Australia Felix: The Fortunes of Richard Mahony

In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language … I see Henry Handel Richardson as another Balzac, with all the Frenchman’s passion for completeness in breadth and depth and height. Arnold Palmer, Sphere, 1929

Australia Felix was first published in 1917. It is the first novel in the 1930s trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, by Henry Handel Richardson. The trilogy reflects the foundational years of Victoria through the restless, eventually harrowing narrative of the Mahony family, and centrally through the life of Richard Mahony: voyager, questor, idealist. The cuts that the author made for the 1930 single-volume omnibus edition have all been restored from the author’s preferred version. This unique, scholarly edition includes notes and source material.