The Getting of Wisdom (Penguin Classics S.) - Softcover

Described by HG Wells as the best school story he knew, THE GETTING OF WISDOM is the classic Australian novel of school days, a compelling and frank account of a young girl's coming of age. When Laura Rambotham arrives at an exclusive Melbourne girls school from her country home, she is ridiculed by the other pupils for her differences - her name, her unusual clothes and, especially, for her 'unpardonable sin': her exceptional musical ability. Laura endures ostracism and misery as she tries tomake herself socially acceptable to her vicious peers, never quite succeeding but learning much about the world and its inhabitants along the way.

'Henry Handel Richardson' was the pen-name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson (1870-1946), Australian novelist and short-story writer. Ethel studied music in Leipzig and became a skilled pianist. THE GETTING OF WISDOM (1910) was followed by 'The Fortunes of Richard Mahony' in 1929, her best-known work. Her death in 1946 cut short the autobiography begun during the war, 'Myself When Young'.