Australian Dictionary of Biography

Geraldine Jay at her parents' North Adelaide home, c1960s

Courtesy of Milazzo family

Geraldine Mary Halls (1919–1996), novelist, was born on 17 December 1919 in Adelaide, third of five children of South Australian-born parents Dorothea Jay, née von Doussa, and her husband Hubert Melville Jay, surgeon. Both of Geraldine’s parents were descended from prominent settler families, and although her father was Anglican, she was raised Roman Catholic by her mother. Often known as ‘Gel’ among family and close friends, she enjoyed an affluent childhood at Barton Croft, a large semi-rural estate at Burnside in Adelaide’s eastern foothills, where she revelled in nature and books. She was particularly encouraged in her love of reading by her father, who had an extensive library that included crime and mystery. Between 1927 and 1936 she excelled at Girton Proprietary School, Adelaide, and her prose and verse were published in the school magazine. After gaining her Leaving certificate in 1936, she spent a year at Invergowrie Homecraft Hostel at Hawthorn, Melbourne, before enrolling in an arts degree at the University of Adelaide (1938–41).

From a young age, Jay was independent and adventurous, openly disregarding social conventions to pursue her dreams of writing and travel. She left university before finishing her degree to instead learn typing and stenography, and then wrote in her spare time while working in various office jobs in Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne. By 1946 she had produced at least one unpublished novel as well as several short stories and poems. She spent fifteen months in London before moving to Port Moresby, Territory of Papua and New Guinea, in June 1949, where she worked as a Supreme Court stenographer until early 1950. The position exposed her to crimes, local customs, and remote locations that would later inspire three of her novels. She also met the English-born educator Albert James (John) Halls, who was by then estranged from his second wife, who had returned to Australia with their two sons. Jay and Halls began a relationship and after Halls’s divorce in 1962, they would marry on 11 August 1962 at the Register Office at Chelsea, England.

From Port Moresby, Jay submitted a manuscript for a mystery novel set in Sydney to the British publisher William Collins, Sons & Co. Ltd. The Knife Is Feminine would be her first book when it was published in 1951 under her pen-name ‘Charlotte Jay.’ Though her great ambition was always to publish what she called ‘straight’ (or serious) novels, she had begun writing mystery fiction and thrillers because she delighted in the work of Sheridan Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins, and Edgar Allan Poe. ‘I set out to frighten and mystify my readers by asking them to identify themselves with a character battling for survival in a lonely, claustrophobic situation,’ she later explained (Halls, quoted in Reilly 1985, 502). As a voracious reader, she was inspired by a diverse array of writers, including E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, and the Australian writers Henry Handel Richardson and Christina Stead. She also admired Graham Greene, and similarly sought to produce work in two broad streams: thrillers and literary works. Her attempts to publish literary fiction were ‘knocked on the head straight away’ (Larkin 1995, 9) by her publisher Collins. It took several years and considerable perseverance before she was able to do so with the support of the London publisher William Heinemann Ltd.

In the 1950s Jay accompanied Halls, who was working for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on successive appointments to Pakistan, Thailand, Lebanon, India, and France. These years yielded rich material for her fiction, but they were also personally and professionally challenging, as she was typically writing while living in remote locations. Among the earliest Australian postwar novelists to engage with Asia, her work often fictionalised experiences from her life and travels, producing stories that incorporated unique perspectives and skilfully evoked unfamiliar settings.

Jay garnered international acclaim with her second novel, Beat Not the Bones (1952), which told of a young Australian woman seeking to uncover the truth behind her husband’s alleged suicide in New Guinea. American critics were particularly effusive, one hailing her as ‘a new writer of rather astonishing capacity’ (Sandoe 1953). In 1954 the book won the Mystery Writers of America’s inaugural Edgar Allan Poe award for best novel. Seven more thrillers followed, including The Fugitive Eye (1953) (adapted for a telemovie starring Charlton Heston in 1961), Arms for Adonis (1960), and A Hank of Hair (1964).

In the early 1960s Jay and Halls moved to England, where they lived in a heritage-listed former schoolhouse in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. There, and later in Adelaide, where they returned to live in 1971, they operated an antique dealership, procuring and trading furniture and Asian art. While in England, John’s youngest son, Julian, visited them, and Geraldine embraced her role as stepmother. From 1965 she published under her married name, starting with a loose trilogy depicting fictional UNESCO projects in Thailand and India. By this time, she was mostly writing ‘straight’ fiction; subsequent novels were The Last Summer of the Men Shortage (1976), The Felling of Thawle (1979), and Talking to Strangers (1982).

Jay experienced depression throughout her life, and after her husband’s death from cancer in 1982, she suffered a period of intense despair, with alcoholism also apparent in later years. Despite worsening health and osteoarthritis, which increasingly restricted her mobility, she continued to make frequent overseas trips. In the 1990s she revised several of her early novels for South Australia’s Wakefield Press and published her last book This Is My Friend’s Chair (1995). She died in Adelaide on 26 October 1996 and her ashes were scattered under a bunya pine tree on the grounds of her former childhood home.

Resilient and determined, Halls was described as ‘a rebel’ with a warm temperament and a sense of humour that was ‘a bit naughty at times’ (Milazzo and Milazzo 2022). Marcie Muir considered ‘one of her most endearing qualities’ to be ‘a quirkiness of nature, so that her actions or responses were often surprising … She added piquancy to life’ (Muir 1996). Her sixteen novels reveal an expansive and insightful literary canvas, awash with mystery, suspense, adventure, satire, romance, and Gothic and historical narratives. From the beginning of her publishing career, she worked with notable agents, publishers, and editors, and many of her books were reprinted, serialised, and translated into foreign languages. With expertise in Asian art, particularly Japanese woodblock prints, she was also involved in acquisitions for major Australian galleries.