The End of a Childhood - Richardson, Henry Handel
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Cuffy Mahony is a young boy in country Victoria in the late nineteenth century. He lost his father just under a year ago, and his mother is feeling the heat a little, both in looking after him and his little sister Luce, and in maintaining her job as the village postmistress. But they manage as best they can, with the help of their live-in maid Bowey. Mary Mahony struggles proudly to keep up the standards set when her husband Richard was alive. He had been in his last years a difficult man, and in some senses she is aware of a feeling of newfound freedom. But she does worry about her children…mehr

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Produktbeschreibung
Cuffy Mahony is a young boy in country Victoria in the late nineteenth century. He lost his father just under a year ago, and his mother is feeling the heat a little, both in looking after him and his little sister Luce, and in maintaining her job as the village postmistress. But they manage as best they can, with the help of their live-in maid Bowey. Mary Mahony struggles proudly to keep up the standards set when her husband Richard was alive. He had been in his last years a difficult man, and in some senses she is aware of a feeling of newfound freedom. But she does worry about her children and what will become of them on her small wage. She finally decides that the time has come for her to take leave and find a good school with a scholarship for Cuffy in Melbourne. Her house-proudness means that the place must be spruced up, so that her temporary replacement won't get a poor impression. With intense industry she sets about a major tidy and painting job. One day, up a ladder, she reaches over a little too far, and comes crashing down heavily onto the floor. This minor disaster starts a chain of events that will alter irredeemably all their lives. With extraordinarily lucid and forceful prose, Henry Handel Richardson charts the inner worlds of mother and son as they attempt to overcome their fears and face life without becoming too cowed by doubt. The End of a Childhood is both a pendant piece to Richardson's great trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, and readable separately as a delicate, heartbreaking and beautiful portrait of a crucial nexus in the life of a family.
Autorenporträt
'Henry Handel Richardson' was the pen-name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, who was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1870. Her father was a medical graduate of Edinburgh University, and her mother was the daughter of a Leicester solicitor; they married after migrating to Australia during the Victorian goldrushes. After her father's death in 1879, her mother worked as a postmistress in country towns, but later she was able to take Ethel and her sister Lilian to Europe, to study music at Leipzig. Ethel, who became a skilled pianist, married John George Robertson, a science graduate turned philologist. Robertson was appointed Professor of German and Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at London University in 1903, where he became one of the foremost scholars of his day. By this time Ethel had begun to write, having given up all thought of a musical career. Her first novel, Maurice Guest, was published in 1908 and had a number of imitators. Her second, The Getting of Wisdom, published in 1910 was described by H. G. Wells as the best school story he knew. Her most important work was The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, published in three volumes, comprising Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule, from 1917 to 1929.