Other names Thelma Korting Died October 8, 1995 Role Short story writer | Name Thelma Forshaw Occupation Writer, journalist | |
Full Name Thelma Honora Forshaw Born 1 August 1923 ( 1923-08-01 ) Glebe Point, New South Wales, Australia Known for An Affair of Clowns (1967) | ||
Thelma Honora Forshaw or Thelma Körting (1 August 1923 – 8 October 1995) was an Australian short story writer and journalist. In 1967 she wrote a largely autobiographical collection of short stories, An Affair of Clowns. As a journalist she worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Bulletin (since defunct), Meanjin, Nation, and Quadrant. Forshaw died on 8 October 1995 of a stroke in her sleep, aged 72.
Biography
Thelma Honora Forshaw was born on 1 August 1923 at Glebe Point – a suburb of Sydney. Her father, Leslie Alfred Forshaw (1901–1935), was a labourer and part-time boxer, her mother was Mary Winifred Forshaw (née Burke, 1889–1949), and her two younger brothers are Walter and Leslie junior. From August 1935 after her father's death, the family lived with relatives in Annandale. Forshaw was educated at St Michael's Catholic Primary School in Stanmore and St Fiacre's Primary School in Leichardt. At the age of 14 years she wrote a poem, "Idyll of a Summer Noon", which was published in The Sydney Morning Herald in February 1938. Forshaw undertook tertiary studies at Sydney Teachers' College.
During World War II, on 15 April 1942, Forshaw enlisted in the WAAAF and was honourably discharged as an Aircraftwoman on 1 March 1943. She worked as a secretary and an advertising writer before marrying George Korting, an Austrian refugee, in 1948. In January 1951, using her married name, Thelma Korting, she wrote "This Veil Wore Me!" in The Argus Subsequently she worked as a freelance writer and book reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Bulletin (since defunct), Meanjin, Nation, and Quadrant, amongst other publications.
Her short stories appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. In 1967, a collection of her short stories, An Affair of Clowns, was published by Angus & Robertson. Stephen Torre, in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009), described the book's first section, "Some Customs of My Clan" as "stories about a working-class Irish Catholic family narrated by a daughter, an aspiring writer. The manners of the Sydney 'clan' include hard drinking, gambling, ferocious gossiping and scandal-mongering, fighting and loving". These stories were notable for their realistic characters set within her gritty, penetrating and humorous depictions of Australian city life in the first half of the 20th century, with a focus on outsiders, working class lifestyles and the migrant experience.
In January 1972 Forshaw wrote a review of Germaine Greer's book, The Female Eunuch (1970), for The Age which "has stirred up a considerable controversy". According to Keith Dunstan in the book, The Best Australian Profiles (2004), this review was "[t]he most famous ... [Forshaw] described [The Female Eunuch] as 'the orchestrated over-the-back-fence grizzle ... based on the curious fancy ... we were all men, and then some fiend castrated half of us'". Forshaw compared herself to Greer: "I'm not a middle-class lady defending her domain. My parents were working class ... I'm a housewife because I want to, I write because I want to, I love my husband who is a male, chauvinist pig and I love my two children". Thelma Forshaw died on 8 October 1995 of a stroke in her sleep, aged 72, and was survived by her husband George and their children Helene and Grea.