Shirley Hazzard

{{short description|Australian-born American novelist and short story writer (1931-2016)}}

{{Infobox writer

| name = Shirley Hazzard

| image = Shirley hazzard australian writer mercantile library for fiction benefit awards dinner october 29 2007 photo by christopher peterson.jpg

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption = Shirley Hazzard at a benefit awards dinner 29 October 2007

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1931|1|30|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Sydney, Australia

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2016|12|12|1931|1|30|df=yes}}

| death_place = Manhattan, New York City

| resting_place =

| occupation =

| nationality = Australian

| notableworks = The Bay of Noon
The Transit of Venus
The Great Fire

| spouse = Francis Steegmuller (1963–1994; his death)

| awards = O. Henry Award
National Book Award
Miles Franklin Award
William Dean Howells Medal
National Book Critics Circle Award

}}

Shirley Hazzard (30 January 1931 – 12 December 2016) was an Australian-American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She was born in Australia and also held U.S. citizenship.{{cite web|url=http://search.abc.net.au/s/search.html?query=Shirley+Hazzard&collection=abcall_meta&form=simple|work=abc.net|access-date=15 December 2006|title=Online Collection}}

Hazzard's 1970 novel The Bay of Noon was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010;{{cite web|author=Hoyle, Ben|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7076649.ece|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110615071128/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7076649.ece|url-status=dead|archive-date=15 June 2011|title=Author waits to hear if she has won 'lost Booker' prize 40 years on|date=26 March 2010|access-date=7 April 2010|publisher=Timesonline.co.uk}} her 2003 novel The Great Fire won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, the Miles Franklin Award and the William Dean Howells Medal.[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2003 "National Book Awards – 2003"], National Book Foundation website; retrieved 27 March 2012. Hazzard also wrote nonfiction, including two books based on her experiences working at the United Nations Secretariat, which were highly critical of the organisation.

Early life

Hazzard was born in Sydney, the younger daughter{{Cite web|url=https://www.acis.org.au/2017/01/08/shirley-hazzard-sydney-1931-new-york-2016|title = Shirley Hazzard (Sydney 1931 – New York 2016)|date = 7 January 2017}} of a Welsh father (Reginald Hazzard) and a Scottish mother (Catherine Stein Hazzard), both of whom immigrated to Australia in the 1920s and who met while they were working for the firm that built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She attended Queenwood School for Girls in Mosman, New South Wales, but left in 1947 when her father became a diplomat and was posted to Hong Kong.Lawson, Valerie (2004) "Hazzard country", in The Sydney Morning Herald, 19–20 June 2004, p. 31.

Hazzard's parents had intended for her to study at the university there, but it had been destroyed in the war. Instead, at age 16, she began working for the British Combined Intelligence Services, until she was "brutally removed by destiny" – first to Australia, as her sister was ill, and then to New Zealand, when her father became Australian Trade Commissioner there. She said of her experience of the East that "I began to feel that people could enjoy life, should enjoy life".

At age 20, in 1951, Hazzard and her family moved to New York City and she worked at the United Nations Secretariat as a typist for about 10 years.{{Cite news|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5505/shirley-hazzard-the-art-of-fiction-no-185-shirley-hazzard|title=Shirley Hazzard, The Art of Fiction No. 185|last=McClatchy|first=Interviewed by J. D.|newspaper=The Paris Review|access-date=14 December 2016}} In 1956, she was posted to Naples for a year and began to explore Italy; she visited annually for several years afterward.

