CIRCUS LIFE IN AUSTRALIA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1033, 25 July 1930, Page 16

CIRCUS LIFE IN AUSTRALIA

KATHARINE PRICHARD'S NOVEL AUTHOR’S INTERESTING CAREER JONATHAN CAPE has just published an interesting narrative ot circus life in Australia. The title is “Haxby’s Circus” and the author is Katharine Susannah Prichard, who will be remembered for her brilliant study of life in the Australian bush “Coonardoo” published last year. Briefly the story deals with Gina, a clever performer, who, being over tired one night, falls and breaks her back. Her life is saved, and she rejoins the circus—but after three months of opportunity for thought. Events, including the violent loss of a boy brother, poison her mind against her father, the proprietor of the circus. She gets her mother away to a hospital for the birth of a seventh or eighth child, and when the child, a girl, is born, she hides mother, child, and herself, for four years, whilo she works to keep them safe. Ouo day they are found, and the circus, which has disintegrated as the result of fatal accidents and ill-luck, is got together again. The tour is resumed. News comes, however, that Gina has been left a fortune by a dwarf formerly with the circus, and with this fortune she reconditions the whole business, takes charge, and carries on. One or two love affairs hurt her; the father dies; she is losing grip; but she recovers and is left prosperous and flve-and-forty at the end of the book. This novel was among the first four books chosen in Cape’s £I,OOO prize novel competition. Tho author has led a very Interesting life. She was born in Fiji and was brought up in an atmosphere of journalism, her father being a newspaper man. In her late teens she travelled to Perth, and from there wandered all over Australia. Miss Prichard's experiences included two visits to London. On the second occasion she stayed for some years and was engaged in every variety of journalism. While in London she wrote her first novel “The Pioneers ” A few years later, she wrote “The Black Opals,” the product of her own experiences on the opal fields in Queensland. After tho war Miss Prichard married Mr. Hugo Throssel, V.C., who served In Gallipoli and Palestine, His father was for some time Premier of West Australia.