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Charmian Clift

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Charmian Clift (30 August 1923 – 8 July 1969) was an Australian writer. She was the second wife and literary collaborator of George Johnston.

Charmian Clift
Clift in 1941
Born(1923-08-30)30 August 1923
Kiama, New South Wales, Australia
Died8 July 1969(1969-07-08) (aged 45)
Sydney
OccupationWriter
Spouse
​
(m. 1947)​
Children3; including Martin Johnston

Early life

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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 did 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 the rank of Lance Bombardier in charge of a group of gunners housed in Drummoyne.[4]

Career

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After Clift and husband George Johnston's collaboration High Valley (1949) won them recognition as writers, they left Australia with their young family, working in London. In November 1954 they relocated to the Greek island of Kalymnos and later Hydra to try living by the pen.[5][2] She met the songwriter Leonard Cohen while there in 1960.[6]

Johnston returned to 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 and 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 Morning Herald and The Herald in Melbourne. They were collected in 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 problems their children had settling into life in Sydney.[citation needed]

On 8 July 1969, the eve of the publication of Johnston's novel Clean Straw for Nothing, Clift committed suicide by taking an overdose[8] of barbiturates in Mosman, a Sydney suburb, while considerably affected by alcohol.[9] Academics Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell suggest in their 2018 book Half the Perfect World that it was the impending publication of Johnston's novel, which Clift knew would lay bare her infidelities while on the island of Hydra, which prompted her to suicide.[10] In her posthumously published article My Husband George in that month's edition of POL magazine, she wrote:[11][12]

I do believe that novelists must be free to write what they like, in any way they liked to write it (and after all who but myself had urged and nagged him into it?), but the stuff of which Clean Straw for Nothing is made is largely experience in which I, too, have shared and ... have felt differently because I am a different person ...

Clift's autobiographical books Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus were reissued by Muswell Press in 2021, with new introductions written by novelist Polly Samson,[13][14] whose own 2020 bestselling novel A Theatre For Dreamers is a fictionalized account of life on Hydra in the 1960s, featuring real-life characters including Clift, Johnston and Cohen.[15]

Death

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Clift died by suicide on 8 July 1969. Her ashes were later scattered in the rose garden of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Sydney.[16]

Personal life

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She met married war correspondent George Johnston in 1945 while both were enlisted in the war effort. Meeting again in 1946 while both working at The Argus, the two writers commenced an affair, for which they were both dismissed by their employer.[17] They married in 1947 and had three children. The eldest was the poet Martin Johnston who was born in 1947; their daughter Shane was born in 1950 and Jason in 1956.[18]

Portrayals

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She is depicted in the drama television series So Long, Marianne, in which she is portrayed by Anna Torv.[19]

Commemoration

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In November 2023 it was announced that Clift was one of eight women chosen to be commemorated in the second round of blue plaques sponsored by the Government of New South Wales alongside, among others, Kathleen Butler, godmother of Sydney Harbour Bridge; Emma Jane Callaghan, an Aboriginal midwife and activist; Susan Katherina Schardt; journalist Dorothy Drain; Pearl Mary Gibbs, an Aboriginal rights movement activist; and charity worker Grace Emily Munro.[20][21]

Bibliography

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Novels

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  • High Valley (with George Johnston), 1949
  • The Big Chariot (with Johnston), 1953
  • The Sponge Divers (with Johnston), 1955
  • Walk to the Paradise Gardens, 1960
  • Honour's Mimic, 1964

Short stories and collections

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  • Strong Man from Piraeus and Other Stories, (with Johnston) 1983

Autobiography

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  • Mermaid Singing, Indianapolis, 1956
  • Peel Me a Lotus, London, 1959

Screenplay

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  • My Brother Jack (1965)[22]

Non-fiction

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  • Images in Aspic, Selected Essays, Sydney, 1965
  • The World of Charmian Clift, Sydney, 1970
  • Trouble in Lotus Land, Sydney, 1990
  • Being Alone with Oneself, Sydney, 1991
  • Charmian Clift: Selected Essays, 2001

References

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  1. ^ "Charmian Clift". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. The University of Queensland. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  2. ^ a b Wheatley, Nadia, "Clift, Charmian (1923–1969)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 25 January 2023
  3. ^ "Charmian, George and Susan, too". The Age. 4 December 2004. December 2, 2004. Retrieved 2023-07-30
  4. ^ Wheatley, Nadia. The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift / Nadia Wheatley. 4th Estate, 2014. P. 126.
  5. ^ Kinnane, Garry, "Johnston, George Henry (1912–1970)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 25 January 2023
  6. ^ Samson, Polly (30 March 2020). "Bohemian tragedy: Leonard Cohen and the curse of Hydra". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  7. ^ The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, Oxford, South Melbourne, 1994, p. 172.
  8. ^ "Annual bibliography of studies in Australian literature". Australian Literary Studies. 11. University of Tasmania: 443. 1983.
  9. ^ 'Sudden death of writer Charmian Clift aged 44', Canberra Times. Thursday, 10 July 1969. p.8.
  10. ^ P. Genoni and T. Dalziell. 2018. Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964. Clayton: Monash University Press. p.404.
  11. ^ McCooey, Dave (1996). Artful Histories: Modern Australian Autobiography. Cambridge University Press. pp. 167–168, 216. ISBN 9780521567909. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
  12. ^ Tucker, Graeme Rochford (January 1991), "From novelist to essayist:the Charmian Clift phenomenon", University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016: 435, retrieved 4 January 2016
  13. ^ "Charmian Clift". Muswell Press. Retrieved 2023-05-05
  14. ^ "'Every scrap of colour sings': how Charmian Clift caught the magic, and menace, of Greek island life". The Telegraph. 24 April 2021. April 24, 2021. Retrieved 2023-05-05
  15. ^ Preston, Alex (5 April 2020). "A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson review – sun, sex and Leonard Cohen". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  16. ^ "Charmian Clift and George Johnston on Hydra Island Greece". HydraDirect. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  17. ^ Wheatley, Nadia, "Charmian Clift (1923–1969)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 14 December 2023
  18. ^ Martin Johnston personal, literary and miscellaneous papers, ca. 1947–1994, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 10143/Boxes 1X-2X,
  19. ^ Greg David, "Macha Grenon, Éric Bruneau, Patrick Watson and Kim Lévesque Lizotte join NRK and Crave original drama So Long, Marianne". TV, eh?, August 24, 2023.
  20. ^ Power, Julie (19 November 2023). "The 'clever girl' who helped build the Harbour Bridge". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
  21. ^ Plaques, Blue (20 November 2023). "New round of Blue Plaques recognises the stories of NSW". Blue Plaques. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
  22. ^ Vagg, Stephen (22 January 2022). "Forgotten Australian Mini-series: My Brother Jack". Filmink. Retrieved 13 August 2024.

Further reading

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