Henry Handel Richardson

Henry Handel Richardson. The Letters

Ed. Clive Probyn and Bruce Steele. Miegunyah Press, 2000. 3 vols.

16 May 1912...London is pleasant now - very green and fresh; and sheep feed in all the parks. I have one of them - known as Primrose Hill - opposite my house, and often I am awakened at dawn by the sheep arriving that are being driven in from the country

The Australian-born writer lived at 90 Regent's Park Road from 1910 to 1934. She is probably best known for her coming-of-age novel, The Getting of Wisdom (1910; a film version was made in 1977), but The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is generally considered her greatest work.

27 October 1913...I have little news to give you, for I seldom go out - except for my daily constitutional in Regent's Park. There I walk every afternoon, wet or dry, following always precisely the same paths, and thinking over the paragraph or the chapter to come. It is a fine open park, with some of the oldest trees in London in it, and a great expanse of sky overhead. When it is wet, or foggy, no one walks there but myself, and I can imagine I am in my own private grounds

9 November 1913...I enter Regent's Park by a little gate almost alongside the North Entrance to the Zoo - a footpath, with bridge over the canal: in early summer a wilderness of white and pink may...You will remember the little park called Primrose Hill as well? - The house I live in faces Primrose Hill, so I have always a great green sweep before my eyes. I cannot live with only houses to look out on