What do you think?
Rate this book
Prelude to Christopher
First published in 1934, this dramatic novel covers four days following a car crash where a doctor is critically injured, and the women around him struggle with their hopes, inhibitions and knowledge.
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
6 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Eleanor Dark
22 books17 followersEleanor Dark (1901 - 1985) was an Australian author, most known for her historical novel The Timeless Land (1941), which became a bestseller in Australia and the USA.
Dark was born on 26 August 1901 at Croydon, Sydney, second of three children of Sydney-born parents Dowell O’Reilly, schoolteacher and author, and his wife Eleanor Grace, née McCulloch, who died in 1914 after an unhappy marriage and a period of ill health. Small, dark and elfin, 'Pixie', as she was known to her family, attended several private schools before boarding at Redlands, Neutral Bay, from 1916 to 1920.
Although Pixie had written verse from the age of 7, as the family’s finances grew tighter her hopes of university and a writing career faded. After attending Stott & Hoare’s Business College, she worked as a stenographer for a firm of solicitors, Makinson, Plunkett & d’Apice, for eighteen months. She married Eric Payten Dark, a medical practitioner and a widower with an infant son, John, on 1 February 1922 at St Matthias’s Church of England, Paddington. Eric and Eleanor shared many interests: literature, history, tennis, bushwalking, mountain-climbing and gardening. Next year they moved to Katoomba. In the relative isolation of the Blue Mountains she resumed writing. Eric enthusiastically encouraged her. They were absorbed in each other; John moved back and forth between them and his mother’s family and later boarded at Sydney Grammar School, visiting the Darks for occasional weekends. Their son Michael was born in 1929; Eleanor was a devoted mother to him.
Dark used the pseudonyms 'P. O’R.' and 'Patricia O’Rane' for the verse which she wrote in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was published in Australia by journals including the Triad, Bulletin and Woman’s Mirror, but was not very significant. Her short stories were also published in these journals and in Motoring News, Home and Ink.
She wrote her ten novels between the 1930s and 1950s. Seven had contemporary themes, often utilising the techniques of modernism, exploring contemporary relationships and politics. Her other three novels - beginning with The Timeless Land - formed an historical trilogy and were her most popular and best-selling works.
Both Eleanor and Eric were openly leftist in their views throughout a period when Australia was increasingly conservative. They were monitored by the government during the "Red scare" of the 1940s and 1950s, for fear they were members of the Communist Party (they weren't).
Dark largely abandoned writing after 1960. Although she worked on manuscript novels and plays, she lost interest due to a combination of low sales and the changing tastes of the public. In the late 1970s, Dark was awarded an Order of Australia medal, and her books were gradually republished in the 1980s as a new wave of artists and feminists discovered her writings. By this time, she was ill, and died in 1985 in hospital.
Dark was born on 26 August 1901 at Croydon, Sydney, second of three children of Sydney-born parents Dowell O’Reilly, schoolteacher and author, and his wife Eleanor Grace, née McCulloch, who died in 1914 after an unhappy marriage and a period of ill health. Small, dark and elfin, 'Pixie', as she was known to her family, attended several private schools before boarding at Redlands, Neutral Bay, from 1916 to 1920.
Although Pixie had written verse from the age of 7, as the family’s finances grew tighter her hopes of university and a writing career faded. After attending Stott & Hoare’s Business College, she worked as a stenographer for a firm of solicitors, Makinson, Plunkett & d’Apice, for eighteen months. She married Eric Payten Dark, a medical practitioner and a widower with an infant son, John, on 1 February 1922 at St Matthias’s Church of England, Paddington. Eric and Eleanor shared many interests: literature, history, tennis, bushwalking, mountain-climbing and gardening. Next year they moved to Katoomba. In the relative isolation of the Blue Mountains she resumed writing. Eric enthusiastically encouraged her. They were absorbed in each other; John moved back and forth between them and his mother’s family and later boarded at Sydney Grammar School, visiting the Darks for occasional weekends. Their son Michael was born in 1929; Eleanor was a devoted mother to him.
