Hazel Rowley (1951-2011)

Hazel Rowley, the Australian biographer, has died in New York at the age of 59. Rowley was born in Lodon and migrated to Adelaide, South Australia, with her family at the age of 8. She achieved a PhD in French from the University of Adelaide before moving to Melbourne and lecturing at Deakin University. She is probably best-known in this country for her biography Christina Stead, published back in 1993. Following this publication, she moved to the US where she tackled, with much success and praise, a biography of

Richard Wright in 2001, and then Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, in 2005, before writing her most recent biography of the Roosevelts, Franklin & Eleanor. She was due to tour Australia celebrating the publication of this book, before she suffered a series of strokes and a heart attack that led to her death. She will be greatly missed.