Barbara Hanrahan

'It is a struggle ... to be me,' wrote Barbara Hanrahan, '... to accept ME, and my spiritual purpose.' This authoritative biography illuminates the life of a great Australian writer and artist. The story starts with Barbara Hanrahan's childhood in Adelaide, travels with her to 'swinging London' of the 1960s, and recounts her remarkable achievements in Britain and Australia in the following decades. Like the artists she most admired - among them, William Blake, Frida Kahlo and D.H. Lawrence - Barbara Hanrahan dedicated herself uncompromisingly to the life of the mind and spirit, producing a body of work that remains challenging and rewarding. Annette Stewart has drawn on a wealth of unpublished material, including the artist's letters, photographs, prints and diaries, as well as interviews with her friends and her partner, the sculptor Jo Steele. Barbara Hanrahan is beautifully illustrated with a number of Hanrahan's artworks, some of which have not been published before, and many photographs from her life.

Reprint of the highly acclaimed author's first novel, originally published in 1973. Fact and fantasy are combined to produce a poignant portrayal of growing up in Adelaide suburbia. The author wrote 13 novels, including TMichael and Me and the Sun', published posthumously in 1992.

Women are rarely if ever mentioned in commentaries upon Australian Christianity and spirituality. Only exceptional women are recognized as authorities on religious matters. Why is this so? Does it matter? Don't people from the same religious tradition share similar experiences of the divine, regardless of their gender? Rewriting God asks whether women have been writing about the divine and whether their insights are different from those contained in malestream accounts of Australian Christianity and spirituality. An analysis of the writings of popular theologians and religious commentators over the last twenty years suggests that the most popular form of spirituality among Australian theologians is Desert Spirituality. An analysis of women's autobiographical writings, however, suggests that the desert is irrelevant to many women's spiritual experiences. This book, through a close investigation of the fictions of Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley and Barbara Hanrahan, attempts to posit alternative forms of women's spirituality and to signal ways in which this spirituality is already being expressed. From the evidence gathered here, it becomes obvious that traditional expressions of Australian Christianity and spirituality are gender-specific and that they have functioned to deny women's religious experiences and to silence their claims to equality in the sight and service of the divine. It becomes obvious, too, that women have been developing their own forms of religious expression and that these may be expected to supplant gradually withering images of Desert Spirituality. Whether this new imagery will strengthen Australian Christianity or whether it merely marks a decline in the authority of Christianity remains a moot point.

Henry Lawson - Miles Franklin - Henry Handel Richardson - Kenneth Slessor - Eleanor Dark - Christina Stead - Kylie Tennant - Patrick White - Thomas Keneally - Mem Fox.

Writer and artist Barbara Hanrahan kept diaries from her late teens to her untimely death at the age of fifty-two. They chronicle her turbulent personal development and her passionate engagement with literature and art.

Women are rarely if ever mentioned in commentaries upon Australian Christianity and spirituality. Only exceptional women are recognized as authorities on religious matters. Why is this so? Does it matter? Don't people from the same religious tradition share similar experiences of the divine, regardless of their gender?Rewriting Godasks whether women have been writing about the divine and whether their insights are different from those contained in malestream accounts of Australian Christianity and spirituality. An analysis of the writings of popular theologians and religious commentators over the last twenty years suggests that the most popular form of spirituality among Australian theologians is Desert Spirituality. An analysis of women's autobiographical writings, however, suggests that the desert is irrelevant to many women's spiritual experiences. This book, through a close investigation of the fictions of Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley and Barbara Hanrahan, attempts to posit alternative forms of women's spirituality and to signal ways in which this spirituality is already being expressed.From the evidence gathered here, it becomes obvious that traditional expressions of Australian Christianity and spirituality are gender-specific and that they have functioned to deny women's religious experiences and to silence their claims to equality in the sight and service of the divine. It becomes obvious, too, that women have been developing their own forms of religious expression and that these may be expected to supplant gradually withering images of Desert Spirituality. Whether this new imagery will strengthen Australian Christianity or whether it merely marks a decline in the authority of Christianity remains a moot point.

A young girl growing up in Australia creates her own secret world through her love for art