McCULLOUGH, Colleen 1937-

PERSONAL: Born June 1, 1937, in Wellington, New South Wales, Australia; married Ric Robinson, April 13, 1984. Education: University of Sydney and University of South Wales, B.S. (with honors); Institute of Child Health of London University, M.S. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, music, chess, embroidery, painting, cooking, "writing the words side of stage musicals."

ADDRESSES: Home—Norfolk Island, Australia. Offıce—c/o Author Mail, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020; P.O. Box 333, Norfolk Island, Oceania via Australia.

CAREER: Founder of and worker at the Department of Neurophysiology at the Royal North Shore Hospital of Sydney, 1958-63; Yale University, School of Internal Medicine, New Haven, CT, associate in research neurology department, 1967-77; writer, 1976—. Has also worked as a teacher, a library worker, a bus driver in Australia's Outback, and in journalism.

MEMBER: Gerontology Foundation of Australia, Monash Medical Centre Literary Programme, Macquarie University, Foundation of the Study of Ancient Cultures, American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow), New York Academy of Science, Board of Visitors of the International Programs Center at the University of Oklahoma.

AWARDS, HONORS: D. Litt., Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 1993; honorary founding governor of Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute; designated a "Living National Treasure" in Australia; Scanno Award for Literature, 2000.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Tim (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1974.

The Thorn Birds, Harper (New York, NY), 1977.

An Indecent Obsession (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1981.

A Creed for the Third Millennium, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.

The Ladies of Missalonghi (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

The First Man in Rome, Morrow (New York, NY), 1990.

The Grass Crown, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

Fortune's Favorites, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

Caesar's Women, Morrow (New York, NY), 1996.

Caesar: Let the Dice Fly, Morrow (New York, NY), 1998.

The Song of Troy, Orion (London, England), 1998.

Three Complete Novels (includes Tim, An Indecent Obsession, and The Ladies of Missalonghi), Wings Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Morgan's Run, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2000.

The October Horse, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

The Touch, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2003.

OTHER

An Australian Cookbook, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.

Roden Cutler, V.C. (biography), Random House Australia (Milson's Point, New South Wales, Australia), 1998.

Contributor to magazines.

ADAPTATIONS: Tim was released as a film, starring Piper Laurie and Mel Gibson, directed and produced by Michael Pate, in 1981. The Thorn Birds was broadcast as a ten-hour miniseries on American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (ABC), in March, 1983, starring Rachel Ward and Richard Chamberlain. Most of McCullough's novels have been adapted as audiobooks, including The Touch, Simon & Schuster Audio, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: "I always write books with peculiar themes: I don't like writing about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl," best-selling author Colleen McCullough told Kay Cassill in a Publishers Weekly interview. The plots of McCullough's novels, which include the phonomenally popular The Thorn Birds, The Ladies of Missalonghi, and a six-volume history of Caesar's Rome, back her assertion. In her book Tim, a middle-aged businesswoman becomes romantically linked with a twenty-five-year-old, mentally retarded man; The Thorn Birds turns on a frustrated romance between a young woman and a Roman Catholic cardinal; An Indecent Obsession's heroine, a war nurse to battle-fatigued soldiers, is tacitly engaged to one of her patients and sexually attracted to another. And in the 2003 novel The Touch, McCullough weaves a colorful story around Scotsman Alexander Kinross, who travels to California, and thence to Australia during the gold rush of the 1800s. After he pragmatically imports a child bride from the old country, Kinross and his young wife find their lives altered as children are born, lovers are taken, friendships forged, and the family's wealth grows due to the savvy but emotionless Scot's business skills. Such ingenious story lines—combined with a talent for what Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described in a New York Times review as "good old-fashioned story telling" and the "requisite happy ending" Library Journal reviewer Kathy Piehl reported as central to the author's story mix—have made McCullough's books appeal to millions of readers. "McCullough's characters win sympathy with their spirited striving for love and honor," added a Publishers Weekly contributor in reviewing The Touch, reflecting another characteristic that has continued to propell the author's epic historical novels up the bestseller charts.

