Copies of the Introduction to this exhibition and catalogues of previous exhibitions are available from the Rare Books Department

An Exhibition of material from the Monash University Library Collection
5 June  - 29 September 

Exhibition catalogue by Richard Overell, Rare Books Librarian
Click here to view Virtual Exhibition

The exhibition was opened by prominent Australian novelist, Brian Castro
 

Introduction

In 1940, Englishman J. I. M. Stewart, then Professor of English at the University of Adelaide gave the first Commonwealth Literary Fund Lecture in Adelaide.

After thanking the CLF for providing the funds to give these lectures in Australian Literature, he declared that 'unfortunately they have neglected to provide any literature - I will lecture therefore on D H Lawrence's Kangaroo'^[1]

This blatant example of intellectual snobbery allowed Stewart to conveniently ignore over 120 years of Australian writing.

In the same year that Stewart gave his lecture, E Morris Miller published his monumental two-volume bibliography of Australian literature. In it he listed and critically discussed, the works of major writers completely ignored by Stewart. A dozen authors come quickly to mind: Marcus Clarke, Henry Kingsley, Catherine Helen Spence, Rolf Boldrewood, Ada Cambridge, Jessie Couvreur (Tasma), Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Barbara Baynton, Henry Handel Richardson, Vance Palmer and Martin Boyd. And, of course, there are many many others.

In the early fifties Miller's bibliography was revised and updated to 1950 by the poet and critic, Frederick Macartney. His revision listed some 8320 tiles by some 3491 authors. In 1992, a team at Monash began work on a new bibliography of Australian literature. The first volume covering only authors whose surnames begin within the letters A-E was published. It lists some 10,000 titles by about 3,500 authors. The compliers are planning a further three volumes to complete the project. The final total of titles is likely to be around 40,000 by over 12,000 authors.

The compilers of the new bibliography have been made extensive use of the ever-expanding holdings of Australian fiction in the Rare Book Collection of the Monash University Library.

This exhibition provides a wonderful snapshot of these holdings. In it, one will find the first and important variant editions of some of the classics of Australian writing: Catherine Helen Spence's Clara Morison (1854), Henry Kingsley's The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) Marcus Clarke's His Natural Life (1874), Rolf Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms (1888), Barbara Baynton's Bush Studies (1902), Joseph Furphy's Such is Life (1903), Frank Dalby Davison's Man-Shy (1931), Xavier Herbert's Capricornia (1938), Martin Boyd's Lucinda Brayford (1946), Patrick White's Tree of Man (1956), Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), Helen Garner's Monkey Grip (1977), and Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda (1988)

There are also many highlight items. Examples include Short stories in prose and verse, Henry Lawson's first book published by his mother in 1894, Barbara Baynton's first publication The Chosen Vessel (1896?), a fine copy in the dust-wrapper of Dearest Idol, the very scarce novel by Martin Boyd published in America in 1929 under the pseudonym of Walter Beckett, and both the English and American editions of Patrick White's first novel, Happy Valley, published in 1939 and 1940 respectively, but yet to be reprinted because of the author's own dislike of the book.

Contrasted with these expensive treasures are examples of the popular paperbacks of the New South Wales Bookstall series and the war economy produced paperbacks of the Australian Pocket Editions. They were funded by the Commonwealth Literary Fund in an attempt to overcome the shortages of reading matter during the war years and the series gave Australian's a chance to own a library for less than two pounds'.

Novels such as Redheap (1934) by Norman Lindsay, Upsurge (1934) by J. M. Harcourt, Love me Sailor (1945) by Robert Close, Frank Hardy's Power Without Glory (1950) and Helen Demidenko/Darville's The Hand that Signed the Paper (1994) that were banned, became the subject of court cases and/or the subjects of public controversy are also included in the exhibition.

The aforementioned Professor Stewart wrote detective novels under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Presumably he used the pseudonym to clearly distinguish these minor works form his more serious literary criticism. This genre of detective or crime fiction is now seriously sought after by collectors and studied by those involved in interdisciplinary programs in cultural studies, history and women's studies. The exhibition includes an early edition of Fergus Hume's classic The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). Guy Boothby's Doctor Nikola (1896) is another early example of this genre while futuristic novels featured in the exhibition include the delightfully titled Melbourne and Mars: my mysterious life on two planets (1889) by Joseph Fraser, William Lane's utopian romance The Workingmen's Paradise (1892) and Kenneth Mackay's The Yellow Wave: a romance of the Asiatic invasion of Australia, set in 1954 but published in 1897.