Dark used the pseudonyms 'P. O’R.' and 'Patricia O’Rane' for the verse which she wrote in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was published in Australia by journals including the Triad, Bulletin and Woman’s Mirror, but was not very significant. Her short stories were also published in these journals and in Motoring News, Home and Ink.
She wrote her ten novels between the 1930s and 1950s. Seven had contemporary themes, often utilising the techniques of modernism, exploring contemporary relationships and politics. Her other three novels - beginning with The Timeless Land - formed an historical trilogy and were her most popular and best-selling works.
Both Eleanor and Eric were openly leftist in their views throughout a period when Australia was increasingly conservative. They were monitored by the government during the "Red scare" of the 1940s and 1950s, for fear they were members of the Communist Party (they weren't).
Dark largely abandoned writing after 1960. Although she worked on manuscript novels and plays, she lost interest due to a combination of low sales and the changing tastes of the public. In the late 1970s, Dark was awarded an Order of Australia medal, and her books were gradually republished in the 1980s as a new wave of artists and feminists discovered her writings. By this time, she was ill, and died in 1985 in hospital.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
January 10, 2015
Beautiful, tragic and unbearably poignant, with one of the most vivid, embittered, heart-wrenchingly proud heroines you're ever likely to encounter in literature. This is one of the books I most admire and keep returning to. It isn't anywhere near as well known as it deserves to be(although part of me is glad of this and doesn't want to share it.)
February 16, 2015
A complex, disturbing book. I was unsettled when I finished reading it. Part of the fascination of reading books written in different eras is the having access to the author's subjectivity which reveals personal as well as cultural attitudes. But part of good fiction is it's open-endedness and capacity to question social/cultural attitudes. I think it is in this second aspect that this book fails. The book explores the nature vs nurture question, suggesting that nurturing can be just as damaging as genes, a binary that plays out in the over-the-top mad woman figure of Linda. Yet, in the character of Nigel, the author seems to idealise eugenics at the same time as acknowledging their impossibility in contemporary society. I was equally unsettled by the unchallenged assumption that women were destined to have children. A bit too much for me, I'm afraid.
February 12, 2012
If you like modernist writing and you haven't read this, run out and buy it now. The Australian public wasn't quite ready for Eleanor Dark's amazing novel when it was first published in 1932.
March 14, 2021
My favourite.
January 5, 2024
Winner of the ALS Gold Medal in 1934, Prelude to Christopher was the second novel of Eleanor Dark (1901-1985). A radical departure from her debut novel Sun Across the Sky, it is regarded as Australia's first modernist novel.
Set over four days in the aftermath of a car crash that critically injures Doctor Nigel Hendon, the story is revealed in fragments; flash backs; feverish dialogue contrasted with mannered calm; disjointed interior monologues; and characters starting and failing to express their fractured thoughts in words. There are four main characters: Nigel; his wife Linda; his mother Mrs Hendon, and the young nurse Kay. (Who fancies Nigel even though he hasn't given her any encouragement at all). The plot is minimal: this is a novel of ideas.
A sense of transgression arises as the reading progresses because Dark is exploring territory that is viewed differently today. Yesterday I posted about Thomas More's 16th century political satire Utopia, because I found myself comparing More's discredited economic ideas of shared ownership of property, with the failed Utopia in Prelude to Christopher exploring an equally discredited form of social organisation. It makes for uneasy reading when it is eventually revealed that Nigel, a brilliant young man whose mother has great ambitions for him, abandons a conventional future to set up an island colony based on the principles of eugenics. He bases the criteria for membership on medical suitability: presciently provoking today's reader to remember the Lebensborn (1935-1945), Nigel wants healthy bodies and minds to breed a better society. But because he loves his wife Linda dearly and cannot leave her behind, he compromises his own rules because her family has a history of mental illness.
But Nigel's colony does not fail because of Linda or because of the moral contradictions in its 'scientific' approach. It fails because of the collective madness of World War 1 mass hysteria.
As the stigma around mental illness fades in our own time, this novel — written nearly a century ago — was groundbreaking in the way it challenged prevailing beliefs about mental illness. It shows how Nigel's 'chosen people' — selected for their superior physical and mental qualities — descend into an irrational rabble not unlike the boys in William Golding's Lord of the Flies though that wasn't written until twenty years later in 1954. Nigel's 'superior' people riot with escalating violence because they want to leave: they want to join the excited hordes clamouring to send their young men to be slaughtered in the war.