McCullough, a native of Australia, first aspired to a career as a physician but could not afford the necessary tuition for a full medical education. She taught in the Outback, drove a school bus, worked as a librarian, and finally qualified as a medical technician specializing in neurophysiology. It was in this position that she eventually came to work at Yale University. In the evenings, she wrote—but not with an eye toward publication. "I always wrote to please myself," she told Cassill. "I was a little snobby about it—that way I could write entirely as I wished. To write for publication, I thought, was to prostitute myself." Once McCullough decided to approach writing commercially, however, she did so very systematically. "I sat down with six girls who were working for me. They were very dissimilar types, and not especially avid readers. Yet, they were all mad about Erich Segal's Love Story. I thought it was bloody awful and couldn't see what girls so basically intelligent could love about it. I asked them what they wanted most out of a book. First, they liked the idea that Love Story was about ordinary people. They didn't want to read about what was going on in Hollywood and all that codswallow, and they wanted something with touches of humor. Yet they enjoyed books that made them cry. . . . If you didn't cry the book wasn't worth reading. . . . So, I said, 'That's it, mate. No matter what else you do in a book, don't forget the buckets of tears.'"

McCullough had a story in mind that would conjure "buckets of tears," a grand romance set mostly on a sheep ranch. She knew, however, that this tale—which would eventually be published as The Thorn Birds—would be lengthy, and that "no one would publish such a long book as a first novel. So I wrote Tim."

Tim is a "novel of awakenings," according to a Publishers Weekly writer, "a lovely and refreshing addition to tales of love." Its two central characters are Mary Horton and Tim Melville. In her climb from an orphanage to success as a mining executive, forty-five-year-old Mary has developed her discipline and self-sufficiency to a high degree but has ignored her emotions. Tim arrives at her home one day to do some yard work. He catches her eye, for he is strikingly handsome. Eventually she learns that this attractive young man is "without the full quid"—that is, he is mentally retarded. First Tim's beauty, then his gentle innocence draw Mary to him, unsettling her rigidly ordered world. This unusual pair experience first love together. When Tim faces being left without a family to care for him, Mary realizes that marriage could be fulfilling and practical for both of them. She must then decide if she has the courage to take such an unconventional step.

Tim was well received by critics. A New York Times Book Review contributor praised the story's "delightful freshness," and Margaret Ferrari, writing in America, remarked upon McCullough's sensitive treatment of her subject matter: "There are many genuinely touching moments in the novel. . . . Its language is clear and direct, full of colorful Australian slang. McCullough's feeling for character, from major to minor, is compassionate yet concise. They are without exception well-rounded and believable. Her delicacy is perfectly suited to the story. . . . Tim is a warm book to read, reassuring about goodness in human nature and about the power of love to overcome worldly obstacles and to make us care more for another person's interests than for our own." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called McCullough's telling of the story "accomplished, sensitive, and wise." The author herself was less generous than most reviewers in describing her first novel. "It's an icky book," she told Cassill, "a saccharine-sweet book." In spite of this negative assessment, she was pleased by its success. "I made $50,000 out of Tim, which wasn't bad for a first novel, and I thought I'd always be a middle of the road, modest selling, respectable novelist," said McCullough to Phillipa Toomey in the London Times.

Having established herself as a good risk in the publishing world, she began to work intensely at getting that long novel she had already "written in her head" down on paper. It was The Thorn Birds, a multigenerational saga of the Cleary family and their life on an Australian sheep station named Drogheda. McCullough focuses on three Cleary women: Fiona, her daughter, Meggie, and Meggie's daughter, Justine. Meggie falls in love with Ralph de Bricassart, an ambitious Catholic priest who has known her since her childhood. When he leaves the Outback for the Vatican, Meggie enters into an unhappy marriage that produces one child, Justine. When Father Ralph visits Australia shortly thereafter, he and Meggie consummate their love. Her second child, a son named Dane, is born nine months later. Meggie keeps the knowledge that she has borne Ralph's son her secret, but it makes the boy especially beloved to her. When the child grows up, he, like his father, becomes a priest and leaves Drogheda for Rome; Justine goes to England to become the toast of the London stage.

McCullough was still working full-time at Yale University while drafting this story and so had to confine her writing to the evenings. She spent such long hours sitting at the typewriter that her legs became swollen; she took to wearing elbow-length evening gloves to keep her fingers from blistering and her arms from chafing against her desk. These efforts paid off: she wrote the first two drafts of The Thorn Birds in three months, churning out 15,000-word blocks of prose nightly. After working at this pace for a year, the final draft was completed. It was 1,000 pages long and weighed ten pounds. McCullough felt that its hefty size was justified; in her interview with Cassill, she declared: "If an editor had seen Thorn Birds in manuscript and 'just loved it,' but suggested it would make a better book if I cut it to a nice 300-page story, I'd have simply said, 'Get stuffed, mate.'"

