This seminar will address the story of Charmian Clift and George Johnston, a power couple of Australian literature in the mid-20th century, who are the focus of the book Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964 (Monash University Publishing, 2018). Clift was a pioneering travel writer, novelist, journalist and feminist, whose books and newspaper columns helped transform the lives of a generation of Australian women. Johnston was a celebrated war correspondent who went on to become a great novelist. On the idyllic Greek island of Hydra in the 1950s and 60s, in company with Leonard Cohen and other luminaries, they wrote some of their best work – as their personal worlds gradually fell apart. Clift died in her mid-40s in 1969, from a self-administered overdose of barbiturates. Johnston was dead a year later.
Clift and Johnston were devoted to their writing. It brought them considerable success and fame, which ultimately, came at a high price. This seminar will ask, was it worth it? And what are the costs of a life dedicated to creativity and personal liberty?