“This crazy, gorgeous family novel” written at the end of the Great Depression “is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century” (Jonathan Franzen, The New York Times). First published in 1940, The Man Who Loved Children was rediscovered in 1965 thanks to the poet Randall Jarrell’s eloquent introduction (included in this ebook edition), which compares Christina Stead to Leo Tolstoy. Today, it stands as a masterpiece of dysfunctional family life. In a country crippled by the Great Depression, Sam and Henny Pollit have too much—too much contempt for one another, too many children, too much strain under endless obligation. Flush with ego and chilling charisma, Sam torments and manipulates his children in an esoteric world of his own imagining. Henny looks on desperately, all too aware of the madness at the root of her husband’s behavior. And Louie, the damaged, precocious adolescent girl at the center of their clashes, is the “ugly duckling” whose struggle will transfix contemporary readers. Named one of the best novels of the twentieth century by Newsweek, Stead’s semiautobiographical work reads like a Depression-era The Glass Castle. In the New York Times, Jonathan Franzen wrote of this classic, “I carry it in my head the way I carry childhood memories; the scenes are of such precise horror and comedy that I feel I didn’t read the book so much as live it.”

This biography is of Christina Stead, born in Australia in 1902, and who sailed to England at age twenty-six, and not returning to Australia until she was 72. This intellectually rigorous and riveting tells of Stead's life, a life that was stormy, eccentric and brave.

'In the harbour city's steamy, fecund heat, the air is thick with thwarted longing, the people on the tram smell like foxes, and the girls with their glossy hair talk of hope chests and fight down the dread of being left on the shelf.' from the Introduction by Drusilla Modjeska Superbly evoking life in Sydney and London in the 1930s, For Love Alone is the story of the intelligent and determined Teresa Hawkins, who believes in passionate love and yearns to experience it. She focuses her energy on Jonathan Crow, an unlikeable and arrogant man whom she follows to London after four long years of working in a factory and living at home with her loveless family. Reunited with Crow in London, she begins to realise that perhaps he is not as worthy of her affections as originally thought.

New York, on the cusp of World War II. Robert Grant, a middle-aged businessman, lives life by his own rules. His chief hobbies are moneymaking and seduction; he is always on the hunt for the next woman to beguile and betray. That is, until he meets his match: Barbara, the ‘blondine’, a woman he cannot best. A sardonic commentary on sexual relations and war as potent as when it was first published in 1948, A Little Tea, a Little Chat holds up a mirror to the corruption and cravenness of our late-capitalist moment. Christina Stead was born in 1902 in Sydney. Stead’s first books, The Salzburg Tales and Seven Poor Men of Sydney, were published in 1934 to positive reviews in England and the United States. Her fourth work, The Man Who Loved Children, has been hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by Jonathan Franzen, among others. In total, Stead wrote almost twenty novels and short-story collections. Stead returned to Australia in 1969 after forty years abroad for a fellowship at the Australian National University. She resettled permanently in Australia in 1974 and was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award that year. Christina Stead died in Sydney in 1983, aged eighty. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential Australian authors of the twentieth century. ‘[Christina Stead] is really marvellous.’ Saul Bellow ‘A sprawling character study...Callous, comical, loathsome, and tiresome, Grant also, as the David Malouf introduction notes, can sometimes stir sympathy thanks to Stead’s artistry.’ Kirkus reviews, starred review

House of All Nations is Christina Stead's 1938 gripping portrayal of financial world success. Set in an exclusive European bank in the heady days of the early thirties, Stead weaves a remarkable tale of greedy, devious and shady characters, all brought together by their love of money. The director of the bank, Jules Bertillon, leads these gamblers, crooks and prospectors on a treacherous journey navigating political and natural disasters, and using both to his advantage. House of All Nations has never been more relevant, as Stead's remarkable work speaks loudly about the modern markets.

The puzzleheaded girl of the title novella, Honor Lawrence, is a young New York filing clerk whose motives her mentor, Augustus Debrett, finds impossible to understand. Her obvious poverty is so embarrassing for the New England elite of her acquaintance that they prefer to imagine scandal in its place. Refusing to accept promotion, but asking, all the same, for help, Honor becomes a spectral figure in Debrett's life, leaving puzzlement and disquiet in her wake. "The Puzzleheaded Girl" (first published in 1968) is a collection of four novellas: "The Puzzleheaded Girl," "The Dianas," "The Rightangled Creek" and "Girl from the Beach."

A group of visitors to the Salzburg Festival, brought together by chance, decides to mark time by telling tales. Their fantasies, legends, tragedies, jokes and parodies come together as The Salzburg Tales. Dazzling in their richness and vitality, the tales are grounded in Christina Stead's belief that 'the story is magical . what is best about the short story [is] it is real life for everyone; and everyone can tell one'. Originally published eighty years ago, these are thoroughly modern stories that invite comparison with Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. The Salzburg Tales are published here with a new introduction by Margaret Harris, Challis Professor of English Literature Emerita at the University of Sydney, and literary executor for Christina Stead.