Shirley Hazzard
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n author of fiction and nonfiction. She was born in Australia, but holds citizenship in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Her 1970 novel The Bay of Noon
The Bay of Noon
The Bay of Noon is a novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard, published in 1970. It was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.-Synopsis:A young Englishwoman, Jenny, is working in Naples some years after WW2...
was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize
Lost Man Booker Prize
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970, described by The New York Times as "an act of literary reparation"...
in 2010.
Life
Hazzard was born in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and attended Queenwood School for Girls
Queenwood School for Girls
Queenwood School for Girls is an independent, non-denominational, Christian day school, located in the suburb of Mosman, on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....
in Mosman
Mosman, New South Wales
Mosman is a suburb on the Lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Mosman is located 8 kilometres north-east of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the Municipality of Mosman.-Localities:In February...
, but left in 1947 to travel through Southeast Asia with her parents. Her first landing was Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
. Her diplomat father took her to Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, and then she was "brutally removed by destiny" to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
where her father was Australian Trade Commissioner. Hazzard says of her experience of the East that "I began to feel that people could enjoy life, should enjoy life".
Hazzard's early life "was a carbon copy of Helen Driscoll's" (the heroine of The Great Fire
The Great Fire (novel)
The Great Fire is the 2003 National Book Award winning novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard. It also won a 2004 Miles Franklin literary award.-Overview:The New Yorker wrote of the novel:Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating...
). Helen and her brother, the dying Benedict, are described as "wonderfully well-read, a poetic pair who live in literature." Poetry, she says, has always been the centre of her life.
She travelled to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in 1956, and worked for a year in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
.
In 1963, Hazzard married the writer Francis Steegmuller, who died in 1994. As of 2006, she lives in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, frequently travelling to her Italian residence in Capri
Capri
Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...
.
Career
Hazzard is best known as the author of four novels and two collections of short fiction, a body of fiction as distinguished as it is small. Her first book, the story collection Cliffs of Fall, was published in 1963. In 1977 her short story "A Long Story Short", originally published in The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
on 26 July 1976, received an O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
.
The Transit of Venus, her third novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, won the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her next novel, The Great Fire
The Great Fire (novel)
The Great Fire is the 2003 National Book Award winning novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard. It also won a 2004 Miles Franklin literary award.-Overview:The New Yorker wrote of the novel:Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating...
, which took her twenty years to write, garnered the 2003 National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, the 2004 Miles Franklin Award
Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...
, and the 2005 William Dean Howells Medal. It was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
Orange Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...
, longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
. Her second novel, The Bay of Noon
The Bay of Noon
The Bay of Noon is a novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard, published in 1970. It was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.-Synopsis:A young Englishwoman, Jenny, is working in Naples some years after WW2...
, was nominated for the Lost Man Booker Prize
Lost Man Booker Prize
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970, described by The New York Times as "an act of literary reparation"...
.
In addition to her fiction, Hazzard has written two books critical of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
—Defeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990)—and an account of her friendship with Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
, Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000). Her most recent work of nonfiction, The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008) is a collection of Hazzard’s writings on Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Italy, co-authored by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller.
In 1984 the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
invited Hazzard to give the Boyer Lectures
Boyer Lectures
The Boyer Lectures began in 1959 as the ABC Lectures. They were renamed in 1961 after Richard Boyer , the ABC board chairman who had first suggested the lectures...
, a series of radio talks delivered each year by a prominent Australian. The talks were published the following year under the title Coming of Age in Australia.
Novels
- The Evening of the Holiday (1966)
- The Bay of NoonThe Bay of NoonThe Bay of Noon is a novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard, published in 1970. It was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.-Synopsis:A young Englishwoman, Jenny, is working in Naples some years after WW2...
(1970) shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker PrizeLost Man Booker PrizeThe Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970, described by The New York Times as "an act of literary reparation"... - The Transit of Venus (1980)
- The Great FireThe Great Fire (novel)The Great Fire is the 2003 National Book Award winning novel by the Australian author Shirley Hazzard. It also won a 2004 Miles Franklin literary award.-Overview:The New Yorker wrote of the novel:Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating...
(2003)
Short story collections
- Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories (1963)
- People in Glass Houses (1967)
Non-fiction
- Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-destruction of the United Nations (1973)
- Coming of Age in Australia (1985)
- Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (1990)
- Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000)
- The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008) (with Francis Steegmuller)
External links
- Shirley Hazzard's profile in the British CouncilBritish CouncilThe British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
's database of contemporary writers in the UK and British Commonwealth. - Shirley Hazzard's profile at Virago
- Judith Shulevitz's review of The Great Fire (2003) at Slate.com
- Charles Taylor's review of The Great Fire (2003) at Salon.com
- Defining Australia: History and Identity The sixth program in special series by ABC Radio National which was broadcast on 6 April 2003 and based on an anthology of previous Boyer Lectures. A transcript of the broadcast, which features a brief excerpt from Hazzard's 1984 Boyer Lectures, Coming of Age in Australia, is available.
- Shirley Hazzard with Sally Loane A ten minute radio interview with Sally Loane for 702 ABC Sydney broadcast on 16 June 2005. Audio is in RealMedia format, which requires RealPlayer.
- Shirley Hazzard on the Leonard Lopate Show An eighteen minute radio interview with Leonard Lopate for WNYC, New York Public Radio, broadcast on 17 November 2003.
- "Our Man on Capri." A letter from Yvonne Cloetta, Graham GreeneGraham GreeneHenry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's last companion, to The New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
in response to David LodgeDavid Lodge (author)David John Lodge CBE, is an English author.In his novels, Lodge often satirises academia in general and the humanities in particular. He was brought up Catholic and has described himself as an "agnostic Catholic". Many of his characters are Catholic and their Catholicism is a major theme...
's review of Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000) and Shirley Hazzard's reply in NYRB, Vol. 47, No. 19 (30 November 2000). - Radio interview on Entitled OpinionsEntitled OpinionsEntitled Opinions is a literary talk show hosted by Robert P. Harrison, a professor of French and Italian at Stanford University. The show is also available as a podcast. Topics range broadly on issues related to literature, ideas, and lived experience...
with Robert P. HarrisonRobert P. HarrisonRobert P. Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Chair of Italian Literature at Stanford University.He was born in Izmir, Turkey, and raised in Rome. He is the host of the podcast Entitled Opinions . He plays lead guitar for the cerebral rock band Glass Wave.- External links :* * *... - Geoff DyerGeoff DyerGeoff Dyer is a British author and novelist. He is also a journalist who writes about a wide range of topics. His published work includes four novels and several books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards...
, Written in the Stars, New Statesman, 28 June 2004. Geoff Dyer's review of The Transit of Venus - Brigitta Olubas 'Shirley Hazzard's Australia: Belated Reading and Cultural Mobility' Common Readers and Cultural Critics conference issue JASAL 2010.