Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.
16 Facts About Christina Stead
2.
Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a member of the Communist Party.
3.
Christina Stead spent much of her life outside Australia, although she returned before her death.
4.
Christina Stead's father was the marine biologist and pioneer conservationist David George Stead.
5.
Christina Stead was born in the Sydney suburb of Rockdale.
6.
Christina Stead later moved with her family to the suburb of Watsons Bay in 1911.
7.
Christina Stead was the only child of her father's first marriage, and had five half-siblings from his second marriage.
8.
Christina Stead married a third time, to Thistle Yolette Harris, the Australian botanist, educator, author, and conservationist.
9.
Christina Stead then left Australia in 1928, and worked in a Parisian bank from 1930 to 1935.
10.
Christina Stead wrote 12 novels and several volumes of short stories in her lifetime.
11.
Christina Stead taught "Workshop in the Novel" at New York University in 1943 and 1944, and worked as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1940s, contributing to the Madame Curie biopic and the John Ford and John Wayne war movie, They Were Expendable.
12.
Christina Stead set her only British novel, Cotters' England, partly in Gateshead.
13.
Christina Stead was in Newcastle upon Tyne in the summer of 1949, accompanied by her friend Anne Dooley, a local woman, who was the model for Nellie Cotter, the extraordinary heroine of the book.
14.
Christina Stead's letters indicate that she had taken on Tyneside speech and become deeply concerned with the people around her.
15.
Christina Stead died in hospital at Balmain, Sydney, in 1983, aged 80.
16.
Christina Stead paused to light another cigarette, choking, blowing a cloud to hide her face; and when she could, continued in a gentle voice:.