gallipoli Victoria Cross winner Hugo Throssell and the acclaimed writer and pioneer Communist, Katharine Susannah Prichard, was himself a writer and playwright. Born at Greenmount, Western Australia, in 1922, his father's suicide in the face of mounting debts blighted his early life. It also came to be dominated by his mother's commitment to the causes of socialism and feminism.

For forty years Ric Throssell fought a battle to climb through the ranks of the Department of Foreign Affairs at home and abroad, unaware that he was under surveillance by the Australian security services.

A committed anti-nuclear campaigner since World War II, he presented his father's Victoria Cross to People for Nuclear Disarmament in 1984.