The Rise

Deeply troubled by social injustice, Pamela became an active member of the Labour Party, writing newsletters and marching in protests against the Spanish Civil War and Franco. In 1935 she met an Australian journalist, Gordon Neil Stewart, whom she married in 1936; her mother, Amy, lived with them after the wedding. Neil and Pamela travelled together in France just before the war (where Neil had lived for a few years after leaving Australia) and she continued to write short stories and novels. Her most memorable fiction in these years is The Monument (1938), a political novel sympathetic to the working class and passionately critical of prejudice, particularly that directed against Jews, and the first novel in her ‘Helena’ trilogy, Too Dear for My Possessing (named for one of the central characters). It is set in Bruges, a city she dearly loved.

Art history · Injustice · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term) · Spanish Civil War · Trilogy · Australian History and Society · Classics · History · Law