| Elyne Mitchell |
Website Links For Mitchell |
Information AboutElyne Mitchell |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ELYNE MITCHELL | |
| 1913 births | |
| mitchell, elyne | |
| 2002 deaths | |
| australian childrens writers | |
| recipients of the order of australia medal | |
| australian women writers | |
|
Her novels describe eastern Australian terrain and wildlife in considerable detail. She was part of a wave of Nationalist Australian writing in that gathered strength in the late 1930s and 1940s and her work is generally described as having a landscape aesthetic. Although the horses and other animals in her books speak to each other, they are not Anthropomorphic and particularly in the first two Silver Brumby books, otherwise behave naturally. Her nonfiction works draw on family history and culture. Elyne Mitchell was the daughter of General Sir Henry George (Harry) Chauvel , who was the commander of the ANZAC Mounted Division Light Horse and Desert Mounted Corps in World War I famous for the charge at Beersheba . She married lawyer, and later parliamentarian, Thomas Walter Mitchell, and moved with him to the mountains. He taught her to ski, and they had four children - Walter Harry, John, Honnor, and Indi. According to an interview with Tom Wright, the "Silver Brumby" series arose from Mrs Mitchell's difficulties in finding suitable reading material for her daughter Indi, then 10 and being raised in some isolation on the Mitchell family property Towong Hill, a remote Cattle Station in the Snowy Mountains . Elyne Mitchell was a keen skier and horsewoman - in 1938 she won the Canadian downhill skiing championship, and according to Tom Wright, in 1941 she became the first woman to descend on skis the entire western face of the Snowy Mountains. Mrs Mitchell was awarded the Medal of the Order Of Australia for services to literature in 1988 and an Honorary Doctorate Of Letters from Charles Sturt University in 1993. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fiction
Nonfiction
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|