Shirley Hazzard

Shirley Hazzard 1931-, Australian novelist and short-story writer, b. Sydney. Educated in Australia, she has lived in the United States since 1951, working at the United Nations in New York from 1952-62. Both she and her husband, writer Francis Steegmuller (1906-94), were frequent contributors to The New Yorker magazine. Hazzard is noted for the insight, sensitivity, and subtlety of her writing and for a lyrical style sometimes leavened by gentle irony. She achieved early critical success with her first story collection, Cliffs of Fall (1963), followed by another collection and two novels of Italy, The Evening of the Holiday (1966) and The Bay of Noon (1970). Her next novel, The Transit of Venus (1980), a psychologically rich treatment of interconnected stories set in modern England, brought her literary acclaim and a greatly expanded readership. Hazzard did not publish another novel until 2003 when The Great Fire, a bittersweet post-World War II love story, was released to considerable praise. Hazzard has also written such nonfiction works as People in Glass Houses (1967), about the United Nations; and Greene on Capri (2000), a memoir.

Hazzard, Shirley (1931– ), novelist and short story writer, born in Sydney, Australia. She has lived abroad since 1947. Her experiences working at the United Nations headquarters in New York (1951–61) provided material for the satirical short stories in People in Glass Houses (1967). Other works include Cliffs of Fall (1963), short stories; and two novels set in Italy: The Evening of the Holiday (1966) and The Bay of Noon (1970). Hazzard's preoccupations with ideas, politics, and complex human emotions reach their fullest expression in The Transit of Venus (1980), a dense multi-layered survey of the post-war world. Her concerns are enacted in the interplay of a large cast, while secrets, loss, and death provide a tragic dimension.

Hazzard, Shirley (1931–), Australian‐born author, in foreign service and later the United Nations, settled in New York City. Her books, in addition to Defeat of an Ideal (1973), condemning the U.N., and Countenance of Truth (1990), concerning the U.N. and the Kurt Waldheim case, include The Evening of the Holiday (1966), a novella about an unhappy romance, set in Italy; People in Glass Houses (1967), subtitled “Portraits from Organization Life,” witty views of fictional bureaucrats; The Bay of Noon (1970), a novel about romantic entanglements in Italy; The Transit of Venus (1980), a novel treating the complex emotional relationships experienced by two expatriate Australian sisters; and a volume of stories, Cliffs of Fall (1963), collected from The New Yorker. She was married to Francis Steegmuller.