And Linda? The novel depicts Linda being subjected to gaslighting by her uncle and by local gossip as an example of how nurture can be just as harmful as nature.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/05/p...
Set over four days in the aftermath of a car crash that critically injures Doctor Nigel Hendon, the story is revealed in fragments; flash backs; feverish dialogue contrasted with mannered calm; disjointed interior monologues; and characters starting and failing to express their fractured thoughts in words. There are four main characters: Nigel; his wife Linda; his mother Mrs Hendon, and the young nurse Kay. (Who fancies Nigel even though he hasn't given her any encouragement at all). The plot is minimal: this is a novel of ideas.
A sense of transgression arises as the reading progresses because Dark is exploring territory that is viewed differently today. Yesterday I posted about Thomas More's 16th century political satire Utopia, because I found myself comparing More's discredited economic ideas of shared ownership of property, with the failed Utopia in Prelude to Christopher exploring an equally discredited form of social organisation. It makes for uneasy reading when it is eventually revealed that Nigel, a brilliant young man whose mother has great ambitions for him, abandons a conventional future to set up an island colony based on the principles of eugenics. He bases the criteria for membership on medical suitability: presciently provoking today's reader to remember the Lebensborn (1935-1945), Nigel wants healthy bodies and minds to breed a better society. But because he loves his wife Linda dearly and cannot leave her behind, he compromises his own rules because her family has a history of mental illness.
But Nigel's colony does not fail because of Linda or because of the moral contradictions in its 'scientific' approach. It fails because of the collective madness of World War 1 mass hysteria.
As the stigma around mental illness fades in our own time, this novel — written nearly a century ago — was groundbreaking in the way it challenged prevailing beliefs about mental illness. It shows how Nigel's 'chosen people' — selected for their superior physical and mental qualities — descend into an irrational rabble not unlike the boys in William Golding's Lord of the Flies though that wasn't written until twenty years later in 1954. Nigel's 'superior' people riot with escalating violence because they want to leave: they want to join the excited hordes clamouring to send their young men to be slaughtered in the war.
And Linda? The novel depicts Linda being subjected to gaslighting by her uncle and by local gossip as an example of how nurture can be just as harmful as nature.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/01/05/p...
July 11, 2018
First published in 1934, this dramatic novel covers four days following a car crash where a doctor is critically injured, and the women around him struggle with their hopes, inhibitions and knowledge. The novel works on many levels discussing eugenics in 1930s Australia, the defence of rights of the individual against control by the community, and also the topic of hereditary madness. But ultimately the novel is about the situation of women who are thought of as dangerous, as they are 'different' and do not conform or fit in to the era in which they exist.
August 19, 2022
Got this as an assignment from my lit class and finished in a hurry. Melodramatic yet the plots aren’t that good IMO. More value in academic modernism study rather than being a good novel itself, e.g. isolated island setting is sort of cliché, Linda’s madness is sort of not heart-striking compared with modern horror or things like Edgar Allan Poe.
April 2, 2023
Although I didn’t really like this book, I thought it provided a fascinating glimpse of the 1920s and 30s. Like some other novels of the time, there is a real sense here of how traumatised the population was after WWI.
I’m so glad that our understanding of mental health has moved on significantly since then.
I’m so glad that our understanding of mental health has moved on significantly since then.
September 3, 2025
the modernist writing got on my nerves!!! so abstract, just went round and round in circles ahhhhhfgg. but also objectively this is genius literary work and i did enjoy it. Linda is a fascinating heroine. also the book's title is probably the best i've ever encountered because it only makes sense at the very end but reframes the story entirely. crazy.
January 10, 2022
An excellent book that should be more widely known. Dark expresses the horror of abject femininity and the terrors of the mind in an way that is both ethereal and horrifying.
December 19, 2012
Initially, I picked this book from a list of others by Australian writers as it was one of the shorter books to choose from. I didn't realise quite how much I would like it.