Writing

Hazzard wrote her first short story, "Woollahra Road", in 1960 while in Siena, and it was accepted and published by The New Yorker magazine the next year. She resigned from her position at the United Nations and began writing full-time.{{Cite news|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5505/shirley-hazzard-the-art-of-fiction-no-185-shirley-hazzard|title=Shirley Hazzard, The Art of Fiction No. 185|last=McClatchy|first=Interviewed by J. D.|newspaper=The Paris Review|access-date=14 December 2016}} Her first book, Cliffs of Fall, published in 1963, was a collection of stories that had previously appeared in the magazine. Her first novel, The Evening of the Holiday, was published in 1966. Her second, The Bay of Noon, appeared in 1970, and follows British people in Italy shortly after World War II. The Guardian has called The Transit of Venus, Hazzard's third novel, her "breakthrough". It follows a pair of sisters from Australia who are living very different lives in postwar Britain. American academic Michael Gorra writes: "Its social landscape will be familiar to any reader of Lessing or Murdoch or Drabble, and yet it is not an English novel. Hazzard lacks the concern with gentility – for or against – that marks almost all English writers of her generation. She has the keenest of eyes for the nuances of class ... and yet doesn't appear to have anything herself at stake in getting it all down."{{citation|title=A Look Back at Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus|author=Michael Gorra|author-link=Michael Gorra|publisher=National Book Critics Circle|date= 25 January 2008}}

Hazzard's final novel, The Great Fire, appeared more than 20 years later. Its protagonist is a British war hero in Asia a few years after the war.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/14/fiction.features|title=Mao and then|author=Adam Mars-Jones|author-link=Adam Mars-Jones|newspaper=The Observer|date=14 December 2003|access-date=16 December 2016 }}

In addition to fiction, Hazzard wrote two nonfiction books critical of the United Nations: Defeat of an Ideal (1973) and Countenance of Truth (1990). Defeat of an Ideal presents evidence of the apparently widespread McCarthyism in the Secretariat from 1951 to 1955. Countenance of Truth alleges that senior international diplomats had been aware of the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim yet allowed him to rise through the Secretariat ranks to the position of Secretary-General, a claim she first made in a 1980 New Republic article. Her collection of short stories, People in Glass Houses, is presented as a satire on "The Organisation", manifestly inspired by the United Nations.{{Cite web|url=https://www.spikemagazine.com/shirley-hazzard-people-in-glass-houses.php|title=Shirley Hazzard – People in Glass Houses|last=Lowe|first=Greg|date=7 March 2008|website=Spike magazine|access-date=5 March 2018}}

Hazzard wrote Greene on Capri, a memoir of her friendship with her husband Francis Steegmuller, a Flaubert scholar,{{cite web|first1=Richard|last1=Eder|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/reviews/000220.20ederlt.html|title=Our Man in Capri|date=February 20, 2000|website=The New York Times}} and his comrade in literature and travel Graham Greene, whom she met in the 1960s and considered an influence.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=teAM2dVcHjIC&q=greene%20on%20capri|title=Greene on Capri: A Memoir|first=Shirley|last=Hazzard|date=7 February 2000|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=9781429979252|via=Google Books}} Her last work of nonfiction, The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008), is a collection of writings on Naples co-authored by Steegmuller.{{Citation|title=The ancient shore: dispatches from Naples|date=2008|author1=Hazzard, Shirley|author2=Steegmuller, Francis, 1906–1994. Incident at Naples|publisher=Chicago, Ill. London University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-32201-8|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/ancientshoredisp00shir}}

=Style and themes=

Hazzard admired the writing of Henry James and Ivy Compton-Burnett, and critics have noted similarities to their work, particularly in the use of dialogue. Critics have also called Hazzard's style "austere" and concise.

Hazzard's characters and plots often mirrored events and people in her own life. According to one commentator, Hazzard's early life "was a carbon copy of Helen Driscoll's" (the heroine of The Great Fire).{{Cite book|title=Shirley Hazzard: literary expatriate and cosmopolitan humanist|last=Olubas|first=Brigitta|publisher=Cambria Press|year=2012|isbn=978-1-60497-804-9|location=New York City|pages=30}} Helen and her brother, the dying Benedict, are described as "wonderfully well-read, a poetic pair who live in literature", and Hazzard once said that poetry had always been the centre of her life.Lawson, Valerie (2004) "Hazzard country", in The Sydney Morning Herald, 19–20 June 2004, p. 31. In addition, Helen Driscoll has to move to New Zealand, as Hazzard did. Similarly, the character of Elizabeth in Hazzard's short story "Sir Cecil's Ride" is young, living in Hong Kong, and working for Combined Services Intelligence.

