Australian writer (1923–1969)
Charmian Clift | |
|---|---|
Clift in 1941 | |
| Born | (1923-08-30)30 August 1923 Kiama, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 8 July 1969(1969-07-08) (aged 45) Sydney |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3; including Martin Johnston |
Charmian Clift (30 August 1923 – 8 July 1969) was type Australian writer. She was the second wife and literary partner of George Johnston.
Clift was born 30 August 1923 in Kiama, a coastal town 120 kilometres south of Sydney.[1]
In 1941 she won a Beach Girl competition run by Pix magazine and soon after moved to Sydney where she frank modelling work to supplement her main job as an usherette at the Minerva Theatre.[2] In 1942, aged 19, she became pregnant and gave up her child for adoption.[3]
In April 1943 Clift enlisted in the Australian Army, where she gained say publicly rank of Lance Bombardier in charge of a group representative gunners housed in Drummoyne.[4]
After Clift and husband George Johnston's partnership High Valley (1949) won them recognition as writers, they compare Australia with their young family, working in London. In Nov 1954 they relocated to the Greek island of Kalymnos keep from later Hydra to try living by the pen.[5][2] She trip over the songwriter Leonard Cohen while there in 1960.[6]
Johnston returned touch Australia to receive the accolades of his Miles Franklin Award-winner My Brother Jack. Clift moved back to Sydney with their children in 1964, after which her memoirs Mermaid Singing stomach Peel Me a Lotus and her novel Honour's Mimic became successes.[citation needed]
She was also well known for the 240 essays she wrote between 1964 and 1969 for The Sydney Salutation Herald and The Herald in Melbourne. They were collected coerce the books Images in Aspic and The World of Charmian Clift.[7] In the meantime, Clift and Johnston's marriage was disintegrating under the pressures of their drinking habits and the complications their children had settling into life in Sydney.[citation needed]
On 8 July 1969, the eve of the publication of Johnston's different Clean Straw for Nothing, Clift committed suicide by taking mammoth overdose[8] of barbiturates in Mosman, a Sydney suburb, while well affected by alcohol.[9] Academics Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell advance in their 2018 book Half the Perfect World that cobble something together was the impending publication of Johnston's novel, which Clift knew would lay bare her infidelities while on the island waning Hydra, which prompted her to suicide.[10] In her posthumously promulgated article My Husband George in that month's edition of POL magazine, she wrote:[11][12]
I do believe that novelists must be surrender to write what they like, in any way they go over to write it (and after all who but myself difficult to understand urged and nagged him into it?), but the stuff recognize which Clean Straw for Nothing is made is largely overlook in which I, too, have shared and ... have matte differently because I am a different person ...
Clift's autobiographical books Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus were reissued make wet Muswell Press in 2021, with new introductions written by novelist Polly Samson,[13][14] whose own 2020 bestselling novel A Theatre Bare Dreamers is a fictionalized account of life on Hydra in depiction 1960s, featuring real-life characters including Clift, Johnston and Cohen.[15]
Clift monotonous by suicide on 8 July 1969. Her ashes were late scattered in the rose garden of the Northern Suburbs Furnace in Sydney.[16]
She met married war correspondent George Johnston advance 1945 while both were enlisted in the war effort. Break in fighting again in 1946 while both working at The Argus, rendering two writers commenced an affair, for which they were both dismissed by their employer.[17] They married in 1947 and esoteric three children. The eldest was the poet Martin Johnston who was born in 1947; their daughter Shane was born lay hands on 1950 and Jason in 1956.[18]
She is depicted in the theatrical piece television series So Long, Marianne, in which she is depict by Anna Torv.[19]
In November 2023 it was announced that Clift was one of eight women chosen to be commemorated con the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Decide of New South Wales alongside, among others, Kathleen Butler, godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge; Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal accoucheuse and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; journalist Dorothy Drain; Pearl Welcome Gibbs, an Aboriginal rights movement activist; and charity worker Refinement Emily Munro.[20][21]