Born in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Ethel Florence Lindesay, the writer known as Henry Handel Richardson, left her native country at the age of seventeen, returning only for one brief visit to refresh her memory while working on her Richard Mahony chronicle. She is, however, probably better known in Australia than in England, where she lived, worked, and published her writings for most of her life. Although readers have admired her sensitive and closely autobiographical account of growing up in Melbourne, The Getting of Wisdom (1910), her poignant stories about youth and adolescence, and two other novels, her reputation largely rests on her masterpiece, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, published in three separate volumes from 1917 to 1929 before finally being brought together in 1929. This trilogy is a grimly exhaustive documentation of the life of a medical practitioner on the gold fields of Ballarat, Victoria, and later in Melbourne and of...