Henry Handel Richardson

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (3 January 1870 20 March 1946), known by her pen name Henry Handel Richardson, was an Australian author. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is Richardson's famous trilogy about the slow decline, owing to character flaws and an unnamed brain disease, of a successful Australian physician and businessman and the emotional/financial effect on his family. It was highly praised by Sinclair Lewis, among others, and was inspired by Richardson's own family experiences. The central characters were based loosely on her own parents. Richardson also produced a single volume of short stories and an autobiography that greatly illuminates the settings of her novels, although her Australian Dictionary of Biography entry doubts that it is reliable.