Biography
Book Details

Portrait of a Friendship

The Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright 1950-2000

Bryony Cosgrove (ed.)

A fascinating insider's view of Australia's cultural life from two central figures, and a profoundly moving and inspiring portrait of a friendship.

Opinion

In this electronic age of e-mail and text message, will such literary morsels ever again be offered? We think not. Here is a moving and inspiring portrait of a true friendship between two of Australia’s finest wordsmiths.

-- Martin Stevenson, Launceston Examiner, 7/4/07

Portrait of a Friendship is a small miracle: a sequence of letters written over half a century, in which both voices are heard . . . The Blackman-Wright volume won’t be the last of its kind, but it does look like one of an endangered species, to be treasured the more for that reason.

-- Brenda Niall, The Age, 7/4/07

About this Title

'The funny bits are the great leavening of life and what makes us friends.'
Barbara Blackman, 23 February 1994

Love, marriage, births, deaths, poetry, art, politics, gardens, pets and philosophy: the letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright in Portrait of a Friendship range over all of these topics and more with the wit and vitality of writers who relished the play and beauty of words.

In the late 1940s, poet Judith Wright and her partner, philosopher Jack McKinney, read some of their work at a meeting of writers in Brisbane. In the audience was young Barbara Patterson, who would, in a few years, marry the painter Charles Blackman. From this meeting grew a firm friendship, and the letters that nurtured it over half a century have created a fascinating and very personal record of Australian literary and artistic life.

Above all, it is a profoundly moving and inspiring portrait of a friendship.

'All my true friendships are long-distance and full of gaps. But somehow they persist. . .'
Judith Wright, 5 June 1969

Barbara Blackman is an essayist, journalist, librettist and oral historian. She was married to the painter Charles Blackman for thirty years.

Judith Wright was one of Australia's best known writers, publishing poetry, short stories, children's fiction, literary criticism and family memoirs. She was also a dedicated environmentalist and championed the rights of Aboriginal people.

About the Author

Bryony Cosgrove has worked as an editor, publisher and university lecturer for many years, specialising in fiction, biography and autobiography. After commissioning Barbara Blackman's 1997 memoir Glass After Glass, she was asked by Barbara to edit and annotate the Blackman-Wright correspondence.

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978-0-522-85355-1