Charmian Clift
Charmian Clift (30 August 19238 July 1969) was an Australian writer and essayist. She was the second wife and literary collaborator of George Johnston. Biography. Clift was born in Kiama, New South Wales in 1923. She married George Johnston in 1947. They had three children, the eldest of whom was the poet Martin Johnston. After Clift and Johnston's collaboration "High Valley" (1949) won them recognition as writers, they left Australia with their young family, working in London before relocating to the Greek island of Hydra to try living by the pen. She met the songwriter Leonard Cohen  whilst there in 1960. Johnston returned to Australia to receive the accolades of his Miles Franklin Award-winner "My Brother Jack". Clift moved back to Sydney with their children in 1964, after which her memoirs "Mermaid Singing" and "Peel Me a Lotus" and her novel "Honour's Mimic" became successes. She was also well known for the 240 essays she wrote between 1964 and 1969 for "The Sydney Morning Herald" and "The Herald" in Melbourne. They were collected in the books "Images in Aspic" and "The World of Charmian Clift". In the meantime, Clift and Johnston's marriage was disintegrating  under the pressures of their drinking habits and the problems their children had settling into life in Sydney. On 8 July 1969, the eve of the publication of Johnston's novel "Clean Straw for Nothing", Clift committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates in Mosman, a Sydney suburb. Academics Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell suggest in their 2018 book "Half the Perfect World" that it was the impending publication of Johnston's novel, which Clift knew would lay bare her infidelities whilst on the island of Hydra, which prompted her to suicide. In her posthumously published article "My Husband  George" in that month's edition of "POL" magazine, she wrote: Her ashes were later scattered in the rose garden of the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in Sydney.