Her editors made no such suggestion. Sensing that The Thorn Birds had the potential to be a major bestseller, they prepared its release carefully and backed it with an extensive publicity campaign. By the time the book became available to the general public, the publishing industry was abuzz with excitement over its prospects; paperback rights had been sold for a then-record price of 1.9 million dollars. This faith and investment in the book were rewarded, for The Thorn Birds went on to sell over a half million copies in hardcover and more than seven million copies in paperback.

Some reviewers quickly dismissed the popularity of The Thorn Birds as a tribute to marketing rather than a reflection of the book's worth. Amanda Heller denounced McCullough's novel as "awesomely bad" in an Atlantic review. "The writing is amateurish, all adjectives and exclamation points. The dialogue is leaden. . . . The characters are mechanical contrivances that permit the plot to grind along without encountering much resistance." And Paul Gray, while admitting in Time that "McCullough knows how to stage convincing droughts, floods and fires," declared that she "has not made literature. For a season or so, her book will make commercial history."

Alice K. Turner countered negative assessments of The Thorn Birds with praise for the novel's value as entertainment. "To expect The Thorn Birds to be a Great Book would be unfair," she suggested in the Washington Post. "There are things wrong with it, stock characters, plot contrivances and so forth. But to dismiss it would also be wrong. On its own terms, it is a fine, long, absorbing popular book. It offers the best heartthrob since Rhett Butler, plenty of exotic color, plenty of Tolstoyan unhappiness and a good deal of connivance and action. Of its kind, it's an honest book." Eliot Fremont-Smith further praised McCullough's engaging style in the Village Voice: "Her prose, even when stately, owes little to any formula; it is driven by a curiosity of mind, a caring for the subject, and some other great energy within the author that in turn, at one remove, spurs the reader on. The Thorn Birds didn't make me laugh and weep, and I could put it down. It is, after all, a romance, and very long. But then I kept picking it up again, more times than can be accounted for by any sense of duty. A fine book."

Both Fremont-Smith and Turner expressed admiration for McCullough's vivid characterizations. "McCullough does make her characters and their concerns come alive," asserted Fremont-Smith. "She gives them (the leads particularly, and Ralph most of all) intelligence and complexity and dimension. Even the minor characters are not dull." Elaborating on the priest's role in the story, Turner wrote, "Very few novels spotlight a Roman Catholic priest as a sex symbol, but Father Ralph's bravura performance in this one rivals the landscape for originality. Father Ralph is simply yummy. . . . And, of course, he is out of the running, which gives the author plenty of opportunity to dangle him as an erotic tease." In her Publishers Weekly interview, McCullough said, "Actually, Ralph was supposed to be a minor character. Yet, when I was planning it in my head I was aware I didn't have a dominant male lead. The minute the priest walked into the book I said, 'Ah ha, this is it. This is the male character I've lacked!' But I had to keep him in the story and, logically, he didn't belong in it. The only way I could do it was to involve him emotionally with Meggie, the only woman available. It worked beautifully because again it made more interesting reading to have a love that couldn't be fulfilled. It kept the reader going."

The solid success of The Thorn Birds made it almost inevitable that McCullough's next books would be compared with it. "When you produce a book which is well loved—and people do love it—it's a very hard book to bury," noted the author in the London Times. Although she believes "a lot of writers keep feeding people the same book," McCullough stated in a New York Times Book Review interview with Edwin McDowell that she had "decided long ago . . . to have a bash at different kinds of books." Her third novel, An Indecent Obsession, certainly differs from its predecessor in many ways; while The Thorn Birds spans three continents and most of a century, An Indecent Obsession is set entirely within the confines of a ward of a South Pacific army hospital near the end of World War II. The drama centers on the tension between Honour Langtry, Ward X's nurse, and her group of "troppo" patients—soldiers who have snapped under the strain of tropical jungle fighting. Many reviewers characterized An Indecent Obsession as a more serious work than The Thorn Birds.

