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Ethel Nhill Victoria Stonehouse

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Ethel Nhill Victoria Stonehouse
Born(1883-08-01)1 August 1883
Nhill, Victoria, Australia
Died1 May 1964(1964-05-01) (aged 80)
Macleod, Victoria, Australia
Pen name
  • Harlingham Quinn
  • Lindsay Russell
  • Patricia Lindsay Russell
Occupation
  • novelist
  • poet
  • short story writer

Ethel Nhill Victoria Stonehouse (1 August 1883 – 1 May 1964) was an Australian writer. She wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Lindsay Russell and Harlingham Quinn.

Life

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Stonehouse was born on 1 August 1883 at Nhill in Victoria. She was the fourth child of Jane (née Hardingham) and blacksmith Robert Stonehouse.[1] She attended Charlton State School until she was 14.[2]

Stonehouse's early works were poems and short stories which were published in Australia in The Bulletin,[3] in England in The Spectator and in America in Munsey's Magazine and Smart Set Magazine.[4]

In December 1910 she brought an action for breach of promise of marriage against Michael Francis Quinn, a Roman Catholic priest, seeking £1,000 damages.[5] The matter was dropped in late January 1911.[6]

In 1912, her first book, Smouldering Fires, was published using the pseudonym, Lindsay Russell. Set in the Mallee region of Victoria, the "characters are thinly disguised"[7] and the plot appears to follow the author's personal experience when a priest takes advantage of her, leading to her disgrace. The book was seen as a "severe indictment of celibacy".[7]

In 1912, following the successful sale of nearly 5,000 copies of Smouldering Fires and with a number of other books planned, Stonehouse left Melbourne on the Scharnhorst to visit Italy and other parts of Europe, seeking to recover her health.[8] Smouldering Fires went on to sell 100,000 copies in Australia in eight editions.[1] It and her second book, Love Letters of a Priest, were subject to a papal boycott whereby booksellers were asked to refrain from stocking them.[9] Advocate journalist, Marion Knowles was scathing in her initial review, calling it a "most virulent attack on the Catholic Church" and a "vicious attempt to blacken the character of the priesthood".[10] Later she noted that it had sold 10,000 copies by November 2012.[11]

Stonehouse married medical practitioner John McNaught Scott in Stonehouse, Lanarkshire, Scotland on 23 September 1914.[1] He had treated her for tuberculosis before their marriage.[12]

She spent much of World War I in Ireland, where she continued writing novels. Her final novel, Earthware, was published in 1918. About an unhappy marriage, it appeared to be based on her own experience.[12]

After the War, the couple moved to Australia and lived at Mortlake in Victoria, where her husband worked as a doctor and served as shire president. Her life was, however, stifled in this "intellectually repressed rural town".[12]

Later life and death

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Following her husband's death in 1942,[13] Stonehouse became reclusive. In 1949 she was admitted, suffering from "mental enfeeblement", to Mont Park Asylum in the Melbourne suburb of Maclean.[12]

Stonehouse died on 1 May 1964 at Mont Park Asylum and was buried at in the Roman Catholic section of Footscray General Cemetery.[12]

Selected works

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  • Russell, Lindsay (1912), Smouldering fires, Fraser & Jenkinson
  • Russell, Patricia Lindsay (1912), Love letters of a priest, Australasian Authors' Agency
  • Quinn, Harlingham (1913), Sands o' the desert, Specialty Press
  • Russell, Lindsay (1913), Souls in pawn, Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
  • Russell, Lindsay (1913), Kathleen Mavourneen : an Australian tale, The Speciality Press Pty. Ltd
  • Russell, Lindsay (1914), The years of forgetting, Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
  • Quinn, E. Hardingham (1916), That woman from Java, London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd
  • Russell, Lindsay (1918), Earthware, London: Cassell
  • Russell, Lindsay (1923), The caravan of dreams : and other verses of the Grampians road, The Express Office

References

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  1. ^ a b c Edgar, Suzanne, "Stonehouse, Ethel Nhill Victoria (1883–1964)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 29 September 2022
  2. ^ "Lindsay Russell". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. Retrieved 29 September 2022.
  3. ^ "Where the Curlews Call", The Bulletin, 33 (1675), John Haynes and J.F. Archibald: 5, 21 March 1912, ISSN 0007-4039
  4. ^ "General Notes". The Herald. No. 11, 362. Victoria, Australia. 2 April 1912. p. 3. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ "Alleged Breach of Promise". The Age. No. 17, 390. Victoria, Australia. 9 December 1910. p. 6. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ "News In Brief". The Border Morning Mail and Riverina Times. Vol. VIII, no. 2213. New South Wales, Australia. 28 January 1911. p. 1. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ^ a b "A Severe Indictment". Watchman. Vol. XI, no. 18. New South Wales, Australia. 9 May 1912. p. 4. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^ "Miss Lindsay Russell, Authoress". Fitzroy City Press. No. 1969. Victoria, Australia. 19 October 1912. p. 2. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. ^ "Easy Chair Jottings". Advocate. Vol. XLV, no. 2209. Victoria, Australia. 22 February 1913. p. 24. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  10. ^ Knowles, Marion Miller (25 May 1912). "Ladies' Letter". Advocate. Vol. XLIV, no. 2170. Victoria, Australia. p. 40. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. ^ "Ladies' Letter". Advocate. Vol. XLIV, no. 2194. Victoria, Australia. 9 November 1912. p. 39. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ^ a b c d e Proctor, Craige (2013). "Patricia Scott (1883–1964)". Royal Historical Society of Victoria. Retrieved 29 September 2022.
  13. ^ "Family Notices". The Argus (Melbourne). No. 30, 002. Victoria, Australia. 21 October 1942. p. 2. Retrieved 30 September 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
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