Lindsay, Joan
Entry updated 31 July 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1896-1984) Australian painter and author; she was born Joan à Beckett Weigall into an Australian family prominent in the arts. Of some interest, for its spoofing of the Fantastic Voyage and of the Lost Race tale, is Through Darkest Pondelayo: An Account of the Adventures of Two English Ladies on a Cannibal Island (1936) as by Serena Livingstone-Stanley. Just as the publication of an excised framing narrative clarified the generic nature of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), the fantastic interest in Lindsay's second novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock (F W Cheshire, 1967), was demonstrated through the publication of the eighteenth and last chapter of the book as The Secret of Hanging Rock (anth 1987 chap), with commentary by Yvonne Rousseau and others. Here the disappearance of various protagonists is initiated by the arrival of a stranger, whom the girls strip; after metamorphosing into a lizard, she leads two of them through a crack in the rock into another Dimension. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), directed by Peter Weir, is based solely on the first-published version. [JC]
Joan à Beckett Weigall Lindsay
born St Kilda, Victoria: 16 November 1896
died Melbourne, Victoria: 23 December 1984
works
- Through Darkest Pondelayo: An Account of the Adventures of Two English Ladies on a Cannibal Island (London: Chatto and Windus, 1936) as by Serena Livingstone-Stanley [hb/]
- Picnic at Hanging Rock (Melbourne, Victoria: F W Cheshire, 1967) [hb/]
- The Secret of Hanging Rock (Sydney, New South Wales: Angus and Robertson, 1987) [anth: chap: containing the cut final chapter of the above plus comments by Yvonne Rousseau and others: pb/Frederick McCubbin, "Lost"]
about the author
- Yvonne Rousseau. The Murders at Hanging Rock (Fitzroy, Victoria: Scribe Publications, 1980) [nonfiction: pb/film still from Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)]
- Yvonne Rousseau. The Murders at Hanging Rock (Melbourne, Victoria: Macmillan/Sun Books, 1988) [nonfiction: exp of the above with introduction by John Taylor: pb/from William Ford's "Picnic Party at Hanging Rock" (1875)]
- Yvonne Rousseau. The Murders at Hanging Rock (Reading, Berkshire: Ansible Editions, 2016) [nonfiction: ebook: further exp of the above with addition of "A Commentary on Chapter Eighteen": na/from William Ford's "Picnic Party at Hanging Rock" (1875)]
- Yvonne Rousseau. The Murders at Hanging Rock (Melbourne, Victoria: Macmillan/Sun Books, 1988) [nonfiction: exp of the above with introduction by John Taylor: pb/from William Ford's "Picnic Party at Hanging Rock" (1875)]
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