$32.95 (Trade paperback / Black Inc / ISBN:9781863951838)
I Am Melba
I Am Melba - how a Melbourne girl defied her father and left her husband to become the most famous singer of the age.
Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell showed musical promise and dreamed of fame, but her father had more orthodox plans in mind. Early marriage took her to the Queensland cane-fields - but her ambitions remained, and she soon fled to London, trusting in talent and luck to get her by.
Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with royalty and collaborating with Europe's most renowned musicians. When her affair with the heir to the defunct French throne was discovered, the press chased them from Paris to St Petersburg and back again, desperate for a glimpse of "the Voice" and her royal conquest.
Feted and condemned by critics, relentlessly pursued by the press and mobbed by adoring fans, Dame Nellie Melba was Australia's first superstar. Behind the scenes, she was a canny businesswoman, an affectionate mother and a playful practical joker. When she died - apparently after a botched face-lift - flags were flown at half-mast and thousands turned out to see her funeral cortege.
In this definitive biography, Ann Blainey captures the exuberance, controversy and pathos of a remarkable Australian life.
Australia's Leading Female Writers Give Their Mother's Day Choices
I Am Melba
Ann Blainey
The View From Castle Rock
Alice Munro
The Price Of Motherhood
Ann Crittenden
Maternal Desire
Daphne De Marneffe
What Mothers Do
Naomi Stadlen
The Age Book of the Year Shortlist 2008 Non-fiction
I Am Melba
$32.95 (Trade paperback / Black Inc )
I Am Melba - how a Melbourne girl defied her father and left her husband to become the most famous singer of the age.
Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell showed musical promise and dreamed of fame, but her father ha... More »
Van Diemen's Land: A History
$49.95 (Hardcover book / Black Inc )
Almost half of the convicts who came to Australia came to Van Diemen’s Land. There they found a land of bounty and a penal society, a kangaroo economy and a new way of life. In this book James Boyce shows how the convict... More »
An Exacting Heart: The Story Of Hephzibah Menuhin
$49.95 (Hardcover book / Viking )
Hephzibah Menuhin had a musical gift most people only dream of. Her refusal to be defined by it led her to reinvent herself not once, but twice in her remarkable life.
Born in 1920 in San Francisco she was, like her worl... More »
A Family History Of Smoking
$32.95 (Paperback book / Melb Univ Press )
A Family History of Smoking is a compelling memoir about two European families living through the last gasps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From great-grandfather David, who saw his family's fortunes decline with the gr... More »
Review
American Journeys
$49.95$29.95 (Hardcover book / Alfred A Knopf )
Only in America, the most powerful democracy on earth, home to the best and worst of everything, are the most extreme contradictions possible. In a series of journeys in 2005 and 2006, acclaimed author Don Watson set out... More »
Review