FORSHAW, Thelma

An Affair of Clowns : Short Stories and Sketches [Signed by Thea Astley]

Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1967. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo : pp. [x] 193 : original pale tan cloth, gilt lettering to spine, top edge tinted pale orange. Bookseller's small label on front endpaper, some light foxing to fore-edge. The jacket has some chipping and is rubbed lightly. Signed by Thea Astley, a contemporary of Forshaw, on the front free endpaper. Near Fine / Very Good. Item #14081

Lucy Scholes wrote of Forshaw (1923-1995) in 2020, "If the Australian writer and critic Thelma Forshaw is remembered for anything today, it’s most likely the hatchet job that she gave Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1972...“I’ve had a hell of a life,” Forshaw told Lewis when defending her attack on Greer, “but I’m still free, I’m buoyant—that’s why I don’t go in for all this whingeing.” The stories in An Affair of Clowns echo this. Forshaw dips her toe into life’s darker corners—whether it’s the violence of her parents’ marriage, or the alienation and loneliness felt by immigrants—but it’s not a depressing collection and she doesn’t seem to believe in victimhood, either. As she promised, her humor wins out in the end." and as Scholes points out, she wasn't the only one who thought so. '“Listen, Forshaw,” wrote her friend, the prize-winning writer Thea Astley, in 1963, “I read your letters and they are literally flashing opal mines of wit. You are seriously one of the funniest, no, THE funniest woman I have ever met.”'

A nice association copy.

Price: $45.00