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Christina Stead

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Author

The Resume

    (July 17, 1902-March 31, 1983)
    Born in Rockdale, New South Wales, Australia
    Best known for the novel 'The Man Who Loved Children' (1940)
    Also wrote the novels 'Seven Poor Men of Sydney' (1934), 'House of All Nations' (1938), 'Letty Fox: Her Luck' (1946), 'The People with the Dogs' (1952), 'Dark Places of the Heart' (1966), 'The Little Hotel' (1973), and 'Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife)' (1976)
    Wrote 'The Salzburg Tales' (1934) and 'The Puzzleheaded Girl: Four Novellas' (1965)
    Contributed to the screenplays for 'Madame Curie' (1943) and 'They Were Expendable' (1945)

Why she might be annoying:

    She became a teacher, realized she was not suited for the profession, and had a nervous breakdown.
    She was a lifelong Marxist who defended Stalin well after most of her contemporaries had wised up.
    A publisher said, 'Christina Stead is a writer who makes absolutely no concession to the reader.'
    When her publisher suggested she write more like John Steinbeck, she snapped, 'That brainless mass of monosyllables!'
    She left Australia for four decades, returning only after she had been denied the Britannica-Australia Prize on the grounds that she had 'ceased to be an Australian.'
    When Patrick White -- who had been helping her financially with cash gifts while disguising his charity by telling her the money came from literary prizes she had won -- invited her to lunch, she showed up with a bag of empty bottles that she asked White to put in his trash bin and spent the meal boasting about her self-sufficiency.

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her father and stepmother were so emotionally distant that the household servants suspected she was an orphaned relative the couple had been obligated to take in.
    Her father called her 'a lazy fat lump.'
    She spent a dozen years 'in perpetual sexual agony' after falling in love with Keith Duncan, who would lead her on then back out before consummating their relationship.
    She then fell for William Blech (later Blake), who promised to marry her as soon as his wife assented to a divorce -- which took 23 years.
    The New Yorker called her 'the most extraordinary woman novelist produced by the English-speaking race since Virginia Woolf' (1953)

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 75.00% Annoying