Background
Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales in 1923.
Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales in 1923.
She was the second wife and literary collaborator of George Johnston. They had three children, the eldest of whom was the poet Martin Johnston. She was also well known for her essays in Sydney and Melbourne newspapers, which included "Images in Aspic" and "The World of Charmian Clift".
On 8 July 1969, the eve of the publication of Johnston"s Clean Straw for Nothing, Clift committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates in Mosman, a Sydney suburb.
In her posthumously-published article My Husband George in that month"s edition of POL Magazine, she wrote:
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. Her ashes were later scattered in the rose garden of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Sydney.
(Jacket has a little wear and tear. Book itself in very go...)