The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift

‘In those days the end of the morning was always marked by the quarry whistle blowing the noon knock-off.

Since everybody was out of bed very early, morning then was a long time, or even, if you came to think about it, a round time – symmetrical anyway, and contained under a thin, radiant, dome shaped cover…’

During the years of the Great Depression, Cressida Morley and her eccentric family live in a weatherboard cottage on the edge of a wild beach. Outsiders in their small working-class community, they rant and argue and read books and play music and never feel themselves to be poor. Yet as Cressida moves beyond childhood, she starts to outgrow the place that once seemed the centre of the world. As she plans her escape, the only question is: who will she become?

The End of the Morning is the final and unfinished autobiographical novel by Charmian Clift. Published here for the first time, it is the book that Clift herself regarded as her most significant work. Although the author did not live to complete it, the typescript left among her papers was fully revised and stands alone as a novella. It is published here alongside a new selection of Clift’s essays and an afterword from her biographer Nadia Wheatley.

‘The End of the Morning is full of feeling, animated by that formless, aching questioning of childhood, and a fascinating glimpse of the forces that shaped Clift as a person and a writer.’ – Fiona Wright

‘Reading her, even a glimpsed paragraph of her, is like quaffing the finest champagne on earth.’ – Peter Craven, Sydney Morning Herald

‘Forthright, funny and with an indefinable flair, Charmian Clift’s writing plays second fiddle to nobody.’ – Richard Cotter, Sydney Arts Guide

About the Author: Charmian Clift was born in the coastal town of Kiama, New South Wales, on 31 August 1923. After serving as a lieutenant in the Australian Army, she joined the staff of the Melbourne Argus newspaper, and in 1947 married fellow journalist George Johnston., Clift wrote the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me A Lotus, and her two novels, Honour’s Mimic and Walk to the Paradise Gardens. Charmian Clift began writing a weekly column that appeared in the Melbourne Herald and the Sydney Morning Herald. Charmian Clift died in 1969. Nadia Wheatley is the editor of Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected essays of Charmian Clift and author of The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Described by critic Peter Craven as ‘ one of the greatest Australian biographies’, this was the Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 2001, and won the NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize (2002). After twenty years it remains the classic account of the life and work of this transformational Australian writer.

01 Apr 2024

The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift ISBN 9781742238166