HAZZARD, Shirley 1931-

PERSONAL: Born January 30, 1931, in Sydney, Australia; daughter of Reginald (a government official) and Catherine (Stein) Hazzard; married Francis Steegmuller (a novelist and biographer), December 22, 1963 (died, October, 1994). Education: Educated at Queenwood College, Sydney, Australia.

ADDRESSES: Home—200 East 66th St., New York, NY 10021. Agent—McIntosh & Otis, Inc., 475 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10017.

CAREER: Writer. Worked for British Intelligence in Hong Kong (now China), 1947-48, and for British High Commissioner's Office, Wellington, New Zealand, 1940-50; United Nations, New York, NY, worked in general service category, Technical Assistance to Underdeveloped Countries, 1952-62, served in Italy, 1957. Boyer lecturer, Australia, 1984, 1988.

MEMBER: American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

AWARDS, HONORS: U.S. National Institute of Arts and Letters award in literature, 1966; National Book Award nomination, National Book Foundation, 1971, and National Book Award for fiction, 2003, for The Great Fire; Guggenheim fellow, 1974; National Book Critics Circle Award, American Book Award nomination, and PEN/Faulkner Award nomination, all 1981, for The Transit of Venus.

WRITINGS:

Cliffs of Fall, and Other Stories, Knopf (New York, NY), 1963.

The Evening of the Holiday (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 1966.

People in Glass Houses: Portraits from Organization Life (nonfiction), Knopf (New York, NY), 1967.

The Bay of Noon (novel), Atlantic-Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1970.

Defeat of an Ideal: A Study of the Self-Destruction of the United Nations (nonfiction), Atlantic-Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1973.

The Transit of Venus (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 1980.

Coming of Age in Australia (lectures), Australian Broadcasting Corp. (Sydney, Australia), 1985.

Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (nonfiction), Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

Greene on Capri: A Memoir, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2000.

The Great Fire (novel), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2003.

Work appears in anthologies, including several volumes of Winter's Tales and O. Henry Prize Stories. Contributor to periodicals, including New Yorker, Ladies' Home Journal, and McCall's.

SIDELIGHTS: Even before the publication of her bestselling novel The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard's work met with critical approval. For example, Robie Macauley wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Hazzard's The Bay of Noon is "one of those rare novels that tries to address itself to the reader's intelligence rather than his nightmares. Its assumptions are fine and modest: That the reader will enjoy a sense of place if that place is drawn for him so perfectly that it seems to breathe, that the reader will understand a story based on the interactions of personality rather than mere violence, that the reader will take pleasure in a style that is consciously elegant and literary." "People in Glass Houses," wrote Laurie Clancy in Contemporary Novelists, "is a brilliantly funny and scathing collection of eight interrelated stories concerning an unnamed 'organization' which is transparently the United Nations."

It was with the release of The Transit of Venus that Hazzard gained a wider and more diverse readership. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Lynne Sharon Schwartz remarked: "If the literary establishment were given to pageantry, [The Transit of Venus] ought to be welcomed with a flourish of trumpets. Last year John Gardner clamored for moral fiction: Here is a book that ventures confidently amid the abiding themes of truth, beauty, goodness, and love, and is informed, moreover, by stringent intelligence and lacerating irony. Hazzard spares no one, not even her reader." Clancy believed that "Hazzard's masterpiece and the basis of her reputation is undoubtedly The Transit of Venus. . . . The meticulous—sometimes almost too meticulous—craftsmanship of the novel and the elegance and subtle wit of the style are a delight and almost unique among contemporary Australian fiction writers."

Los Angeles Times critic Doris Grumbach wrote that she was very moved by The Transit of Venus. She felt that it "is an impressive, mature novel, full and satisfying, by a novelist whose earlier work—two novels and two collections of stories . . . did not prepare us for this book. Without fear of exaggeration I can say it is the richest fictional experience I have had in a long time, so sumptuous a repast that it may not be to every reader's taste."

Although characterization plays a vital role in all of her writings, Hazzard exhibits particular skill in this area in The Transit of Venus. Webster Schott pointed out in the Washington Post: "Her purpose is to reveal [the characters] in the act of living and to make their pleasure, anguish and confusion rise out of their personalities as they respond to change. . . . All of The Transit of Venus is human movement, and seen from near the highest level art achieves."

John Leonard suggested in the New York Times that Hazzard's skill not only lies in her characterizations but in her literary style in general. "Miss Hazzard writes as well as Stendhal," Leonard remarked. "No matter the object—a feeling, a face, a room, the weather—it is stripped of its layers of paint, its clots of words, down to the original wood; oil is applied; grain appears, and a glow. Every epigram and apostrophe is earned. A powerful intelligence is playing with a knife. It is an intelligence that refuses to be deflected by ironies; irony isn't good enough."

The feature that several critics have identified as the underlying factor of Hazzard's skillful characterization and literary style is her sensitivity. Schott wrote: "Her perceptions of gesture, voice, attitude bespeak an omniscient understanding of human personality. The story she tells is, for the most part, so usual as to sound irrelevant. What she brings to it is virtually everything that story alone cannot tell about human lives." Similarly, Schwartz remarked that "The Transit of Venus evidences the wisdom of one not only well traveled but well acquainted with truth and falsehood in their numberless guises. Interwoven with the story of Caro's and Grace's lives and loves are a devastating representation of British class structure, with barriers and loopholes clearly marked; an acerbic, satirical view of a governmental bureaucracy that scoops the marrow out of men and leaves them empty bone; a glimpse at underground activists struggling for fundamental political decencies in Latin America, as well as a survey of various modes of contemporary marriage."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 18, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981.

Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1982, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

Geering, R. G., Recent Fiction, Oxford University Press (Melbourne, Australia), 1974.

PERIODICALS

Australian Literary Studies, October, 1979.

Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1980, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, review of The Transit of Venus.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 24, 1988.

Listener, October 19, 1967.

Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1980, Doris Grumbach, review of The Transit of Venus.

Meanjin, summer, 1970; December, 1970.

National Review, February 27, 1968.

New Statesman, October 20, 1967.

New Yorker, April 13, 1970.

New York Times, February 26, 1980, John Leonard, review of The Transit of Venus.

New York Times Book Review, January 9, 1966; November 12, 1967; April 5, 1970, Robie Macauley, review of The Bay of Noon; March 16, 1980; May 11, 1980; April 29, 1990.

Publishers Weekly, February 2, 1990, p. 70; March 9, 1990, p. 48.

Saturday Night, June, 1990, p. 59.

Saturday Review, January 8, 1966.

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Volume 25, number 2, 1983.

Time, January 14, 1966; November 24, 1967.

Times Literary Supplement, July 7, 1966; October 19, 1967; May 7, 1970.

Village Voice, March 3, 1980.

Washington Post, March 9, 1980, Webster Schott, review of The Transit of Venus.

Washington Post Book World, April 8, 1990.