Christine Kearney wrote in The Canberra Times that Hazzard's "fine and formal prose features high-minded protagonists who prize love, beauty and art, and who are frequently hamstrung by the philistines or the callous in their midst", adding, "while Hazzard has a peerless elegance and effortless control over her material, her occasional haughtiness may seem naive to a contemporary audience."{{Cite news|url=https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7074245/elegant-stylish-and-haughty/?cs=14252|work=The Canberra Times|title=Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories is a handsome compilation from one of Australia's best writers|date=9 January 2021|first=Christine|last=Kearney}}

Richard Eder wrote in The New York Times that Greene on Capri "was a two-decade crossword puzzle that the novelist Shirley Hazzard began that day, presuming out of her habitual restraint and courtesy upon the privilege of the tiny literary freemasonry that still could speak yards of poetry by heart."

Awards and honours

In 1977, Hazzard's short story "A Long Story Short", originally published in The New Yorker on 26 July 1976, received an O. Henry Award.{{Cite news|url=http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/awardwinning-australian-author-shirley-hazzard-dies-in-new-york-aged-85-20161213-gtan4p.html|title=Critically acclaimed Australian writer Shirley Hazzard dies aged 85|last=Bowden|first=Ebony|date=14 December 2016|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|language=en-US|access-date=14 December 2016}} The Transit of Venus won the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award{{cite web|title=National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction|work=Powell's Books website|url=http://www.powells.com/prizes/nbcca_fiction.html|access-date=22 May 2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060427231708/http://www.powells.com/prizes/nbcca_fiction.html|archive-date=27 April 2006}} and was included in The Australian Collection, a compendium of Australia's greatest books.{{Cite book |last=Dutton |first=Geoffrey |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13138661 |title=The Australian collection: Australia's greatest books |date=1985 |publisher=Angus & Robertson Publishers |isbn=0-207-14961-5 |location=North Ryde, NSW, Australia |oclc=13138661}} The Great Fire garnered the 2003 National Book Award, the 2004 Miles Franklin Award, and the 2005 William Dean Howells Medal; it was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and named a 2003 Book of the Year by The Economist.{{cite news|url=http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2173040|title=Words of love and war|newspaper=The Economist|date=30 October 2003|access-date=19 January 2007}} The Bay of Noon was nominated for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/14/shirley-hazzard-internationallyacclaimed-australian-author-dies-at-85|title=Shirley Hazzard, internationally acclaimed Australian author, dies at 85|last=Harmon|first=Steph|date=13 December 2016|newspaper=The Guardian|issn=0261-3077|access-date=14 December 2016}}

Hazzard was a fellow of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the British Royal Society of Literature, as well as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.{{Cite book|title=Shirley Hazzard: new critical essays|publisher=Sydney University Press|others=Olubas, Brigitta|year=2014|isbn=9781743324776|location=Sydney|oclc=890012056}} In 1984, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation invited her to give the Boyer Lectures, a series of radio talks delivered each year by a prominent Australian. The talks were published the next year under the title Coming of Age in Australia.[http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1480759?lookfor=subject:%22Australia%20-%20Civilization.%22&offset=8&max=785 Coming of Age in Australia: book details], nla.gov.au; accessed 14 December 2016. In 2012, a conference was held in her honour at the New York Society Library and Columbia University.[http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/news-and-events/shirley-hazzard-symposium-1753.html Shirley Hazzard Symposium] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120818051245/http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/news-and-events/shirley-hazzard-symposium-1753.html |date=18 August 2012 }}, unsw.edu.au; accessed 14 December 2016.

Personal life

In 1963, Hazzard married the writer Francis Steegmuller, and the couple moved to Europe. They initially lived in Paris, with visits to Italy, and in the early 1970s settled in Capri. They also kept an apartment in New York City. Hazzard and Steegmuller went to New York in August, "to write in peace, as no one is there", and then returned to Italy in the fall.

Steegmuller died in 1994.

Hazzard died in New York City on 12 December 2016, aged 85. She was reported to have had dementia.[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/books/shirley-hazzard-dead-novelist.html?referer=https://www.google.ca/ Shirley Hazzard, Novelist Who Charted Storm-Tossed Lives, Dies at 85], nytimes.com, 13 December 2016; accessed 14 December 2016.

