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''Picnic at Hanging Rock'' is a 1967 Australian historical novel by Joan Lindsay. The plot focuses on a group of female students at an Australian women's college in 1900 who inexplicably vanish at the site of an enormous rock formation while on a Valentine's Day picnic, and also explores the outlying effects the girls' disappearance has on the community. The novel has been often discussed and debated due to its inexorably ambiguous ending. Lindsay wrote the novel over a four-week period〔('Hanging out for a mystery', ''Sydney Morning Herald'' (21 January 2007) )〕 at her home Mulberry Hill in Baxter, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. It was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was released in paperback by Penguin in 1970. The rock formation featured in the story, Hanging Rock, is an actual geological formation located in Victoria, Australia. The novel was adapted into a critically acclaimed film of the same name in 1975 by director Peter Weir. ==Synopsis== At Appleyard College, a fictitious upper-class women's private boarding school, a picnic is being planned for the students under the supervision of Mrs. Appleyard, the school's headmistress. The picnic entails a day trip to Hanging Rock in the Mount Macedon area, Victoria, on St. Valentine's Day in 1900. One of the students, Sara, who is in trouble with Mrs. Appleyard, is not allowed to go. Sara's close friend Miranda, who is described as an ethereal girl, goes without her. When they arrive, the students lounge about and eat a lunch. Afterward, Miranda goes to climb the rock with classmates Edith, Irma, and Marion. The girls' French teacher, Mademoiselle de Poitiers, follows behind them. As they ascend the rock, in a dreamlike episode, Miranda, Marion, and Irma vanish into the rock while Edith watches; she returns to the picnic in hysterics, disoriented and with no memory of what occurred. Mademoiselle de Poitiers is also nowhere to be accounted for. The school scours the rock in search of the girls and their teacher, but they are not found. The disappearances provoke much local concern and international sensation with sexual molestation, abduction and murder being high on the list of possible outcomes. Several organized searches of the picnic grounds and the area surrounding the rock itself turn up nothing. Meanwhile, the students, teachers and staff of the college, as well as members of the community, grapple with the riddle-like events. A young man on a private search finds one of the missing girls, but is himself found in an unexplained daze – yet another victim of the rock. Concerned parents begin withdrawing their daughters from the formerly prestigious college and several of the staff, including the headmistress, either resign or meet with tragic ends. We are told that both the college, and the Woodend Police Station where records of the investigation were kept, are destroyed by fire shortly afterwards. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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