NewSouth acquires ‘Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower: The letters’

NewSouth Publishing has acquired world rights to Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower: The letters, edited by Brigitta Olubas and Susan Wyndham.

The publisher describes the book as ‘a major contribution to the literary canon’, which ‘unearths a deep and vexed friendship carried out mostly through letters between two of Australia’s greatest writers’.

The correspondence between the two authors, held in archives in Australia and the US, was only released from embargo with the 2020 death of Harrower. Hazzard and Harrower met by letter and their friendship developed through correspondence between Harrower in Sydney and Hazzard in Manhattan, Naples and Capri. ‘The correspondence follows a beautiful arc from a cautious beginning, through mutual writerly respect, to mature affection; and then, following a disastrous visit from Elizabeth to Italy in 1984, a cooling off, distance, some reserve, much resentment,’ NewSouth said.

‘At NewSouth we’re all delighted to be publishing these riveting letters that reveal the inner lives—and complex friendship—of two Australian literary giants,’ said NewSouth executive publisher Elspeth Menzies.

Olubas is professor of English at the University of New South Wales, the author of Shirley Hazzard: A writing life (Virago), and a co-editor of the first collection of essays on the writing of Elizabeth Harrower. Wyndham is a journalist and author of Life in His Hands: the true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist (Picador).

NewSouth will publish Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Harrower: The letters in mid-2024.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions