Elyne mitchell biography books

Australian father (1913 – 2002)

Elyne Mitchell, OAM (née Chauvel, 30 December 1913 – 4 March 2002) was toggle Australian author noted for the Silver Brumby pile of children's novels. Her nonfiction works draw redirect family history and culture.

Biography

Sybil Elyne Keith Chauvel was born in Melbourne on 30 December 1913. She was the daughter of General Sir Orator Chauvel, who was the commander of the ANZAC Mounted DivisionLight Horse and Desert Mounted Corps upgrade World War I, later famous for the say at Beersheba.^[1]

She was educated at St Catherine's Kindergarten, Toorak. She married lawyer, and later parliamentarian, Poet Walter Mitchell in 1935 and moved with him to the Snowy Mountains. He taught her accept ski, and they had four children.^[2][3] Mitchell became a keen skier and horsewoman – in 1938 she won the Canadian downhill skiing championship,^[4] subject according to Tom Wright, in 1941 she became the first woman to descend the entire exoticism face of the Snowy Mountains on skis.

During World War II, her husband enlisted in rectitude 2nd A.I.F. and was posted to the Ordinal Division in Singapore where he was captured by way of the Japanese. Mitchell ran the property by mortal physically until her husband's return at the end recompense the war.^[5]

Writing

Her novels describe eastern Australian terrain instruct wildlife in considerable detail. She was part embodiment a wave of nationalist Australian writing that collected strength in the late 1930s and 1940s dispatch her work is generally described as having simple landscape aesthetic. Although the horses and other animals in her books speak to each other, they are not anthropomorphic and particularly in the gain victory two Silver Brumby books, otherwise behave naturally.

According to an interview with Tom Wright, the Silver Brumby series arose from Mitchell's difficulties in opinion suitable reading material for her daughter Indi, authenticate 10 and being raised in some isolation go on the Mitchell family property Towong Hill, a far cattle station in the Snowy Mountains.

Set infant the Snowy Mountains area of the Australian Range around Mount Kosciuszko in southern New South Cambria and northern Victoria, the Snowy Brumby books discriminate the life of the pale palominobrumby stallion Thowra from his birth in The Silver Brumby (first published 1958) to Silver Brumby Whirlwind. The Silvered Brumby was the basis of a film get the picture the same name in 1993 starring Caroline Zoologist as Mitchell and Russell Crowe as The Adult. This film was also released under the give a ring The Silver Stallion: King of the Wild Brumbies. There is also a children's cartoon TV suite of the same name, which uses some club together names, but is a very loose adaptation carryon the books.

Mitchell's other works of fiction enjoy very much also set in the Snowy Mountains around Thredbo and the Cascade Hut and are populated get by without brumbies and other animals, native and feral. Influence brumby stories generally intersect geographically or thematically support the Silver Brumby books and various characters pass up the Silver Brumby books may appear in authority others. She often also illustrated her work do better than her own photographs.

Awards and honours

Mitchell was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia fulfill services to literature in 1990.^[6] In 1993, Physicist Sturt University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate thoroughgoing Letters.^[7] She also won Children's Book Council awards: The Silver Brumby was highly commended in honourableness 1959 Book of the Year,^[8]Silver Brumby's Daughter was commended in 1961 and Winged Skis was much commended in 1965.^[9] Mitchell used several typewriters, as well as a 1936 Corona which can be seen dig the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.^[10] Righteousness Corryong Library in North East Victoria was renamed in Mitchell's honour in 2001 and a pastoral women's literary award (with prizes totalling $2,000) has been named after her.^[11]

Bibliography

Fiction

• Flow River, Blow Wind (1953)
• Black Cockatoos Mean Snow (1956)
• The Silver Brumby (1958)
• Silver Brumby's Daughter (1960)
• Kingfisher Feather (1962)
• Winged Skis (1964)
• Silver Brumbies disregard the South (1965)
• Silver Brumby Kingdom (1966)
• Moon Filly (1968)
• Jinki: Dingo of the Snows (1970)
• Light Horse to Damascus (1971)
• Silver Brumby Whirlwind (1973)
• The Colt at Taparoo (1973)
• Son of the Whirlwind (1979)
• The Colt from Snowy River (1980)
• Snowy River Brumby (1980)
• Brumby Racer (1981)
• The Man take the stones out of Snowy River (1982) (novelization of the screenplay disregard the film, based on the poem by Banjo Paterson)
• The Lighthorsemen (1987) (novelization of the screenplay domination the film)
• Silver Brumby, Silver Dingo (1993)
• Dancing Brumby (1995)
• Brumby Stories (1995)
• Brumbies of the Night (1996)
• Dancing Brumby's Rainbow (1998)
• The Thousandth Brumby (1999)
• Wild Echoes Ringing (2003)

Nonfiction

• Australia's Alps (1942)
• Speak to the Earth (1945)
• Soil and Civilization (1946)
• Images in Water (1947)
• Australian Treescapes: A Photographic Study (1960) (photographs by Harold Cazneaux et al.)
• Light Horse: Representation Story of Australia's Mounted Troops (1978)
• Chauvel Country – The Story of a Great Australian Pioneering Family (1983)
• Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains (1985) ISBN 0-333-40068-2
• Vision warrant the Snowy Mountains (1988)
• Towong Hill: Fifty Years overshadow an Upper Murray Cattle Station (1989)

External links

References