For Love Alone

Set in Sydney and London in the 1930s, For Love Alone is the story of Teresa Hawkins, an intelligent, ardent young woman, and her search for the ideal passion of love. She attempts to engage the feelings of the unworthy Jonathan Crow, an intellectual young man and advocate of free love, and follows him to London after four years of severe self-sacrifice. In London the mediocrity, corruption and egoistic shallowness of Crow gradually becomes obvious. With the help of James Quick, however, a devoted older man who takes Teresa to live with him, she is able to abandon her idealised vision. After a brief interlude with Quick's friend, Harry Girton, Teresa advances to a new, more detached appreciation of passion, and renews her commitment to Quick in full awareness of the compromises that love imposes.

First published in 1944, MUP presents this new edition as part of its Miegunyah Modern Library series.

About the Author

Christina Stead was born and educated in Australia, but spent the greater part of her life abroad. Until 1965 none of her novels were published in Australia, and critical appreciation of her work has been fitful, only winning a general following after the 1965 publication of The Man Who Loved Children.

The New York Times Book Review acclaimed her as 'one of the most distinguished novelists writing in English'.