Except, when I was just a little over have way through, my teacher had someone come in and give our class a lecture on the book, and she spoiled the ending for me, so at that point, I didn't really want to read it anymore, as the ending (in a lot of cases) is the best part.
However, I had to keep reading it. It was either that, or pick another, longer book and start all over again. And I'm glad I did. I pleasantly enjoyed the book.
Except it's ending. I really liked the character of Linda, so when she killed herself in the end, I felt as though she was just giving up, throwing away all that she had been fighting for for most of her life, as well as what she had been fighting for in her marriage.
While some people might like the ending, as it gives way for Kay to be with Nigel, I really didn't see anything in this way (until I was told that it can be viewed as a love story, if you will). Right from the jump, I didn't like Kay. In fact, after a little character development, I grew to hate Kay even more than I did when I first read her character. The fact that Kay was so obsessed with Nigel just made her even worse.
Nigel's mother drove me nuts. I couldn't stand her. She claims to have hated Linda, but here's the problem I have with that: was she not the one that set them up? If she hated Linda so much, why would she go through the trouble of setting her son up with the woman?
Linda in my view was nowhere near insane. It was the environment in which she lived that made it seems as though she was insane, or going insane. Her uncle would always be watching her as she was going to sleep, and Nigel decided for them that they wouldn't have children to prevent her wrecked genes from carrying on in a child of their own. As well, she and Nigel lived away from most of the civilisation, which probably helped aid her "insanity". It is with great reflection when I say that she was fooling people in the end to believe that she was more insane than she really was (because, who ISN'T insane in some small way or another?).
Nigel was a bland character. While he had an eventful and somewhat exciting character, I thought there could have been more to him than there actually was. I was often bored while reading the parts based around him. I did, however, like him to some degree. Another however: It was a reluctant liking, as I did not appreciate the way he simply determined that he and Linda would not have a child. (I'm not a feminist in any way any more than than the average woman, but I believe it more the woman's right to decide whether or not she and her husband should have a baby. Either that or that it should be a mutual decision.)
All in all, with the exception of the ending, I enjoyed this book. It has a twist at almost every corner which just made it all the more pleasant to read. Aces!
Except, when I was just a little over have way through, my teacher had someone come in and give our class a lecture on the book, and she spoiled the ending for me, so at that point, I didn't really want to read it anymore, as the ending (in a lot of cases) is the best part.
However, I had to keep reading it. It was either that, or pick another, longer book and start all over again. And I'm glad I did. I pleasantly enjoyed the book.
Except it's ending. I really liked the character of Linda, so when she killed herself in the end, I felt as though she was just giving up, throwing away all that she had been fighting for for most of her life, as well as what she had been fighting for in her marriage.
While some people might like the ending, as it gives way for Kay to be with Nigel, I really didn't see anything in this way (until I was told that it can be viewed as a love story, if you will). Right from the jump, I didn't like Kay. In fact, after a little character development, I grew to hate Kay even more than I did when I first read her character. The fact that Kay was so obsessed with Nigel just made her even worse.
Nigel's mother drove me nuts. I couldn't stand her. She claims to have hated Linda, but here's the problem I have with that: was she not the one that set them up? If she hated Linda so much, why would she go through the trouble of setting her son up with the woman?
Linda in my view was nowhere near insane. It was the environment in which she lived that made it seems as though she was insane, or going insane. Her uncle would always be watching her as she was going to sleep, and Nigel decided for them that they wouldn't have children to prevent her wrecked genes from carrying on in a child of their own. As well, she and Nigel lived away from most of the civilisation, which probably helped aid her "insanity". It is with great reflection when I say that she was fooling people in the end to believe that she was more insane than she really was (because, who ISN'T insane in some small way or another?).
Nigel was a bland character. While he had an eventful and somewhat exciting character, I thought there could have been more to him than there actually was. I was often bored while reading the parts based around him. I did, however, like him to some degree. Another however: It was a reluctant liking, as I did not appreciate the way he simply determined that he and Linda would not have a child. (I'm not a feminist in any way any more than than the average woman, but I believe it more the woman's right to decide whether or not she and her husband should have a baby. Either that or that it should be a mutual decision.)
