Christina Stead, winner of the prestigious Hawthornden Prize, was born in Scotland in 1909. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a painter. She grew up in Canada, spending summers on the Cornwallis River in Nova Scotia. The merest mention of Cornwallis caused animosity among the Scots who had settled there
Christina's mother, who had been born poor, was determined that her little girl should not be educated by the same methods as her brothers and sisters. She did not want her daughter to have to contend with the kind of poverty she herself had known. To this end she sent Christina to England for education at a boarding school where she was kept under close supervision and encouraged to be interested only in "things that would make a lady." Her parents died when Christina was seventeen; it is not hard to see why she remained deeply attached to them throughout her life.
It may also explain her decision to become a writer. While still an undergraduate at University College, London, Stead published three novels: The Man Who Lived Underground (1924), Pamela (1928), and The Servant (1931). She went on to write many more novels and short stories and established herself as one of Britain's most admired and controversial writers.
If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around.Christina Stead
Give me your honest opinion. I don't want truth with a veil on– I like naked ladies naked.Christina Stead
Charm is a cunning self-forgetfulness.Christina Stead
