My first and greatest debt of gratitude is to the Hazel Rowley Fellowship, the generous award that enabled me to work full time on this book. The fellowship, administered by Writers Victoria, exists to commemorate the life and legacy of Hazel Rowley. It’s pleasant to think that Hazel herself, the biographer of Eleanor Roosevelt and Christina Stead among others, might have approved of this project.

Grateful thanks to Tom D.C. Roberts for his help in research. I also want to acknowledge Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digital research tool, without which this book – and, I know, many others – would have taken twice as long to complete, and probably have been half as comprehensive.

Thanks also to Jane Novak, my agent; to Peter Cochrane, who read early versions of the manuscript; and to the librarians in the state libraries of New South Wales and Victoria, the National Library of Australia, the Public Record Office of Victoria and the Woollahra Library, Sydney (especially local librarian Patra, short for Cleopatra). Conversations with many people, especially John Carmody, Suzanne Falkiner, Susan Wyndham, Kate Grenville, Meredith Rose and Clare Wright contributed immeasurably to this book. Members of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston and in Melbourne were also extremely helpful. And thanks to Penguin Random House: former publishers Ben Ball and Cate Blake; Meredith Curnow, editors Rachel Scully and Katie Purvis.