Amy Witting was born in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney, in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria's War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and The New Yorker. Her acclaimed short fiction is collected in the volume Faces and Voices. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting died in 2001.
'Her reflections on human nature are eloquently drawn, intimate, compassionate and witty.' * Australian * 'Amy Witting is comparable to Jean Rhys, but she has more starch, or vinegar. The effect is bracing.' * New Yorker * '[Witting] lays bare with surgical precision the dynamics of families, sibling, students in coffee shops, office coteries. One sometimes feels positively winded with unsettling insights. There is something relentless, almost unnerving in her anatomising of foibles, fears obsessions, private shame, the nature of loneliness, the nature of panic.' -- Janette Turner Hospital 'A beautifully but unobtrusively honed style, a marvellous ear for dialogue, a generous understanding of the complex waywardness of men and women.' -- Andrew Riemer 'Sparkling prose and extraordinary ability to enter the minds of a wide variety of characters.' * A Reader's Guide to Australian Fiction * ‘Quietly brilliant…Witting's characterizations are staggeringly sharp—it is hard to imagine a novel more keenly observed—simultaneously heartbreaking and (subtly) hilarious, not because they're exaggerated, but because they are so unsettlingly, overwhelmingly true…A compassionate masterpiece.’ * STARRED Review, Kirkus *