Despite these differences, Chicago Tribune Book World reviewer Julia M. Ehresmann found that An Indecent Obsession "has McCullough's fingerprints all over it." Comparing the themes of Tim, The Thorn Birds, and An Indecent Obsession, Ehresmann observed that "in these times when personal gratification is valued so highly, Colleen McCullough is writing about old-time moral dilemmas and largely discarded qualities: self-denial, self-control, and notions of duty, honor, and love as self-displacing virtues." Joanne Greenberg similarly said in the New York Times Book Review that An Indecent Obsession is "a very old-fashioned novel, with its focus on the conflict between duty and love, a rare concern in contemporary fiction." McCullough's well-drawn characterizations and powerfully evoked setting once again gained praise from many critics, with Greenberg crediting the author's "attention to detail" as the factor that "makes one feel the discomfort of the sweltering tropical nights as well as appreciate the awesome beauty of the sea, the torrential rains and the sunsets." Finally, in his Washington Post Book World article, William A. Nolen addressed "the question a lot of potential readers will want answered: Is An Indecent Obsession as good as McCullough's The Thorn Birds? The question can't be answered. It's like asking if a nice, ripe orange is as tasty as a nice, ripe apple; it depends on your mood and your taste buds. I enjoyed both books, but I thought An Indecent Obsession was more intriguing, more thought provoking, than was The Thorn Birds."

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, however, found fault with the book in the New York Times. "We turn the pages," he acknowledged. "I do not mean to make light of Colleen McCullough's already best-selling successor to her gigantically successful The Thorn Birds. . . . McCullough is a natural story-teller, more than merely clever at getting up a head of emotional steam. . . . But if [she] expects to be taken seriously as a novelist—and, to judge from the improvement of this book over The Thorn Birds, there's no reason why she shouldn't be—she's going to have to write just a little less slickly." McCullough's glibness, continued Lehmann-Haupt, "makes one want to say that An Indecent Obsession is merely a gilded version of what I believe teen-age readers used to refer to as a nurse book. It isn't really. But far too often, its faults reduce it to medical soap opera."

In 1990, after a decade of research, McCullough embarked on a series of novels set in ancient Rome. The first volume in the series, The First Man in Rome, focuses on Gaius Marius and his feud with his brother-in-law, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The second volume, The Grass Crown, deals mainly with handsome and ambitious Sulla as he vies for control over Rome.Fortune's Favorites, the third installment, picks up Sulla's story as he grows old and dies; the story then turns to the rise of the younger generation of Roman power-seekers: Pompey, Crassus, and Julius Caesar. 1996's Caesar's Women, the fourth installment, focuses on Caesar's rise to power between 68 and 58 B.C., and Caesar: Let the Dice Fly takes the story to 48 B.C. The October Horse, which completes McCullough's Roman saga, finds Octavian rising to manhood while Caesar's Rome grows too large for one man to govern. All of the series' volumes feature meticulous details about life in ancient Rome, and portray the timeless traits of men vying for power—lust, deception, and greed—in massive scope, with each volume typically comprising nine hundred pages.

Critics of McCullough's "Roman" series have praised her eye for detail, her research, and her storytelling powers, while noting that the sheer size and scope of the stories sometimes get in the way of character development. For instance, Washington Post Book World contributor Judith Tarr remarked that the author's ambition with the series is "laudable" but "a bit too ambitious. The result is often a loss of focus and a failure of Story in the face of History." Reviewing Fortune's Favorites in the Chicago Tribune Books, Geoffrey Johnson commented: "So intent is McCullough on including every iota of Roman history that occurred during the 14-year span of her novel that she relegates major events to a paragraph, and much of the novel seems to take place in the wings." However, Johnson praised the author for her handling of certain events and characters in the novel, calling it "artfully composed fiction." In his New York Times Book Review piece on Caesar: Let the Dice Fly, Allen Lincoln described Julius Caesar as "essentially the same character one recalls from his . . . memoirs—brilliant, ambitious, ruthless and fascinating," while Booklist reviewer Kathleen Hughes was equally laudatory about McCullough's characterizations in The October Horse. Praising the final novel's combination of "political intrigue, romance, drama, and war," Hughes cited the author's "seemingly effortless evocation of the excitement and turmoil" that characterized the wanning Republic under Emperor Octavian.