In the past, librarians and even some collectors were dismissive of the dust-wrapper. Once the book had left the bookshop it had served it purpose and was discarded. Today, for collectors a first edition with the dust-wrapper makes a huge difference to both the book's desirability and, thus, its price. An unchipped dust-wrapper which has not had its printed price clipped (proving that the copy in question was not sold cheaply or remaindered) adds even more to the price. For bibliographers, dust-wrappers are important for the extra piece of often-elusive information they provide, ranging from the author's country of birth to details of other works by them.

Rare Book curators now compete with collectors for copies with dust-wrappers. There are some fine examples here on display both protecting and promoting the texts they cover including Katherine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo (1929) and Dale Collins' Race the Sun (1936)

It can well be argued that librarians are the unsung heroes of research. Richard Overell certainly deserves this accolade. As Rare Books Librarian at Monash, he has been tireless in building up the collections to both complement and strengthen the research interests of the Monash academic community. The Australiana collection has grown extensively under his curatorship.

This exhibition of Australian fiction is a tribute to his collecting zeal on behalf of the University.

John Arnold
Head,
School of Political and Social Inquiry and
Co-editor, The Bibliography of Australian Literature

Foreword

The intention in presenting this exhibition has been to show the range and depth of our holdings in Australian fiction from the earliest period to the present. We mounted an exhibition of Modern Australian Poetry in 1999, and we intend to have an exhibition of nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian poetry over the next year or two.

As could be expected in a research institution which teaches Australian history and literature, and has a sound record of publication in the area, Monash University has a very good collection of Australiana. Over the past few years, the literature component has been built up even more assiduously than usual to provide resources for the National Centre for Australian Studies Bibliography of Australian Literature Project. The material on display represents only a fraction of our holdings.

The choice of authors includes the obvious names, as well as some of the more unusual writers in our history. The selection of their books to display partly depended on what titles are thought to be their most significant, and partly on what copies are the most eye-catching and presentable.

Richard Overell,
Rare Books Librarian.

1. Rowcroft, Charles (1798-1856)

Tales of the colonies : or the Adventures of an emigrant / by Charles Rowcroft. New ed. (London : Smith, Elder and Co., 1845)

The Australian Crusoes, or, The adventures of an English settler and his family in the wilds of Australia / by Charles Rowcroft. From the sixth London edition, with illustrations. (New York : World Publishing House, 1876)

The earliest work of Australian fiction was Henry Savery's Quintus Servinton, published in Hobart in three volumes during 1830-1831. The earliest item in our collection is however, Charles Rowcroft's Tales of the colonies, first published in three volumes in 1843. It takes the form of a journal supposedly written by an early settler in Van Diemen's Land. We have his account of clearing the land, building his house and overcoming natural disasters such as bushfires and floods, as well as attacks by bushrangers, and Aborigines.

As with many of the early novels, the aim was to inform possible new settlers of life in the colonies. Rowcroft arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1821 and took up a land grant near Bothwell. After a series of reverses he left to return to England via Brazil in 1825.

He wrote several novels, and in 1845 became editor of Hood's Magazine. Tales of the Colonies was his most popular work and appeared in various editions. In America it was re-titled The Australian Crusoes.

2. McCombie, Thomas (1819-1869)

Adventures of a colonist, or, Godfrey Arabin the settler. (London : John & Daniel A. Darling, [1845?]) Ferguson no. 4090.

Thomas McCombie arrived in Melbourne in March 1841. He tried his hand at squatting then became editor of the Port Phillip Gazette. He went to the gold rush at Mount Alexander and championed the cause of the diggers. In 1856 he was elected to the Legislative Council, and served as a Minister. He returned to England after the ministry fell in 1859. There he became an authority on matters Australian, lecturing on the Aborigines, the gold rush, and colonization.

His novel first appeared in 1845 under the title, Arabin, or the adventures of a colonist in New South Wales. It deals with the experiences of a medical doctor who emigrates to the colony and establishes a successful country practice. It is primarily aimed at informing would-be colonists of the conditions in Australia, but has the added interest of another work by McCombie included at the end of the novel, "An essay on the aborigines of Australia", (p. 251-274)

3. Vidal, Francis, Mrs. (1815-1873)

Tales for the bush / by Mrs. Francis Vidal. 5th ed., enl. (London : J. Masters, 1876)

Theresa Vidal came to New South Wales with her husband in 1840 and stayed until 1845. Her Tales for the bush first appeared in Sydney in 1845 in eight parts. The stories are meant as edifying stories on such matters as Sunday observance, and being content with your lot. After her return to England she continued to write fiction, Cabramatta and Woodleigh Farm appeared in 1850 and Bengala in 1860. She wrote several other novels, set mainly in England.

4. Haydon, George Henry (1822-1891)

The Australian emigrant : a rambling story, containing as much fact as fiction / by G.H. Haydon ; with illustrations by Watts Phillips. (London : Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co., 1854)
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Haydon arrived in Melbourne in July 1840. He worked in a variety of jobs, most of which involved learning bushcraft skills, but he also gave art lessons and contributed illustrations of colonial life to magazines. He returned to England in January 1845, and wrote an account of his time in the colony, Five years experience in Australia Felix (1845). The Australian emigrant, his second book also draws upon his time in the Port Phillip District, and is a mixture of fact and fiction. Both books have illustrations based on Haydon's own sketches, and both include material on the Aborigines. Haydon was very well-disposed towards the Aborigines, made friends with them, and learnt much about their customs.

5. Howitt, William (1792-1879)

A boy's adventures in the wilds of Australia : or Herbert's note-book / by William Howitt ; with illustrations by William Harvey. (London : G. Routledge, [1880?])

Tallangetta, the squatter's home : a story of Australian life / by William Howitt. (London : Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1857) 2 v. bound in 1.
View book cover

William Howitt was the husband of Mary Howitt. They were prolific authors; together and separately producing over 180 books. William came to Victoria in 1852 with two of his sons to try their luck at the gold fields. He returned to England in 1854. The account of his stay, Land, labour and gold (1855) is one of the best from that period.

He also wrote two novels set in the colony, A boy's adventures in the wilds of Australia : or Herbert's note-book (1854) and Tallangetta, the squatter's home : a story of Australian life (1857). Both works include descriptions of life on the land and at the diggings, and feature encounters with bushrangers and Aborigines.

6. Spence, Catherine Helen (1825-1910)

Clara Morison : a tale of South Australia during the gold fever, (London : John W. Parker & Son, 1854) 2 v. bound in 1.
View book cover

Catherine Helen Spence was the first Australian novelist to show a talent for her craft. She arrived in South Australia from Scotland in 1839 and took work as a governess. Clara Morison, her first novel, is an accurate depiction of life in Adelaide from the point of view of a well-bred girl living below her station, being compelled to work as a servant. She eventually marries a squatter.

Spence's work bears comparison with the novels of George Eliot. Of particular Australian interest is her description of the effects of the Victorian gold-rush on the neighbouring colony of South Australia.

An odd aspect of the first edition is that the frontispiece illustrations appear to be from an altogether unrelated work. That used for volume two shows "Rosanna", a lady with a macaw, looking from a balcony onto what appears to be a Turkish scene. Catherine Spence was paid £40, but, after paying an English editor to abridge the manuscript, this was reduced by the publisher to £30.

7. Kingsley, Henry (1830-1876)

The recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn / by Henry Kingsley. (Cambridge : Macmillan and Co., 1859) 3 v.
The Hillyars and the Burtons / by Henry Kingsley. New ed. (Hobart : Propsting & Cockhead, [1889?])

Henry Kingsley was the younger brother of the novelist Charles Kingsley. He emigrated to Australia in 1853, went to the gold-fields in Victoria and New South Wales, and spent time on pastoral properties in the Monaro district in NSW as well as at Skipton in Victoria. There he made a start on his novel Geoffry Hamlyn which he finished in 1859 after returning to England.

He continued to write novels, some of which, most notably, The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865) include Australian material.

Both novels are concerned with the trials and ultimate successes of emigrants to the colonies. Marcus Clarke and Rolf Boldrewood were impressed with Geoffry Hamlyn, considering it the best Australian novel yet written. It set the tone for many of the pastoral novels which followed. Bushfires, attacks by Aborigines and particularly the depredations of bushrangers feature in the Australian scenes.

Joseph Furphy criticised Geoffry Hamlyn in Such is Life on the grounds of its lack of realism. Kingsley's anglocentric pastoralists could not, in his opinion, have survived in the Australian bush, let alone prospered.

8. Farjeon, B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) (1838-1903)

Grif : a story of Australian life / by B. L. Farjeon. (London : Tinsley Brothers, 1870) 2 v. bound in 1.

B. L. Farjeon came to Victoria as a sixteen year old in 1854 to try his luck on the gold fields. He was unsuccessful and turned his attention to journalism. He left for New Zealand in 1861 where he worked in Dunedin on the Otago Daily Times. His first book, Shadows on the snow: a Christmas story appeared in 1865. He sent it to Dickens who responded favourably. Thus encouraged, Farjeon returned to England where he made a successful career for himself with his pen.

Grif, his second novel, first appeared in Dunedin in 1866. It was reprinted in London in two volumes in 1870. The story concerns the lives of people living in the Melbourne slums during the gold rush. The characters discuss political issues of the day, including the question as to whether or not the Governors of the Australian colonies should be elected by the people.

Farjeon published over fifty novels, several of which have Australian themes. His daughter, Eleanor Farjeon, became a famous children's writer.

9. Clarke, Marcus (1846-1881)

His natural life / by Marcus Clarke. (Melbourne : George Robertson, 1874)

Marcus Clarke emigrated to Melbourne in 1863. At first he worked in a bank, then, in 1865, moved to a station at Glenorchy in Victoria where he began to write sketches of colonial life. He remained there for two years before returning to Melbourne where he found work on the Argus newspaper. In 1868 he became editor of the Colonial Monthly magazine where his first novel, Long Odds ran as a serial. This appeared in book form in 1869. It is a horse-racing novel, set mainly in England but ending in Australia where the villain turns up as a swagman at the hero's station.

In 1868 Clarke, along with other literary figures such as Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, and George Gordon McCrae, founded the Yorick Club in Melbourne.

In 1870 Clarke began to contribute instalments of His Natural Life to the Australian Journal. It is a novel concerned with the convict system in Tasmania, a subject he researched extensively. He also used this information in a series of historical sketches, Old Tales of a Young Country (1871).

His Natural Life ran as a serial from March 1870 to June 1872. As he was always short of money, Clarke continued the serial version of the novel after the shipwreck of his main characters while escaping from Norfolk Island. In the serial, the protagonist returns to Melbourne and the goldfields, and eventually to England. The text was considerably tightened for the publication in book form, as a single volume in Melbourne in 1874 and in three volumes in London, 1875. The first edition to use the longer title, For the term of his natural life, appeared in 1882.

Like the poets Kendall and Charles Harpur, Clarke viewed the Australian forests, especially in Van Diemen's Land, as dark and malevolent. Perhaps the most memorable character among the convicts is the cannibal, Gabbett, based on a real person, Alexander Pearce. Clarke's description of the escape of Gabbett's party from the penal settlement of Port Arthur is particularly disturbing.

10. Borlase, James S. (James Skipp) (1839- ?)

Ned Kelly : the ironclad Australian bushranger / by One of his captors. (London : Alfred J. Isaacs & Sons, [1881?])
Blue Cap, the bushranger; or, The Australian Dick Turpin. (London : Hogarth House, [1885?])
View book cover

"Skipp" Borlase was a Melbourne solicitor who made a reputation for himself as a writer of boy's "bloods". His first such work appeared in 1867 as The Night Fossickers and other Australian tales of peril and adventure.

His Ned Kelly originally appeared in thirty-eight weekly parts. Here we see an edition bound from the parts but with a lurid, "yellowback" style cover. Ned Kelly (1855-1880) the most famous Australian bushranger had been executed on 11^th November 1880. Allegedly, Kelly's final words from the gallows were, "Such is life", a saying later used by Joseph Furphy as the title of his novel (item 28).

There have been numerous literary and historical works about Kelly and his gang. The responses to the Kelly saga remain polarised. One side sees him as an Irish hero of the under-class; the other as a criminal who posed a serious threat to established values. This split in views can be seen as ideological. It partly reflects the once dominant Catholic/Protestant polarities of Australian society.

Blue Cap the bushranger is an example of an Australian adventure tale produced for the English market where the linking of the name to that of the notorious highwaymen, Dick Turpin, would have created a familiarity in the reader.

11. Boldrewood, Rolf (1826-1915)

Robbery under arms : a story of life and adventure in the bush and in the goldfields of Australia / by Rolf Bolderwood [sic] (London : Remington, 1888) 3 v.

