Richardson, Henry Handel (1870–1946)

Australian novelist. She was the first Australian writer to win a reputation abroad. Her works include The Getting of Wisdom (1910), based on her schooldays and filmed in 1977. She left Australia when only 18.

Richardson was born in Melbourne. In 1888 she went to study piano in Leipzig, Germany, and her first novel, Maurice Guest (1908) is based on these years. The trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, published as Australia Felix (1917), The Way Home (1925), and Ultima Thule (1929), traces the career of a gold-rush migrant from the early 1850s to the mid-1870s and draws heavily on the life of her father.