Works

=Novels=

The Evening of the Holiday (1966)
The Bay of Noon (1970), shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize
The Transit of Venus (1980), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction
The Great Fire (2003), winner of the National Book Award for fiction and the Miles Franklin Award

=Short story collections=

Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories (1963){{Cite web|url=https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/shirley-hazzard-internationally-acclaimed-australian-author-dies-at-85/ar-AAlxBik|title=Shirley Hazzard, internationally acclaimed Australian author, dies at 85|website=www.msn.com|access-date=14 December 2016|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161220133844/https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/shirley-hazzard-internationally-acclaimed-australian-author-dies-at-85/ar-AAlxBik|archive-date=20 December 2016}}
People in Glass Houses (1967)
Collected Stories (2020)

=Non-fiction=

Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-destruction of the United Nations (1973)
Coming of Age in Australia (1985)
Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (1990)
Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000)
The Ancient Shore: Dispatches from Naples (2008) (with Francis Steegmuller)
We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think: Selected Essays (2016)

= Short stories =

All stories published in The New Yorker except where noted.

Title	Publication	Collected in
class="wikitable" \|+
"Woollahra Road"	April 8, 1961	Collected Stories
"Vittorio"	June 17, 1961	rowspan=10\| Cliffs of Fall and Other Stories
"Villa Adriana"	August 5, 1961
"The Worst Moment of the Day"	September 2, 1961
"Weekend"	May 5, 1962
"The Picnic"	June 16, 1962
"Cliffs of Fall"	September 22, 1962
"Harold"	October 13, 1962
"The Party"	December 8, 1962
"A Place in the Country"	Published in The New Yorker in two parts: "A Place in the Country": June 15, 1963 "A Leave-Taking": July 13, 1963
"In One's Own House"	Mademoiselle (October 1963)
"The Flowers of Sorrow"	October 17, 1964	People in Glass Houses
"Comfort"	October 24, 1964	Collected Stories
"The Evening of the Holiday"*	April 17, 1965	* Excerpt from The Evening of the Holiday
"Out of Itea"	May 1, 1965	Collected Stories
"Nothing in Excess"	March 26, 1966	rowspan=7\|People in Glass Houses
"The Meeting"	July 23, 1966
"A Sense of Mission"	March 4, 1967
"Swoboda's Tragedy"	May 20, 1967
"The Story of Miss Sadie Graine"	June 10, 1967
"Official Life"	June 24, 1967
"The Separation of Dinah Delbanco"	July 22, 1967
"The Everlasting Delight"	August 19, 1967	rowspan=4\|Collected Stories
"Leave It to Me"	Meanjin Quarterly (Summer 1971)
"The Statue and the Bust"	McCall's (August 1971)
"Sir Cecil's Ride"	June 17, 1974
"A Long Story Short"*	July 26, 1976	rowspan=4\| * Excerpt from The Transit of Venus
"A Crush on Doctor Dance"*	September 18, 1977
"Something You'll Remember Always"*	September 17, 1979
"She Will Make You Very Happy"*	November 26, 1979
"Forgiving"	Ladies' Home Journal (January 1984)	Collected Stories
"The Place to Be"*	June 29, 1987	rowspan=3\| * Excerpt from The Great Fire
"In These Islands"*	June 8, 1990
"Longing"*	Antaeus (Autumn 1994)

References

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070203151033/http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=authC2D9C28A1d58c25A71pVq36861B4 Shirley Hazzard's profile] at the British Council website
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120320175650/http://www.virago.co.uk/author_results.asp?sf1=data&st1=profile&exp=G-H-I%7C&ref=e2007070316250173 Shirley Hazzard's profile] at Virago Press
[http://www.stanford.edu/dept/fren-ital/opinions/hazzard.html Radio interview] on KZSU, Stanford University
Geoff Dyer, [http://www.newstatesman.com/node/148316 "Written in the stars"], The New Statesman, 28 June 2004
Brigitta Olubas, [http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1509/2080 "Shirley Hazzard's Australia: Belated Reading and Cultural Mobility"], Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature
{{C-SPAN|1008539}}
[https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4079817 Finding aid to Shirley Hazzard papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.]