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Notes
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Dedication: For our children.
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Epigraph: The Styx is only rumoured to be a dark and terrifying river. Who has explored it? If you threw in a line, mightn't you pull out a golden fish?
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
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Ruth Park Brings Sydney’s Past to Life More Than Any Other Writer
2019
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 5 March 2019;P'ark’s bold, glittering descriptions and her vigorously alive characters are forever lodged in my consciousness.'
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A Working Writer : Ruth Park
2018
single work
biography
— Appears in: A Free Flame : Australian Women Writers and Vocation in the Twentieth Century 2018;'The question of vocation takes centre stage in the two volumes of Ruth Park's autobiography, A Fence Around the Cuckoo and Fishing in the Styx. From earliest childhood, Park writes, she knew she would be a writer: 'It had been as if a voice spoke from a burning bush.' Her depiction of her vocation to the literary life contains all the classic elements of the artist's call: it came out of nowhere, it was a summons that could not be set aside or ignored, and it shaped her destiny. Normally, however, this call takes shape in a specific cultural context: the little girl who longs to be a writer begins her life as a passionate reader surrounded by books, and as part of a family or society that holds writers (in the abstract, at least) in high esteem. Park's context was very different. According to A Fence Around the Cuckoo, for the first ten or so years of her life, she had no books, and no access to books. In the early 1920s, her father was part of a work gang that travelled around remote parts of the North Island of New Zealand building roads and bridges, and until she was six years old her home was a tent. Neither her father nor her seamstress mother owned any books. Even when the family settled in the tiny town of it Kuiti, where Ruth would go to school, books were in short supply. As Park Writes in Fence, 'No one I knee. had any books.' The irresolvable problem of Poverty was compounded in the wider community by a moral distrust of all that books stood for. As Park explains, 'It was thought that reading poked your eyes out and kept you from doing wholesome things.' (Introduction)
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Marion Halligan Writes on Ruth Park's Novels : 'Some Sorcery in the Subconscious'
1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Ruth Park : A Celebration 1996; (p. 20-22) -
'The Craft So Long to Learn': Ruth Park's Story of Ruth Park
1996
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 17 no. 3 1996; (p. 244-253) -
Author Willing to Risk Being Honest
1994
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 1 May 1994; (p. 24)
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Untitled
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 7 no. 4 1993; (p. 3)
— Review of Fishing in the Styx 1993 single work autobiography -
Untitled
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Review , December 1993 and January vol. 8 no. 9 1994; (p. 24)
— Review of The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993 anthology criticism biography ; Fishing in the Styx 1993 single work autobiography -
Fishing in Ambiguous Waters of Memory
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Social Alternatives , April vol. 13 no. 1 1994; (p. 56-57)
— Review of Murawina : Australian Women of High Achievement 1993 anthology autobiography ; The Georges' Wife 1993 single work novel ; Fishing in the Styx 1993 single work autobiography ; The Gripping Beast 1993 single work novel -
A Lifetime Chasing after Deadlines
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 6 November 1993; (p. C11)
— Review of Fishing in the Styx 1993 single work autobiography -
Always on Guard
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 156 1993; (p. 20)
— Review of Fishing in the Styx 1993 single work autobiography -
'The Craft So Long to Learn': Ruth Park's Story of Ruth Park
1996
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 17 no. 3 1996; (p. 244-253) -
Author Willing to Risk Being Honest
1994
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 1 May 1994; (p. 24) -
Ruth Park: A Novel Lifetime
1994
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 4 May 1994; (p. 9) -
Ruth Park
Kate Veitch
(interviewer),
1993
single work
interview
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 156 1993; (p. 21-22) -
The Voice that Opens Windows
1993
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 30 October 1993; (p. 9A)
Awards
- 1994 winner 3M Talking Book of the Year Award
- The Harp in the South 1947 single work novel
- The Shiralee 1955 single work novel
- Norfolk Island, Australian External Territories,