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Dearest Munx

The Letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake

Edited by Margaret Harris

From the time Christina Stead, a shy Australian girl in London, met William J. Blake, a cosmopolitan American, theirs was one of the great love stories.

Opinion

'Editor Margaret Harris likens the experience of reading the letters to walking into an ongoing conversation. Because of Harris' superb editing, it is well worthwhile to stay and listen.'- Brenda Niall, The Age

'. . . a valuable resource for reading and rereading Stead's magnificent fiction.'-Australian Book Review

About this Title

'As Dearest Munx . . . makes clear, Stead and Blake shared a verbal exuberance and love of languages, a sense of humour and a boundless interest in the world.'-Times Literary Supplement

'Editor Margaret Harris likens the experience of reading the letters to walking into an ongoing conversation. Because of Harris' superb editing, it is well worthwhile to stay and listen.'- Brenda Niall, The Age

'To morrow I will write you a human letter, lovely and worthy of you and my love for you
Your adoring husband, Munx.'

From the time Christina Stead, a shy Australian girl in London, met William J. Blake, a cosmopolitan American, theirs was one of the great love stories. Dearest Munx presents the extraordinary correspondence that records their lives together from 1928 until Blake's death in 1968. The letters take us from London and Paris to New York and Hollywood and back to post-war Europe, mingling domestic detail and world events, hopes and disappointments.

This exceptional collection gives a rare glimpse into the life and thoughts of one of Australia's most renowned novelists. Especially revealing is the intensity of Christina Stead's relationship with her life partner, the paradoxical Marxist banker and author. Although less well known, William J. Blake was the dominant character in Christina's story-a lover, mentor and literary confidante. Striking insights into Stead's fiction also emerge from these energetic, witty and moving letters.

Nearly 300 letters are published here for the first time. Margaret Harris skilfully guides the reader through their story, teasing out the relationship between fact and fiction, literature and life. Dearest Munx is simultaneously an unusual love story, an intriguing insight into the writerly mind and a rich and valuable contribution to Stead's literary legacy.

About the Author

Margaret Harris is Professor in English Literature at the University of Sydney, and Christina Stead's literary executor. She has published extensively on Victorian literature, her principal area of expertise, and on Australian fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Her research has frequently taken her into studies of authors' unpublished writings, and she has published several books in this area, including The Notebooks of George Meredith, with Gillian Beer (1983), and The Journals of George Eliot, with Judith Johnston (1998).

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978-0-522-85173-1