Getting of Wisdom

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A01=Henry Handel Richardson
A32=Mint Editions
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Australian literature
Author_Henry Handel Richardson
automatic-update
awkwardness
boarding school
Category1=Fiction
Category=FBC
Category=FC
Category=FXB
Category=FY
coming of age
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_classics
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
escape
family ties
insecurity
Language_English
Melbourne
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
propriety
PS=Active
rebellion
softlaunch
Victorian conformity

Product details

  • ISBN 9781513133935
  • Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
  • Publication Date: 31 Mar 2022
  • Publisher: West Margin Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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The Getting of Wisdom (1910) is a novel by Henry Handel Richardson. Based on her experiences at Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College, The Getting of Wisdom is a coming-of-age novel aimed at a young audience. Engaged with such themes as grief, bullying, and peer-pressure, Richardson’s novel is a powerful story of a young girl finding her way in the world. An instant bestseller, the novel has never gone out of print. “Laura went into her own room and locked the door, a thing Mother did not allow. Then she threw herself on the bed and cried. Mother had not understood in the least…” Punished for cutting her own hair without permission, Laura Tweedle Rambotham defies her mother once more. Alone in her room, she begins to think about her mother’s words, letting them sink in until the truth can no longer be denied. In the morning, she leaves for The Ladies’ College, a boarding school far from family and friends—and in Melbourne, no less, a city she has never been to. Scared, nervous, and tired, she drifts off to sleep in her childhood room for the last time. Heartfelt and deeply personal, The Getting of Wisdom is a powerful coming-of-age story from one of Australia’s best-loved writers. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henry Handel Richardson The Getting of Wisdom is a classic of Australian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Henry Handel Richardson (1870-1946) was the pen name of Australian novelist Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson. Born in East Melbourne, she was raised in a series of towns across Victoria with her mother and siblings following her father’s death. At thirteen, she left Maldon—where her mother worked as the local postmistress—to attend Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne. Her time there would inspire her bestselling coming-of-age novel The Getting of Wisdom (1910). Upon graduating in 1888, Richardson moved with her family to Germany to study music at the Leipzig Conservatorium. In 1894, she married John George Robertson, whom she met in Leipzig while he was studying German literature. They moved to London in 1903, where Richardson would publish Maurice Guest (1908), her debut novel. In 1912, Richardson returned to Australia to begin researching for her critically acclaimed trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, which consists of the novels Australia Felix (1917), The Way Home (1925), and Ultima Thule (1929). Partly based on her own family’s history, the trilogy earned praise from such figures as Sinclair Lewis for its startling depictions of a man’s decline due to mental illness and the lengths to which his wife must go to care for their young family.

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