 First edition | |
| Author | Ruth Park |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Angus and Robertson |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 220 pp |
| Preceded by | Poor Man's Orange |
| Followed by | A Power of Roses |
The Witch's Thorn (1951) is a novel by Australian author Ruth Park. [1]
The novel is set in the fictional New Zealand North Island town of Te Kana. After the disappearance of her consumptive mother and the death of her beloved grandamother, Bethell Jury is adopted by her Aunt Amy whose husband is the local grocer and whose son is an unpleasant lout.
The initial press reaction to this novel was not good: The Advertiser (Adelaide) found "There is wonderful material in this for a colorful novel of New Zealand life, but Ruth Park resolutely sticks to the horror and the sordidness whose sensational exploitation marred her Sydney novels"; [2] The Examiner (Launceston) was blunt in stating that " it is inspired by cruelty, disease, despair, blasphemy and death"; [3] and The Sydney Morning Herald noted that The New York Times called it "unplotted and nervously episodic". [4]
Possibly in a sort of response to these views, Kirkus Reviews noted: "There's an unblinking realization of the rough and tumble of bare subsistence, of the good in the bad and the worst in the best of us that gives this a raw insistence which may repel or attract." [5]
Dedication: For Charles Hutchinson: unforgotten. [1]
Eleanor Alice Hibbert was an English writer of historical romances. She was a prolific writer who published several books a year in different literary genres, each genre under a different pen name: Jean Plaidy for fictionalized history of European royalty and the three volumes of her history of the Spanish Inquisition, Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga. She also wrote light romances, crime novels, murder mysteries and thrillers under pseudonyms Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate.
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The Harp in the South is the debut novel by New Zealand-born Australian author Ruth Park. Published in 1948, it portrays the life of a Catholic Irish Australian family living in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, which was at that time an inner city slum.
Rosina Ruth Lucia Park AM was a New Zealand–born Australian author. Her best known works are the novels The Harp in the South (1948) and Playing Beatie Bow (1980), and the children's radio serial The Muddle-Headed Wombat (1951–1970), which also spawned a book series (1962–1982).
D'Arcy Francis Niland was an Australian farm labourer, novelist and short story writer. In 1955 he wrote The Shiralee, which gained international recognition in its depictions of the experiences of a swagman and his four-year-old daughter. It was made into a 1957 film, starring Peter Finch, and a 1987 TV mini-series, starring Bryan Brown. Niland married fellow writer Ruth Park (1917–2010) on 11 May 1942 and the couple had five children: Anne, Rory, Patrick and twin daughters, Kilmeny (1950–2009) and Deborah (1950–present). Niland died on 29 March 1967 of a myocardial infarction, aged 49.
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