Stead, Christina Ellen (1902–1983)

Australian writer. She lived in Europe and the USA 1928–68.

An exploratory, psychological writer, imaginatively innovative in form and style, she disclosed elements of the irrational, even the grotesque, in the subconscious of her characters. Her novels include The Man Who Loved Children (1940), Dark Places of the Heart (1966) (published as Cotter's England in the UK), and I'm Dying Laughing (1986).