Bluestocking in Patagonia
Bluestocking in Patagonia
Mary Gilmore’s Quest for Love and Utopia at the World’s End
(First published Profile Books UK, 2003-04; Untapped ebook ISBN 9781922730213; 2022 Booktopia print edition ISBN 9781761280689)
(First published Profile Books UK, 2003-04; Untapped ebook ISBN 9781922730213; 2022 Booktopia print edition ISBN 9781761280689)
Publisher’s cover note:
‘In a remarkable blend of biography and travel writing, Anne Whitehead follows in the footsteps of the young Australian poet Mary Gilmore, from the former socialist colonies of Paraguay to the sheep estancias of southern Argentina and brings to life Mary’s testing time in one of the harshest places on earth – a coming of age and a love story.’
Shortlisted for 2005 Australian Magarey Medal for Biography
Anne Whitehead brilliantly counterpoints her own wanderings with Mary's in an Argentina which then, as in 2002, was facing economic and social crisis, and which is tellingly described in both accounts. After six years in South America, the Gilmores sailed home. Poet and national icon, Mary Gilmore's portrait now graces the Australian $10 note. Her time in Argentina was both a coming of age and a most unusual love story. '
Cover note by Thomas Keneally:
‘This splendid and fascinating book is brilliantly balanced as part memoir, part well-researched recreation of the experiences of the young Mary Gilmore as inamorata of Henry Lawson, as radical, wife, Paraguayan and Patagonian settler, and as abidingly Australian soul.’
Bluestocking in Patagonia