Australia Felix is a novel by Henry Handel Richardson, the pseudonym used by Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, (3 January 1870 - 20 March 1946) who was an Australian author. She took the name "Henry Handel" because at that time, many people did not take women's writing seriously, so she used a male name. Australia Felix is without question Henry Handel Richardson's most important work, and Richard Mahony, a complex portrayal of Richardson's own father, is the first substantial character in Australian fiction. Richardson's brilliant analysis of human inadequacy, of the gulf between the ideal...