Guide to the Papers of Christina Stead
MS 4967
National Library of Australia
| Date Completed: | March 1997 |
| Last updated: | November 2008 |
This finding aid was revised and published with the assistance of the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust
Table of Contents
Summary
Introduction
Scope and Content
Access
Preferred Citation
Provenance
Related Material
Biographical Note
Contents List
Summary
| Creator: | Stead, Christina, 1902-1983 |
| Title: | Papers of Christina Stead |
| Date range: | 1929-1996 |
| Reference number: | MS 4967 |
| Extent: | 3.0 metres (20 boxes) |
| Repository: | National Library of Australia Canberra |
Introduction
Scope and Content
Manuscript and typescript drafts of prose; notes, background material and jottings relating to Stead's literary output; correspondence with Philip Harvey, Norman Rosten, Ettore Rella, William Blake, Cyrilly Abels, Stanley Burnshaw and others; diaries, reviews, photographs and other papers. The collection also includes literary drafts of other writers including Ettore Rella, Mary Sarton, George Baxt, John Bright, Oliver Stallybrass, E. Louise Mally, Jorge Ibarguengoitia, Elaine Kraf, Norman Rosten and Stanley Burnshaw.
Provenance
The Stead Papers were acquired in ten consignments between 1975 and 1999, mainly from Stead's literary executor, Professor Ron Geering.
Related Material
Correspondence and other papers relating to Christina Stead are also held other Manuscript Collection including MS 802 (H.C. Coombs, box 49, folder 377); MS 7168 (Jack Lindsay), MS 7228 (Ettore Rella), MS 7306, MS 7570 (W.H. Pearson), MS 7666, MS 7840 (Donald A. Cameron), MS 8317, MS 8477, MS 8548 (Laurence Pollinger), MS 8617, MS 8645, MS 9244 (Hazel Rowley), MS 9351 (R.G. Geering) and MS 9405 (Edith Anderson).
Biographical Note
Christina Ellen Stead was born in Sydney on 17 July 1902, the daughter of the naturalist David Stead. She was educated at Bexley Public School, St. George High School (Kogarah), Sydney Girls' School and Sydney Teachers' College, where she graduated in 1921. Stead worked as a teacher until 1924 and in office work until her departure from Australia in 1928. Stead lived most of her life abroad, mainly in London (1928-1929 and 1953-1968) and Paris (1929-1933), where she worked as a secretary and translator and in the United States of America, (1935-1947).
During the 1930s Stead began writing novels. The Salzburg tales and Seven poor men of Sydney were published in 1934 and her highly praised novel The man who loved children appeared in 1940. Despite critical acclaim she did not win a more general following in Australia until the mid 1960s. After the death of her partner William Blake, Stead returned briefly to Australia in 1969 as writer-in-residence at the Australian National University. In 1974 she returned permanently to Australia, receiving the inaugural Patrick White Award in the same year.
Stead died in Sydney on 31 March 1983.
Contents List
Papers Received 31 October 1984
Box 1
Folder 1 "More lives than one"
Uncompleted novel
Folder 2 For love alone
Notes and jottings
Folder 3 The man who loved children
Jottings
Folder 4 House of all nations
Odd pages
Folder 5 The beauties and furies
Fragments from early versions
Folder 6 "The right-angled creek"
Novella, early version
Box 2
Folder 7 Letty Fox
Notes and fragments from early versions
Folder 8 "Tales"
Story topics and fragments
Folder 9 The people with the dogs
Notes
Folder 10 Cotters' England
Early versions, fragments
"Branch line: the northern engineer"
Folder 11 Cotters' England
Notes and parts of early version
"Brother and sister"
Folder 12-14 Miss Herbert
Corrected typescript (early), slightly different final paragraph from that in the book
Box 3
Folder 15-17 Miss Herbert
A more recent corrected typescript with changed ending
Folder 18 "Eleanor", Miss Herbert
Notes and fragments of early versions
Folder 19-20 "Fan Pearl"
Notes, background material; sketches and other television projects
Folder 21 "Foxwarren Hall"
Memoirs, 1958
Box 4
Folder 22 "Foxwarren Hall"
Memoirs, 1959-60 (?). See also Folder 22a in Box 16.
Folder 23 "Four just men"
Rough version and suggestions for a T.V. series
Folder 24 "Women"
Women's Movement letters, notes
Folder 25 "Doctor"
Notes for a nouvelle
Folder 26 "Albania"
Notes, sketches, fragments of a nouvelle
Folder 27 "Spanish"
Handwritten passages
Folder 28 "Cards and cryptography"
Folder 29 "The student lovers part 2: The student of Naples"
Parts of an early nouvelle
Box 5
Folder 30 "Yiddish"
Dialogue, notes and sketches
Folder 31 "The talking ghost"
Fragments of stories and notes
Folder 32 Miscellaneous I
Folder 33 Miscellaneous II
Folder 34 Miscellaneous III
Folder 35 Miscellaneous IV
Folder 36 Miscellaneous V
Folder 37 Miscellaneous VI
Box 6
Folder 38 Lydham, early Sydney, family
Folder 39 Miscellaneous VII
Folder 40 Miscellaneous VIII
Early fragments, "The Wraith and the Wanderer", Verse, "Under Capricorn"
Folder 41 Miscellaneous IX
Folder 42 Miscellaneous X
Folder 43 "The traveller's bed and breakfast", St Prex
Folder 44 "Marionettes I"
Nello
Folder 45 "Marionettes II"
Jan Callowjan
Box 7
Folder 46-47 "On Literature I"
Folder 48-49 "On Literature II"
Folder 50-51 Letters
Folder 52
'Answers to Questionnaire'
(a) International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture, 1937
(b) Interview by Jonah Raskin
Folder 53 "On Virginia Woolf"
Folder 54 "On David Smith's Medals for Dishonour"
Box 8
Folder 55 "On Stanley Burnshaw"
Folder 56 Stanley Burnshaw.
