AustLit

Hope argues that Brennan invented a private language that is difficult to decipher, but stresses that symbolist ideas are not just literary talk--they are the essentially human experience. Hope acknowledges the limitations of Brennan's verse and defends the poet's Platonic position, but argues that Poems offers modern readers more than detractors have claimed.

'A landmark article in two key issues that confront critical opinion since Richardson's death: her use of autobiography and her style. Hope asserts that Maurice Guest is a novel of musical genius written under the influence of the Nietzschean superman, despite its often moody prose and its clear writing out of her frustrated musical talent. While this article was written in 1955, Hope reaffirms this position by interview on April 10, 1974, at Canberra; he is attacked by Green in Ulysses Bound' (William D. Elliott, Henry Handel Richardson 165).