Anne Whitehead

Bluestocking in Patagonia

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 23:46:56 +0000

Bluestocking in Patagonia

Mary Gilmore’s Quest for Love and Utopia at the World’s End
(First published Profile Books UK, 2003-04; Untapped ebook ISBN 9781922730213; 2022 Booktopia print edition ISBN 9781761280689)

Publisher’s cover note:
‘In a remarkable blend of biography and travel writing, Anne Whitehead follows in the footsteps of the young Australian poet Mary Gilmore, from the former socialist colonies of Paraguay to the sheep estancias of southern Argentina and brings to life Mary’s testing time in one of the harshest places on earth – a coming of age and a love story.’

Shortlisted for 2005 Australian Magarey Medal for Biography

Anne Whitehead brilliantly counterpoints her own wanderings with Mary's in an Argentina which then, as in 2002, was facing economic and social crisis, and which is tellingly described in both accounts. After six years in South America, the Gilmores sailed home. Poet and national icon, Mary Gilmore's portrait now graces the Australian $10 note. Her time in Argentina was both a coming of age and a most unusual love story. '

Cover note by Thomas Keneally:

‘This splendid and fascinating book is brilliantly balanced as part memoir, part well-researched recreation of the experiences of the young Mary Gilmore as inamorata of Henry Lawson, as radical, wife, Paraguayan and Patagonian settler, and as abidingly Australian soul.’

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Paradise Mislaid

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 23:46:21 +0000

Paradise Mislaid

In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay
(First published UQP, 1997-98; Untapped ebook: ISBN 9781922730220; 2022 Booktopia print edition: ISBN 9781761280696)

Publisher’s cover note:
‘In a bizarre 1890s social experiment, a band of 500 ordinary Australians followed an English journalist and visionary, William Lane, to found a socialist utopia in the tropical rainforests of Paraguay. It is a story of politics, heroism and hard struggle, dreams and disillusionment, sexual adventures and romantic love. When the colonists’ hopes collapsed in turmoil, many, including Mary Gilmore, returned home. Others stayed on, learning Spanish and the Guaraní language and becoming part of the culture of their adopted country. These descendants of socialists also endured the harsh Stroessner dictatorship.

At once an erudite, award-winning work of history and a passionate personal quest, Anne Whitehead’s unique narrative maps her own journeys to Paraguay over two decades. The Spanish-speaking descendants, their lingo still peppered with Australianisms, tell her stories of their childhoods, of political oppression and crusades against it, of smuggling and brigandage, love and loss, obsession and high adventure.’

Winner - 1998 NSW Premier's Australian History Award

Shortlisted in 1998 for: Kibble Literary Award for Women Writers; Dobbie Award for a First Published Book; The Age Book of the Year selection.

ABC-RN Nightlife interview with Sarah Macdonald – ‘This Week in History – New Australia’, broadcast 23 September 2018:

‘One of the most bizarre stories in Australian history – splendidly told by one of our master story-tellers.’

Frank Moorhouse, cover note 1997

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Betsy and the Emperor

admin — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 23:45:31 +0000

Betsy and the Emperor

The true story of Napoleon, a pretty girl, a Regency rake and an Australian colonial misadventure
(Allen & Unwin, 2015; Print edition: ISBN 9781760112936; ebook: ISBN 9781925266610)

Publisher’s note:
‘After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was sent into exile on St Helena. He became an “eagle in a cage”, reduced from the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed by Betsy Balcombe, the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant.

Anne Whitehead brings to life Napoleon’s last years on St Helena, revealing the important role of the Balcombe family. She also lays to rest two centuries of speculation about Betsy’s relationship with Napoleon.

After Napoleon’s death, Betsy travelled to Australia in 1823 when her father was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. After the family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a memoir that made her a celebrity. With her extraordinary connections to royalty and high society, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance, but she was always striving for her independence. This new account reveals Napoleon at his most vulnerable, human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most dramatic events of her time.’

Anne was awarded an Australia Council Literature Board Fellowship for this work and her research has taken her to the South Atlantic island of St Helena, then only reached by a week's voyage on the last Royal Mail Ship. She also explored archives and locations connected with the Balcombes in England, Scotland and France.

She talked about the research and writing of the book with Phillip Adams on ABC-RN Late Night Live, broadcast 28 September 2015.

She appeared at the 2016 Sydney Writers’ Festival on 20 May to discuss ‘Napoleon’s Legend’ with Tom Keneally and historian Philip Dwyer, a panel chaired by Phillip Adams and also broadcast on Late Night Live on 24 March 2016 &13 Dec 2016.

It is published in the UK

in hardback and paperback, as The Emperor’s Shadow: Bonaparte, Betsy and the Balcombes of the St Helena.

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