Marian Favel Clair Eldridge (1 February 1936 – 14 February 1997) was an Australian short story writer and book reviewer.

Biography

Marian Favel Clair Stockfeld was born in Melbourne, Victoria on 1 February 1936. She grew up on her parents' property outside

Lancefield Lancefield is a town in the Shire of Macedon Ranges local government area in Victoria, Australia north of the state capital, Melbourne and had a population of 2,743 at the 2021 census. History The area was used by the indigenous aborigin ...

. Eldridge graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1957 with a BA and then taught high school English and History in Traralgon and in Canberra. She was a member of the "Canberra Seven" or "Canberra Seven Writers" along with

Marion Halligan Marion Mildred Halligan AM (born 1940) is an Australian writer and novelist. She was born and educated in Newcastle, New South Wales, and worked as a school teacher and journalist before publishing her first short stories. Halligan has served a ...

, Dorothy Johnston,

Margaret Barbalet Margaret Evelyn Barbalet (born 1949) is an Australian novelist, historian and diplomat. Biography Born Margaret Evelyn Hardy in Adelaide, South Australia, Barbalet grew up in Tasmania. She completed a Master of Arts in history at the Univ ...

Sara Dowse Sara Dowse (born 12 November 1938) is an American-born Australian feminist, author, critic, social commentator, and visual artist. Her novels include ''Schemetime'' published in 1990, ''Sapphires'', and ''As the Lonely Fly'', and she has contribu ...

, Suzanne Edgar and Dorothy Horsfield, who met to critique and encourage each other's writing. Her stories were published in Australian literary journals, including ''Coast to Coast'', '' Westerly'', ''Festival'' and ''Australian Voices''. She wrote book reviews for ''

Australian Book Review ''Australian Book Review'' is an Australian arts and literary review. Created in 1961, ''ABR'' is an independent non-profit organisation that publishes articles, reviews, commentaries, essays, and new writing. The aims of the magazine are 'to ...

'' and '' The Canberra Times''.

Selected works

Short story collections

* ''Walking the Dog'' (1984) * ''The Woman at the Window'' (1989) * ''The Wild Sweet Flowers: The Alvie Skerritt Stories'' (1994)

Novel

* ''Springfield'' (1992)

Awards and recognition

Eldridge was joint winner of the 1981 Canberra Times National Short Story Competition and won the 1992 ACT Literary Award and was runner-up for the same award the following year. Her anthology, ''The Woman at the Window'', was highly commended in the 1990

Barbara Ramsden Award The Barbara Ramsden Award was administered by Fellowship of Australian Writers and awarded annually to an author and editor in recognition of the efforts of both parties to produce a quality fiction or non-fiction book. The winners receive a memo ...

, while ''The Wild Sweet Flowers'' won the NSW International Year of the Family Award in 1994.

Death and legacy

Eldridge died on 14 February 1997 in Canberra. Eldridge Crescent in the Canberra suburb of

Garran Garran is a suburb in the Woden district of Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory. Garran was named after Sir Robert Garran who made numerous contributions to the development of higher education in Canberra. The streets in Garran are na ...

was named in her honour. Her papers are held in the National Library of Australia.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eldridge, Marian 1936 births 1997 deaths 20th-century Australian women writers University of Melbourne alumni 20th-century Australian short story writers Australian literary critics Australian women literary critics