High-minded, independent, imaginative, Teresa Hawkins knows only one commandment 'Thou shalt love'. Emotionally starved by her ramshackle family, Teresa searches for fulfillment outside her stultifying life as a working girl in a large city. Obsessed with love and sex she pins her affection on the first possible object, the egotistical Jonathan Crow, a poverty-stricken tutor who coaches her in Latin. Teresa preserves this love in the face of his indifference, contempt and ill-usage, imprisoned by her belief that 'to love is to give for ever without stint, and not to ask for the slightest thing'. It is only through another man - her ebullient and warm-hearted employer James Quick - that Teresa comes to understand her power as a woman, and emerges from obsession to a real consciousness of sexuality and love. Set in Sydney and London, "For Love Alone", first published in 1945, is one of Christina Stead's finest novels.
- ISBN10 0156325357
- ISBN13 9780156325356
- Publish Date 1 January 1979 (first published 16 April 1970)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
- Edition Harvest/HBJ ed.
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 491
- Language English