Centered, like The Thorn Birds and The Touch on the history of her native Australia, McCullough's husband's family serves as a basis for her 2000 novel Morgan's Run. The novel's hero, Richard Morgan, suffers a string of personal tragedies and then becomes the victim of a set-up, culminating in his deportation as one of the first prisoners sent to the Botany Bay penal colony. Though his many misfortunes would defeat a lesser man, Richard rises to the occasion as a leader and a man of principle under the most trying circumstances. Set in the late eighteenth century, the novel reveals how the vicissitudes of war and politics between England, America, and Australia affect one individual. "McCullough's narrative skills are fully displayed in this intricately researched, passionate epic," observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who added that the book unfolds "a complex, consistently entertaining narrative." In the New York Times Book Review, Peter Bricklebank voiced reservations about the "wholly noble" protagonist, feeling that Richard Morgan shows a "lack of compelling emotions." Library Journal correspondent Nancy Pearl also felt that Richard is "the major weakness of the novel."

Consistently praised for her strong storytelling skills and with a strong reader following, McCullough responds to the occasional criticism of her work calmly. "Only time tells," she philosophized in her interview with Cassill. "If it lasts, it's good literature. If it dies, it's just another book. Very often the books the critics like today are gone tomorrow." She explained that the greatest change her phenomenal success has wrought in her life has been a feeling of increased security and freedom. The owner of several homes, she spends much of her time on tiny Norfolk Island, located some one thousand miles off the east coast of Australia and inhabited mostly by descendants of the Bounty mutineers. Life there suits McCullough perfectly. "It isn't what you are, it's who you are in a place like this," she told Toomey in the London Times, "It's incredibly beautiful and peaceful and remote. . . . I get a heck of a lot of work done because there is nothing much else to do."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 27, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

DeMarr, Mary Jean, Colleen McCullough: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.

Hjerter, Kathleen G., Doubly Gifted: The Author as Visual Artist, Harry N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1986.

McCullough, Colleen, Tim, Harper (New York, NY), 1974.

PERIODICALS

America, August 10, 1974, Margaret Ferrari, review of Tim.

Atlantic, June, 1977, Amanda Heller, review of The Thorn Birds.

Best Sellers, May 15, 1974.

Booklist, July, 2000, Diana Tixier Herald, review of Morgan's Run, p. 1975; October 15, 2002, Kathleen Hughes, review of The October Horse, p. 363; October 15, 2003, Patty Engelmann, review of The Touch, p. 357.

Chicago Tribune Book World, October 11, 1981, Julia M. Ehresmann, review of An Indecent Obsession.

Christian Century, March 31, 1982.

Entertainment Weekly, November 28, 2003, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of The Touch, p. 129.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2003, review of The Touch, p. 1149.

Library Journal, August, 2000, Nancy Pearl, review of Morgan's Run, p. 154; November 1, 2003, Kathy Piehl, review of The Touch, p. 125; April 15, 2004, Barbara Valle, review of The Touch, p. 148.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 25, 1981.

National Observer, June 20, 1977.

New Leader, July 4, 1977.

Newsweek, April 25, 1977.

New York Times, May 2, 1977; March 25, 1979; September 17, 1981; October 29, 1981; March 26, 1983; March 27, 1983.

New York Times Book Review, April 21, 1974; May 8, 1977; October 25, 1981; November 15, 1981; February 1, 1998, Allen Lincoln, review of Caesar: Let the Dice Fly, p. 18; October 22, 2000, Peter Bricklebank, review of Morgan's Run.

People, May 7, 1984; November 27, 2000.

Publishers Weekly, March 7, 1977; February 22, 1980; February 18, 1984; October 16, 1995, p. 42; July 24, 2000, review of Morgan's Run, p. 67; October 27, 2003, review of The Touch, p. 42; November 4, 2003, review of The October Horse, p. 62.

Saturday Review, April 16, 1977.

Time, May 9, 1977; May 20, 1985, Paul Gray, review of The Thorn Birds.

Times (London, England), November 30, 1981.

Times Literary Supplement, October 7, 1977; December 11, 1981.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 31, 1993, Geoffrey Johnson, review of Fortune's Favorites, p. 3.

Village Voice, March 28, 1977, Eliot Fremont-Smith, review of The Thorn Birds.

Washington Post, April 24, 1977; November 26, 1981; March 27, 1983.

Washington Post Book World, October 11, 1981; January 20, 1985; April 28, 1985; November 21, 1993, p. 4.

Writer's Digest, March, 1980.*