Katharine Susannah Prichard


Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.

Early life

Prichard was born in Levuka, Fiji in 1883 to Australian parents, and spent her childhood in Launceston, Tasmania, before moving to Melbourne, where she won a scholarship to South Melbourne College. Her father, Tom Prichard, was editor of the Melbourne Sun newspaper. She worked as a governess and journalist in Victoria then travelled to England in 1908.
Her first novel, The Pioneers, won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize.
After her return to Australia, the romance Windlestraws and her first novel of a mining community, Black Opal, were published.

Political life and marriage

Prichard moved with her husband, war hero Hugo "Jim" Throssell, VC, to Greenmount, Western Australia, in 1920 and lived at 11 Old York Road for much of the rest of her life. She wrote most of her novels and stories in a self-contained weatherboard workroom near the house. In her personal life she always referred to herself as Mrs Hugo Throssell. Her friends called her Kattie. They had one son, Ric Throssell, later a diplomat and writer.
Prichard was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1921 and remained a member for the rest of her life. She worked to organise unemployed workers and founded left-wing women's groups, and during the 1930s she campaigned in support of the Spanish Republic and other left-wing causes. Although she had frequent arguments with other Communist writers such as Frank Hardy and Judah Waten over the correct application of the doctrine of socialist realism to Australian fiction, she remained supportive of the Soviet Union and its cultural policies when many other intellectuals, such as Eric Lambert and Stephen Murray-Smith, left the party during the 1950s. Her public position as both a communist and a female writer saw her harassed by West Australian police and the federal government throughout her life. The official surveillance files which were opened on Prichard in 1919 were not closed until her death in 1969.
Prichard's commitment to her politics and her position as a woman in the public sphere also saw her socially isolated by the conservative social groups which dominated Perth in this period. She was the subject of constant rumours and frequent anonymous tip offs to Western Australian police of any communist activity. She was also part of a new community of free thinking public intellectuals who, amongst other things, challenged notions of acceptable sexuality.
Her two major novels, which were to give her national and international prominence, were written in Western Australia in the early years of her marriage. The novels were Working Bullocks which dramatised the physical and emotional traumas of timber workers in the karri country of Australia's south-west, and Coonardoo, a novel which became notorious for its candid portrayal of relationships between white men and black women in the north-west.
The far north-west of Australia provided inspiration and setting for her daring play Brumby Innes.
Most of the short stories in the first of her four collections, Kiss on the Lips, were also from the 1920s, her decade of creative activity. During this time she wrote her most adventurous novels, stories and plays.

Death of husband

While she was visiting the Soviet Union in 1933, her husband Jim Throssell committed suicide when his business failed during the Great Depression.
In 1934 her membership of the Communist Party of Australia and the Movement Against War and Fascism led her to lead the Egon Kisch welcome committee, which rapidly metamorphosed into the committee to defend Kisch from exclusion from Australia.
The novel Intimate Strangers was a turning point in her life. The 'fire of a regenerating idea' referred to in the novel's revised conclusion was reflected in the author's life; as pamphleteer and public speaker, Katharine Prichard fearlessly and emotionally promoted the cause of peace and social justice.

Goldfields trilogy

Her extended work The Goldfields Trilogy—The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles, and Winged Seeds is a considerable reconstruction of social and personal histories in Western Australia's goldfields from the 1890s to 1946.
Her autobiography Subtle Flame published a few years before her death exhibited the complex legacy she left behind
Prichard died at her home in Greenmount in 1969. Her ashes were scattered on the surrounding hills.
Like her husband, her son Ric Throssell committed suicide, when his wife Dodie died in 1999. He had fought for many years to clear his name after being accused of passing classified information to his mother, or actively spying for the Soviet Union. His 1989 book covering this was called My Father's Son.
The centenary of her birth was celebrated by UWA academics in a collection of essays

Legacy

The home has now become the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers' Centre, a foundation promoting humanitarianism, the study of Katharine Susannah Prichard, and encouraging writing in Western Australia, where Prichard spent the majority of her life.
The Shire of Mundaring public library branch in Greenmount is named after her as well.
The 1996 Australian film Shine depicts the close correspondence between Prichard and Australian pianist David Helfgott. She was played by Googie Withers. Prichard helped raise money for Helfgott, to enable him to go to London to study music.
A house at Abbotsleigh has been named after her.

Works

Novels