Elizabeth Salter

Elizabeth Fulton Salter (2 October 1918 – 14 March 1981) was an Australian biographer and crime novelist. She was secretary to Edith Sitwell from 1957 until the latter's death in 1964.

Education and career Salter was born in Angaston in the Barossa Valley and educated locally and then at the Wilderness School. She graduated from the University of Adelaide and the Elder Conservatorium of Music.

She moved to England in 1952 and where she found work with the BBC, before being employed as secretary to Edith Sitwell in 1957. Although based in Hampstead, Salter retained her sense of being Australian.

In reviewing Salter's memoir of Sitwell in 1967, John Whitwell wrote in The Canberra Times, "As an Australian, Miss Salter was able to pierce the hierarchical etiquettes in which Dame Edith lived, to the great advantage of each. Her book sits modestly and worthily alongside such memoirs as Neville Cardus' book on Sir Thomas Beecham."

Salter was granted a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship in 1969 to research and write a biography of Daisy Bates. It was later adapted for film by Eleanor Witcombe, with Hepburn to take the leading role.

On one of many visits to Australia in 1980 she was seeking to write a biography of Maie, Lady Casey.

Salter died in London on 14 March 1981.

The National Library of Australia holds 27 boxes of her papers.

Works

Biographies

The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell, Bodley Head, 1967 Daisy Bates: Queen of the Never Never, Angus & Robertson, 1971 The lost impressionist: a biography of John Peter Russell, Angus & Robertson,1976 Helpmann: The authorised biography of Robert Helpmann, Angus & Robertson, 1978 Edith Sitwell, Oresko Books, 1979

Crime novels

Death in a Mist, Geoffrey Bles, 1957 Will to Survive, Geoffrey Bles, 1958 There Was a Witness, Geoffrey Bles, 1960 The Voice of the Peacock, Geoffrey Bles, 1962 Once Upon a Tombstone, Geoffrey Bles, 1965