Henry Handel Richardson is one of Australia's major novelists, and one of the most elusive. An expatriate for most of her life, she worked hard to maintain her privacy, and to conceal her personal views behind an impartial authorial style. This study explores the well-springs of her fiction, her abiding concerns and the intellectual heritage that informs her major writing. An overview of her life is provided, and all her fiction discussed. The study focuses on her engagement with the sexual politics of the time, on inherited concerns, and on contemporary theories of gender. The influence on her fiction of writers as diverse as Hoffmann and Wedekind, Weininger, Freud and Schopenhauer, is demonstrated. Ackland locates Richardson's work within a tradition of European thought, while also showing why she is of central importance to Australian and women's studies.