All in all, with the exception of the ending, I enjoyed this book. It has a twist at almost every corner which just made it all the more pleasant to read. Aces!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 30, 2012
This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.
This modernist novel is a classic of Australian literature that is not talked about nearly enough. It is a discussion of the effects of eugenics in the 1930s Australia, as well as the hereditary nature of madness.
The beginning of this novel starts off interestingly enough, with Nigel being injured in a car crash. We are then almost immediately introduced to the fragmented consciousness of Linda, his wife. Things get progressively more melodramatic from there though.
I have to confess I didn't finish reading this text. The modernist style and flow of consciousness style really wasn't up my alley. I had to read it and write an essay on it on how modernism and realism developed in Australian literature. I have to say it's not one of my better essays at all.
It took me ages to work out that Dark was the surname of the author who wrote the book! Well, not ages, but I was confused for a bit, when I was searching to buy it online. The cover certainly fits in with the Dark theme don't you think?
I think the most interesting thing about this novel was that the time progression is really strange (modernism!!). The book is officially set out into 4 parts of 4 days, but the time period covered within is much more than that due to flashbacks.
When reading about this novel, I found it interesting that Dark took a long time to write it because she was dealing with raising a small child, and she felt that it was impossible to write while trying to look after him during the day. Perhaps that is where the idea of Linda's desire for a child comes from. The idealism in the text is said to come from the ideas of Dark's own husband.
I'm unable to give you a link to buy this text, as it seems to be out of print everywhere (much to the dismay of my literature teacher). I got mine from a friend who had previously studied the unit. If you live in Australia, and want to read it, you're welcome to my copy!
This modernist novel is a classic of Australian literature that is not talked about nearly enough. It is a discussion of the effects of eugenics in the 1930s Australia, as well as the hereditary nature of madness.
The beginning of this novel starts off interestingly enough, with Nigel being injured in a car crash. We are then almost immediately introduced to the fragmented consciousness of Linda, his wife. Things get progressively more melodramatic from there though.
I have to confess I didn't finish reading this text. The modernist style and flow of consciousness style really wasn't up my alley. I had to read it and write an essay on it on how modernism and realism developed in Australian literature. I have to say it's not one of my better essays at all.
It took me ages to work out that Dark was the surname of the author who wrote the book! Well, not ages, but I was confused for a bit, when I was searching to buy it online. The cover certainly fits in with the Dark theme don't you think?
I think the most interesting thing about this novel was that the time progression is really strange (modernism!!). The book is officially set out into 4 parts of 4 days, but the time period covered within is much more than that due to flashbacks.
When reading about this novel, I found it interesting that Dark took a long time to write it because she was dealing with raising a small child, and she felt that it was impossible to write while trying to look after him during the day. Perhaps that is where the idea of Linda's desire for a child comes from. The idealism in the text is said to come from the ideas of Dark's own husband.
I'm unable to give you a link to buy this text, as it seems to be out of print everywhere (much to the dismay of my literature teacher). I got mine from a friend who had previously studied the unit. If you live in Australia, and want to read it, you're welcome to my copy!
March 4, 2013
I'm not a fan of modernist writing, having failed to get through a single Patrick White or Virginia Woolf book, because I simply need a story to move ahead and not get bogged by details. I find it anti-imagination. Dark joins some excellent company with this beloved novel, but I could not get into it.
February 12, 2014
I struggled to keep interested to start with but was racing to turn the pages as it went on to find out what happened in the end. interesting style of writing, not at all what I'm used to. made me think a lot more about what was being written and how the author was expressing it.
March 28, 2016
'Prelude to Christopher' is a superb Australian novel; it amazes me that it is so little known. Rich in psychological themes and characters, feminist before there was such a word and a fist-shake at conformity. I am now compelled to seek out more of Eleanor Dark's work.
July 27, 2014
A testament to the wretchedness of the entire philosophy of the Eugenicist.
Read
December 27, 2015amazing book with shades of Gilman's Yellow wallpaper and Tennyson's Lady of Shallot. Disquieting and beautifully crafted
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews