Maurice Guest (1908) is the debut novel by Australian writer Henry Handel Richardson.

[1] In turn-of-the-century Leipzig, Maurice Guest, a young English provincial, falls madly in love with an Australian woman, Louise Dufrayer.

A reviewer in The Age found some difficulty with the book, noting that "while the book is undoubtedly clever, it runs to the inordinate length of 562 pages, and is more like a scientific dissection of the love theme than the romance that the ordinary reader likes.

Stalwart manhood and woman hood are absent from its pages, which are occupied mostly in a study of the almost neurotic psychology, in which many authors seem to delighted.

[3] Dedication : To Louise The novel was deemed too controversial to be published as Richardson intended, and she was forced to cut twenty thousand words from the original manuscript and tone down its language.