Editing Christina Stead (section)

==Works==
Stead wrote 12 novels and published a large number of articles on different subjects in her lifetime. A volume of short stories was published after her death. She taught "Workshop in the Novel" at [[New York University]] in 1943 and 1944, and also worked as a [[Hollywood, Los Angeles|Hollywood]] screenwriter in the 1940s,<ref name=bwcs /> contributing to the ''[[Madame Curie (film)|Madame Curie]]'' biopic and the [[John Ford]] and [[John Wayne]] war movie, ''[[They Were Expendable]]''.<ref name=bwcs /> Her first novel, ''Seven Poor Men of Sydney'' (1934), dealt with the lives of radicals and dockworkers, but she was not a practitioner of [[social realism]]. Stead's best-known novel, titled ''[[The Man Who Loved Children]],'' is largely based on her own childhood, and was first published in 1940. It was not until the poet [[Randall Jarrell]] wrote the introduction for a new American edition in 1965 and her New York publisher convinced her to change the setting from Sydney to Washington,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Corkhill|first=Anna|date=Autumn 2018|title=5 Australian Literary Classics|journal=SL Magazine|volume=11|issue=1|pages=8}}</ref> that the novel began to receive a larger audience. In 2005, the magazine ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' included this work in their "100 Best Novels from 1923–2005",<ref name=time>{{cite magazine|last=Lacayo |first=Richard |url=http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_man_who_loved_children,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051022124711/http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,the_man_who_loved_children,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=22 October 2005 |title=All Time 100 Novels |magazine=Time |date=16 October 2005 |access-date=5 February 2011}}</ref> and in 2010 American author [[Jonathan Franzen]] hailed the novel as a "masterpiece" in the ''[[New York Times]]''.<ref>{{Cite news | url=http://nyti.ms/aAdEvl | title=Rereading 'The Man Who Loved Children'| newspaper=[[New York Times]]| date=3 June 2010| last1=Franzen| first1=Jonathan}}</ref> Stead's ''[[Letty Fox: Her Luck]]'', often regarded as an equally fine novel, was officially banned in Australia for several years because it was considered amoral and salacious.<ref name=lfban>{{cite web|url=http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/viewFile/22/33 |title=The Totally Incredible Obscenity of ''Letty Fox'' |access-date=5 February 2011}}</ref>

Stead set one of her two British novels, ''Cotters' England,'' partly in [[Gateshead]] (called Bridgehead in the novel). She was in [[Newcastle upon Tyne]] in the summer of 1949, accompanied by her friend Anne Dooley (née Kelly), a local woman, who was the model for Nellie Cotter, the extraordinary heroine of the book. Anne was no doubt responsible for Stead's reasonable attempt at conveying the local accent. Her letters indicate that she had taken on Tyneside speech and become deeply concerned with the people around her. The American title of the book is ''Dark Places of the Heart''.