"A Window of Life": A Biography of Ruth Park

My project, the first literary biography of celebrated and beloved author Ruth Park, will draw on the rich archival holdings at the State Library of NSW in order to understand and preserve the legacy of a writer once dubbed the "female Dickens from Australia. Parks special realismher writing as a window of lifeundergirds the realism animating her enduringly popular Harp in the South (1948). By affording a view of disadvantaged community through this novel and other writing, however, Park has provided an aperture on lives that some have preferred not to see. My project recognises the literary qualities of Parks popular writing while illuminating her professional dedication alongside the popular appeal and public controversies surrounding her work.