Christina Stead - An Internationalist and Cultural Mediator

Abstract

Christina Stead was one of the great Australian writers of the twentieth century. After a revived interest in her work in the 70s and 80s, Hazel Rowley’s Biography (1993) and Chris William’s Christina Stead: A Life of Letters (1989), as well as an issue of Southerly in 2003, Stead is in danger of being once again forgotten. Many of her texts, however, are relevant today as they express attitudes dominant in social media. It is perhaps fitting now in the twenty-first century that we evaluate how relevant her work still is in an age of transculturalism and globalization. We see in some of her texts the same dissatisfaction with politicians, politics and social life expressed in current political events such as Brexit and the Trump phenomenon.