Includes bibliographical references.

The haunting of Hanging Rock -- The early years -- The golden summers of the Edwardian years -- Gardens and picnics (and everything in between) -- White muslin and a red herring: the year 1900 -- The school years -- School days at Clyde -- Clyde School versus Appleyard College -- The mysterious picnic of 1919 -- The artistic years -- Frederick McCubbin and forging an artistic career -- Marriage to Daryl Lindsay -- From London to Toorak to Mulberry Hill -- Facing the future -- London, mark two -- Life with Daryl -- Stormy nights and sunny days -- The writing years -- America, London, love and Vivien Leigh -- The worry of money -- Nature, time mathematics and patterns -- Writing Picnic at Hanging Rock -- Bringing Picnic at Hanging Rock to the big screen -- The final years -- Writing 'the end'.

In the winter of 1966, at sixty-nine years of age, Lady Joan Lindsay sat down and wrote a short novel about a group of upper-class schoolgirls from a prestigious ladies? college who disappear while on a country picnic in the summer of 1900. The result was Picnic at Hanging Rock, a literary mystery that has endured for half a century. Beyond the Rock looks at not just the myth of Picnic and how it has become part of Australia?s culture, but also the story behind it. It examines Joan Lindsay?s enigmatic life, much of which she kept secret from the world, including her childhood, her complex marriage to Daryl Lindsay of the famous Lindsay family of artists, their enduring love and unconventional bohemian life, and her life at Mulberry Hill, the Lindsays? own Arcadia deep in the Victorian countryside.