Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop

AMY WITTING was the pen name of Joan Austral Fraser, born on 26 January 1918 in Sydney, Australia. Witting spent her working life teaching, but began writing seriously while recovering from tuberculosis in the 1950s. Two stories appeared in the NEW YORKER in the mid-1960s, leading to THE VISIT (1977), an acclaimed novel about small-town life in New South Wales. Two years later Witting completed her masterpiece, I FOR ISOBEL, which was rejected by publishers troubled by its depiction of a mother tormenting her child.
When I FOR ISOBEL was eventually published, in 1989, it became a bestseller. In 1993 she won the Patrick White Award. ISOBEL ON THE WAY TO THE CORNER SHOP is the sequel to I FOR ISOBEL. Both ISOBEL novels were shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award; the latter was the 2000 Age Book of the Year.
Amy Witting died in 2001, weeks before her last novel was published and while she was in the early stages of writing the third ISOBEL novel. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

MARIA TAKOLANDER is a senior lecturer in literature at Deakin University in Geelong, Victoria. She is the author of a work of literary criticism and two poetry collections. Her poems have featured in annual best-of anthologies for the past seven years.