The Crucible

Arthur Miller was born in 1915, the middle of three other children. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Miller experienced first hand the effects of discrimination and like so many of the Polish-Jews that had already ventured into safety before the war, he endured the vicious annihilation of the Jewish population in Europe from afar, helpless to stop it. The virulent anti-Semitism that he was subjected to in the late 1930s when he was employed at a New York warehouse, no doubt gave him inspiration to explore discrimination in characters such as Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, among the first named for witchcraft in The Crucible.

He began studying at the University of Michigan and it became clear to him there that he wanted to write, penning over half a dozen plays in a little over a year that received critical acclaims in the university community. His marriage to Mary Grace Slattery in 1940 marked his venture in writing for Broadway and radio. In 1952, Miller made the trip to the village of Salem, Massachusetts to begin research on the material he would need to write The Crucible and despite it’s global success, the US State department denied his passport to attend the Belgian premier of the play because of suspicions with Communist involvement. Four years later, he divorced Mary Slattery and immediately married Hollywood movie siren Marilyn Monroe, and despite Munroe staying beside him during the heat of the HUAC trials, they divorced amicably in 1961. His final marriage to Austrian-born Inge Morath saw him enter the 1960s to write close to another 30 plays and short stories, but none ever matched the political capital The Crucible seemed to rouse.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, he received the William Inge Festival Award for Distinguished Achievement in American Theatre. In the early 2000s, Miller received the John H Finlay Award for Exemplary Service to New York City and the prestigious Jerusalem Prize, a biannual prize awarded to writers whose work addresses the theme of human freedom against oppression.

Miller passed away from heart failure at his house in Connecticut in 2005 at the age of 89 and was admitted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

The Dressmaker

Rosalie Ham was born and raised in Jerilderie, country Australia. As a farmer’s daughter, she has fond memories of life on the farm as a child – swimming in creeks, riding a horse whilst herding sheep, splitting firewood to keep their house warm and learning to drive when she was nine so that she could help out on the farm. She matriculated from St Margaret’s School in Melbourne in 1972 and travelled overseas briefly before returning home to study education at Deakin University. On the request of a friend, Ham began writing some stage and radio plays but discontinued as she did not feel an affinity with theatre. A self-described ‘accidental novelist’, Ham realised that she enjoyed the art of novel writing and completed a degree at RMIT in Advanced Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing and later, a Master of Arts (Creative Writing) in 2007.

The Dressmaker was her debut novel in 2000 and it received critical praise for its unusual style and resonating Australian characters. In addition, Summer at Mount Hope (2005), There Should Be More Dancing (2011) and The Year of the Farmer (2018) were all equally captivating and all are rooted in small rural communities around the Australian landscape. Common themes throughout her works include revenge, gossip, love, betrayal, isolation, manipulation and the study of human nature.

The The Dressmaker film was released in 2015 starring global star Kate Winslet as Tilly and Australian great Judy Davis as Molly. The novel was short-listed for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the New South Wales Literary Awards and was the 2007 finalist at the State Library of Victoria’s Most Popular Novel. It has appeared in the various curriculum text lists around Australia, multiple times.

Ham worked sporadically as a nurse until 2005, to subsidise her writing career, but when the nursing home she worked at closed down, she took work as a literature teacher at Trinity College in Melbourne, the University of Melbourne and RMIT.

She currently lives with her husband Ian in Brunswick, Melbourne. Ham’s brothers still live on the family farm and work the land.