 First edition | |
| Author | Christina Stead |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Publisher | Harcourt Brace |
Publication date | 1944 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 491pp |
| Preceded by | The Man Who Loved Children |
| Followed by | Letty Fox: Her Luck |
For Love Alone (1944) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. [1]
Set in Sydney and London in the 1930s, the novel tells the story of Teresa Hawkins and her search for the ideal of love. She follows the unworthy Jonathan Crow to London and discovers Crow's corruption and egoistic shallowness. Taken under the wing of an older man, James Quick, she discovers a renewed sense of love and compassion.
A reviewer in The Advertiser (Adelaide) was not impressed with the novel at all: "This is a sadly disappointing fact, for Christina Stead for long has been outstanding among Australian writers, and her novels have been unusually brilliant books. In this novel, though, she has attempted a realistic subject and approach, and both subject and approach are quite unsuited to her talents. Her supposed realism, in contrast to her previous fantasy, is unselective and generally without significance. It makes the characters ridiculous figures whose actions appear meaningless and purposeless." [2]
In reviewing the novel when it was re-issued in 1970, W.S. Ramson compared it to Martin Boyd's novel Lucinda Brayford , also re-issued at that time: "For Love Alone is as different in style as it is possible to be, feminine, intuitive, almost claustrophobic in its intensity and introspectiveness, masterful rather than masterly in its assurance. Miss Stead worries at her subject examining and analysing, leeching her material dry, probing through a world which bends before the weight of her examination, and becomes strained and distorted into a new and tightly controlled perspective." [3]
The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1986. The adaptation was written and directed by Stephen Wallace, and featured Helen Buday, Sam Neill, and Hugo Weaving. [4]
Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a member of the Communist Party. She spent much of her life outside Australia, although she returned before her death.
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The Man Who Loved Children is a 1940 novel by Australian writer Christina Stead. It was not until a reissue edition in 1965, with an introduction by poet Randall Jarrell, that it found widespread critical acclaim and popularity. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The novel has been championed by novelists Robert Stone, Jonathan Franzen and Angela Carter. Carter believed Stead's other novels Cotters England; A Little Tea, A Little Chat; and For Love Alone to be as good, if not better than The Man Who Loved Children.
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Letty Fox: Her Luck is Australian-born author Christina Stead’s sixth novel. It is a tribute to the drama of the urban environment and its role in socializing its occupants. Published in 1946, Stead wrote the lengthy Letty Fox after living in New York City for seven years. The cosmopolitan setting serves well as the theater in which Stead develops her characters through their adventures with numerous careers, love affairs, familial obligations, and sensitivities to reputation. To this end, Letty Fox has been described as “a modern picaresque novel and psychological novel at the same time.”
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The Beauties and Furies (1936) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead.
House of All Nations (1938) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead.
A Little Tea, a Little Chat (1948) is a novel by Australian writer Christina Stead.
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