Hazel Rowley

Hazel Rowley was born in London and educated in England and Australia. She taught Literature for some years at Deakin University before moving to New York City. She died there on 1 March 2011, aged fifty-nine. Dr Rowley published four biographies: Christina Stead: A Biography (1993), Richard Wright: The life and times (2001), Tête-à-Tête: The lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre (2005), and Franklin and Eleanor: An extraordinary marriage (2010). In 2007 she delivered the Australian Book Review/La Trobe University Annual Lecture. ‘The Ups, the Downs: My Life As a Biographer’ appeared in the July–August 2007 issue of ABR.. Lucy Sussex wrote a tribute to Hazel Rowley in our April 2011 issue (‘Biographer of Big Subjects’).

La Trobe University Essay | 'The ups, the downs: My life as a biographer' by Hazel Rowley

July–August 2007, no. 293 • 01 July 2007

Last year, in the Australian Book Review/La Trobe University Annual Lecture series, Ian Donaldson gave a sparkling talk on biography. He told us that it has emerged as something of a cultural phenomenon in recent years, with a biography section at the front of many bookshops. We now know that the genre has endless possibilities (biographers have written about London, Paris, the pineapple and the p ... (read more)

Hazel Rowley reviews 'Fishing in the Styx' by Ruth Park

November 1993, no. 156 • 01 November 1993

I discovered Ruth Park’s Companion Guide to Sydney in a Sydney second-hand bookshop in 1980. Published in 1973, it was already out of print, probably because it evokes a Sydney that no longer existed. In the early 1970s, Park writes, ‘Sydney was beginning to pull itself to pieces, the air was full of fearful noise, the sky of dust … And the terrible sound of the rock pick tirelessly pecking ... (read more)

Hazel Rowley reviews 'Kanga Creek: Havelock Ellis in Australia' edited by Geoffrey Dutton

May 1989, no. 110 • 01 May 1989

Are you (as I am) conscious of suffering from what they call the postmodern condition? You know, the spiritual and moral void within commodity culture, the isolation of individualism, the lack of meaning and all that. Since reading this book, I have begun to think that we should all spend time in Sparkes Creek. Havelock Ellis, who became the great British psychologist of sex, went there over a hun ... (read more)