"Caged in an Animal's Mind"
Folder 57 Stanley Burnshaw.
Poems
Folder 57 Stanley Burnshaw.
"The Hero of Silence"
Folder 58 Stanley Burnshaw.
"Uriel Da Costa"
Folder 59 Ettore Rella.
"American Portifolio" With comments
Folder 60 Ettore Rella.
(i) "Smiley the Guru" With comments
(ii) "The Real Imitation"
Folder 61 Vietnam
Printed matter
Folder 62 "Women in Love"
Sapphire Films
Box 9
Folder 63
(i) Mary Sarton.
(ii) George Baxt.
"The Leopard Land"
"The Curse of the Golem". Original story and screenplay, 1958
Folder 64 John Bright.
City of Angels
Folder 65
(i) Oliver Stallybrass.
(ii) E. Louise Mally.
"I. 2 Track Mind"
"The Hunter of Kentucky"
Folder 66 Jorge Ibarguengoitia.
"The Dead Girls"
Folder 67-68 Elaine Kraf.
"The House of Madelaine"
Folder 69 John Bright.
"The Paper World"
Folder 70 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1981-83
Addition 10 October 1986
This addition described by Marlene Bonny, 13 March 1987.
Box 10
Folder 71 Correspondence from Philip Harvey, 1961-1980
Folder 72 Correspondence from Stead to Philip and Leah Harvey, 1968-1984
Folder 73-78 Early versions of material published in Ocean of Story
Box 11
Folder 79 Unpublished articles and notes
Folder 80-83 Book reviews
Folder 84 Workshop in the novel
Folder 85-86 I'm dying laughing - background material
Box 12
Folder 87 I'm dying laughing - notes and background material
Folder 88-94 I'm dying laughing - early versions
Addition 9 September 1988
Box 14
Folder 108
Three typescripts (n.d.): "Extracts from a Spanish diary" (2 p.), "Notes on character observation" (2 p.), "Clarification of the plot - how to approach and write the great scene" (2 p.)
Unfinished stories in typescript (no dates but some appear circa early 1940s): "The bearded lady"
"Lafe Tilley's haunted house"
"Haunted cars"
"The talking ghost"
"George eccentricities"
"MM's ghost"
Folder 109 Correspondence between Christina Stead and Norman Rosten, 1967-82
Includes poems by Rosten sent to Stead.
Addition 7 June 1991
Box 15
Folder 110 Diary "First days of a modern Monte Christo", Belgium, August - October 1936
Folder 111 Diary "The travellers' bed and breakfast", Switzerland and France, September 1950 - April 1951
Folder 112 Diaries, Paris, United States, Spain, Belgium, London, 1929-40
Folder 113 Miscellaneous typescripts 1. "The 36 classic dramatic situations" 2. "Bookbinding ateliers of Paris" 3. "A few points" 4. "Decline of the bourgeois audience in England" 5. "Overland" - fragments on childhood, voyage to Europe 6. "Why I am an expatriate" - fragments of various versions 7. "Obsession" 8. "Workers and writers" 9. "Terror in La Ciudad Imbecila" 10. "Reverberations from Spain" 11. "Guns along the Bidasoa" 12. Virginia Woolf - Quentin Bell 13. "Senor Armino" - notes on The Man Who Loved Children 14. "Notes on Letty Fox and Teresa" 15. "Notes on Jack Brame and family" 16. "Love affairs" - Letty Fox and For Love Alone 17. "The Fausts" 18. Journal of "The Blackmailer" 19. "From a radio interview" 20. "The doctor and Vietnam"
Folder 114 Photocopies of letters of Harry Bloom, 1949-74
Folder 115 Letters of Ettore and Jessie Rella, 1944-82
Folder 116 Stead's letters to Ettore Rella, 1967-82
Folder 117 Poems by Ettore Rella
Folder 118 Correspondence with Philip Harvey, 1958-78
Addition October 1993
Box 17
Folder 121-123 Correspondence of Christina Stead and William Blake 1930-81
Correspondents include Eldon Branda, Richard Kopely, Aida Kotlarsky, Nadine Mendelson, W.H. Pearson, Norman Rosten, Eva Schumann, Catherine Stead, Gilbert Stead, Philip Van Doren Stern, Neil Stewart, Gwen Walker-Smith, Hyren and Judah Waten and Asa Zatz.
Addition 6 February 1996
This addition consists mainly of correspondence with Christina Stead and her husband, William Blake, and a folder of portrait photographs 1930-82.
Box 17
Folder 124 Correspondence of Christina Stead, 1957-82
Correspondents include Dymphna Cusack, A.D. Hope, Hal Porter and Patrick White.
Folder 125 Correspondence of Christina Stead and William Blake, 1946-73
Correspondents include H. Grossman, Dymphna Cusack, Tella Friedmann, Stanley Burnshaw and Oliver Stallybrass.