Patricia Wrightson OBE (19 June 1921 – 15 March 2010) was an Australian writer of several highly regarded and influential children's books.[1] Employing a 'magic realism' style, her books, including the award-winning The Nargun and the Stars (1973), were among the first Australian books for children to draw on Australian Aboriginal mythology.[2] Her 27 books have been published in 16 languages.[3]
Wrightson was born Patricia Furlonger on 19 June 1921 in Bangalow,[6] near Lismore, New South Wales, the third of six children. Her father was a country solicitor.[7] She was formerly educated through the State Correspondence School for Isolated Children and St Catherine's College,[2][8] and also attended a private school in Stanthorpe, Queensland, for one year.[9] Of her education, Wrightson later wrote, “I was really educated in literature, philosophy and wonder by my father; and in the social sciences by my mother. My most profitable year of schooling was the one in which I abandoned the syllabus altogether and spent the year, without permission or guidance, in discovering Shakespeare”.[10]
During World War II Wrightson worked in a munitions factory in Sydney.[11]
Wrightson married in 1943, and had two children, Peter and Jenny, before divorcing in 1953.[12] She worked as secretary and administrator at Bonalbo District Hospital, from 1946 to 1960, and Sydney District Nursing Association, from 1960 to 1964.[8]
Wrightson died of "natural causes" on 15 March 2010, a few days after entering a New South Wales hospital.[3]
Wrightson served as Assistant Editor and later editor of the School Magazine, in Sydney, from 1964 to 1970, a literary publication for children.[2][8]
She wrote 27 books during her lifetime and entwined Australian Aboriginal mythology into her writing. After beginning with straightforward adventure stories,[13] Wrightson's writing developed to reveal two key characteristics: her use of Aboriginal folklore, with its rich fantasy and mystery, and her understanding of the importance of the land. Author, editor and academic Mark MacLeod wrote that "Wrightson thought that it might be possible to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian cultures and create a new kind of pan-Australian narrative, in which the human characters from both cultures were strongly aware of and influenced by the metaphysical world that Indigenous Australians had known for 60 000 years."[14]
Initially, Wrighton's use of Aboriginal myths was appreciated by Aboriginal leaders because of her evident respect and care for their traditions,[15] however, as times changed, Wrightson's use of Aboriginal myths and legends in her fiction came to be questioned by some academics, including New Zealander Clare Bradford, who accused Wrightson of “appropriating and controlling strategies.”[16] Wrightson’s editor Max Macleod stressed that Wrightson’s use of Aboriginal mythology was respectful and inclusive: "She was trying to create a kind of pan-Australia – a whole new Australian mythology which was part non-indigenous and part indigenous."[17]
In 1978 the Aboriginal playwright Jack Davis praised Wrightson’s work to the International Board on Books for Young People. Davis "encouraged her to be even bolder in her writing and, far from giving up in fear, to go on."[18]Brian Attebery, American writer and author of Strategies of Fantasy, wrote "No amount of care can make [Wrightson] into a tribal elder, nor can her use of Aboriginal folklore ever be fully ‘authentic’. However, she can become… a participant in the reshaping of tradition for a modern world in which authenticity is an inaccessible ideal."[19]
The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest career recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Wrightson was a runner-up for the writing award in 1984 and won it in 1986.[4][5] The illustration winner that year was Robert Ingpen, who had collaborated with Wrightson on The Nargun and the Stars (1973), her fantasy novel based on Aboriginal mythology. They remain the only Australians among more than 60 Andersen Medal recipients.[4]
The Children's Literature section of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards began as a single award in 1979, but was redefined in 1999 to create the Patricia Wrightson Prize (for writing for a primary school audience) named in her honour, and the Ethel Turner Prize (for a secondary school audience).[23]
Patricia Wrightson was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Southern Cross University in September, 2004.[8]
