page_title: Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)
section_title: Conception
hierarchical_section_title: Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel) / Conception
context_page_description: Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay. Set in 1900, it is about a group of female students at an Australian girls' boarding school who vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine's Day picnic, and the effects the disappearances have on the school and local community. The novel was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was reprinted by Penguin in 1975. It is widely considered by critics to be one of the best Australian novels.
  Although the events depicted in the novel are entirely fictional, it is framed as though it were a true story, corroborated by ambiguous pseudohistorical references. Its irresolute conclusion has sparked significant public, critical, and scholarly analysis, and the narrative has become a part of Australia's national folklore as a result. Lindsay claimed to have written the novel over two weeks at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, after having successive dreams of the narrated events.
context_section_description: Lindsay claimed to have written the novel based on an idea she had in a dream. In a 2017 article in The Age, it was noted: "The dream had centred on a summer picnic at a place called Hanging Rock, which Joan knew well from her childhood holidays. Joan told Rae [her housekeeper] that the dream had felt so real that when she awoke at 7.30am, she could still feel the hot summer breeze blowing through the gum trees and she could still hear the peals of laughter and conversation of the people she'd imagined, and their gaiety and lightness of spirit as they set out on their joyful picnic expedition."
  According to her housekeeper at the time, the events of the novel were dreamt by Lindsay successively. Several years after the publication of the novel, Lindsay would recount the experience of writing it as such: "Picnic at Hanging Rock really was an experience to write, because I was just impossible when I was writing it. I just sort of thought about it all night and in the morning I would go straight up and sit on the floor, papers all around me, and just write like a demon!"
  The novel was written over a total of two weeks at Lindsay's home in Mulberry Hill. In thinking of a title, Lindsay recalled the painting At the Hanging Rock by William Ford, which had hung in her husband Daryl's office at the National Gallery of Victoria, and chose to incorporate it into the title as it was "simple and pretty, and belied the horrors hidden within." In an interview after Lindsay's death, academic Terrence O'Neill, who had befriended Lindsay, remarked the supernatural elements of the novel: "It was clear that [Joan] was interested in Spiritualism, and longed for some spiritual dimension in her life, but she didn't feel safe bringing that side of her out in front of her husband. So I think she channelled it into her writing. I know she was very interested in Arthur Conan Doyle and his belief in and theories about Spiritualism, nature and the existence of spirits."
  The novel was imported for sale in the United States, and would receive its first publication there in 2014 by Penguin Random House. In the United Kingdom, the novel was printed in several editions by Vintage, in 1998 and 2013.
caption: At the Hanging Rock by William Ford (1875) was the basis of the novel's title; in addition to her writing, Lindsay was also a professional painter and influenced by visual art.[a]
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