Bankruptcy has always provoked intense emotions, ranging from anger, shame and despair to compassion, sympathy and even hope. It has also inspired some of Australia’s most important and popular writers of fiction, from Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson to Elliot Perlman and Jane Harper. This lecture by Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Lucie O’Brien will trace the cultural history of bankruptcy and debt in Australia, focusing particularly on Melbourne-born novelist Henry Handel Richardson and her tragic masterpiece, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930).
