Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson) is one of the most important novelists Australia has produced, though her achievements cannot be measured in terms of quantity. Maurice Guest, The Getting of Wisdom, the three books of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, The Young Cosima, and some short stories make up her published fiction. She has been criticised as a mere chronicler of facts. On the contrary, as this book shows, she was an imaginative writer who, working within the European literary tradition, created an autonomous world.