Rolf Boldrewood was the pen-name of Thomas Alexander Browne. He arrived in Sydney as a child in 1830. The family moved to Melbourne in 1838, but his father was ruined in the depression of the early 1840s. The young Thomas took up land at Port Fairy in 1843 and prospered. He acquired leases on further runs in the Riverina but fell victim to the bad seasons in 1866 and 1868. He then became a Police Magistrate and Goldfields Commissioner in New South Wales.

Boldrewood began writing in the 1860s partly to pay off debts. Some of his articles on Australia appeared in 1865 in the Cornhill Magazine. During the 1870s he had seven novels published as serials in the Australian Town and Country Journal, but it was not until Robbery Under Arms appeared, first in the Sydney Mail (1882-83), then in three volumes in London in 1888, and as a single volume in 1889, that his popularity was assured.

If one disregards the novels which deal with convicts, Robbery Under Arms is the first Australian novel to have criminals as the main characters. Dick Marston is a bushranger with Captain Starlight. Their adventures take place in Victoria and New South Wales, particularly on and around the Turon gold fields.

Boldrewood published seventeen more novels from the 1890s up to 1905. After his retirement in 1895, he moved with his family to Melbourne where he became a member of the Melbourne Club. His volume of reminiscences, Old Melbourne Memories (1884) is an important source of information on Melbourne in the 1840s.

12. Hume, Fergus (1859-1932)

The mystery of a hansom cab / by Fergus W. Hume. (London : The Hansom Cab Publishing Co., [1888?])
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Fergus Hume came to New Zealand from England as a child. He was educated in Otago where he graduated in law in 1885. He then moved to Melbourne and tried his hand at writing plays. However he was unable to have his dramas performed. Realising that the detective novels of the Frenchman, Gaboriau were then very popular he decided to write a similar work set in Melbourne. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was published in 1886. It quickly became a success and, in 1888, Hume returned to England where he continued as an author, publishing over 130 further detective novels, only a few of which were set in Australia.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab opens with two men, one supporting the other, hailing a cab in Collins Street. After one man alights along St. Kilda Road, his companion in the cab is found to have been murdered. The novel's plot is complicated; involving illegitimacy and blackmail. Part of its interest lies in Hume's depiction of Melbourne low life during the boom period.

13. Boothby, Guy (1867-1905)

Doctor Nikola / by Guy Boothby ; Illustrated by Stanley L. Wood. (London : Ward, Lock, 1896)
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Guy Boothby was born in Adelaide, but with his brother travelled extensively in Australia and South-East Asia. An account of his experiences was published as On the wallaby, or, Through the East and across Australia (1894). The book was illustrated by Guy's brother, Ben.

In 1894 he went to London where he made his career as a novelist, publishing over fifty works before his early death in 1905, aged thirty-eight.

Several of his novels have Australian settings or content. Dr. Nikola is his most famous character, first appearing in A bid for fortune, or, Dr. Nikola's vendetta (1895). That novel centres on a merchant from Thursday Island who sails to London with the New South Wales Colonial Secretary. Dr. Nikola is a necromancer who tries to steal from the Colonial Secretary a magic stick which carries the key to the mysteries of an eastern monastery.

The novel Doctor Nikola is partly famous for the sinister vignette portrait on the cover which shows the main character and his cat. The plot centres on Nikola and his companion trying to penetrate the monasteries of Tibet to discover the ancient knowledge hidden there. There were three further Dr. Nikola novels culminating in Farewell Nikola (1901). They were immensely popular in their time.

Although the strong flavour of the occult is an important part of their success, the appeal of the Nikola novels also lies in Boothby's use of exotic locales. The action in the later works takes place in a range of settings from Venice to Mashonaland.

14. Cambridge, Ada (1844-1926)

The three Miss Kings : a novel / by Ada Cambridge. (London : Heinemann, 1891)

Ada Cambridge came to Australia in 1870 after marrying a curate. Her husband took up posts in parishes around country Victoria before becoming Vicar of Williamstown (1893-1909).

She had published three short works of fiction and two books of verse on religious themes before her marriage. After arriving in Australia she began by publishing a volume of verse; The Manor house and other poems, which appeared in 1875. From 1875 onwards she directed her attention to writing novels. Nine of her novels appeared as serials in the Australasian from 1875 to 1886.

One of these, The Three Miss Kings may be taken as an example of her work. It is set in Melbourne in 1880. The plot centres on the attempts of a society matron to find husbands for three orphaned sisters. The novel includes descriptions of attending the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. It appeared in book form in 1891 and helped establish her reputation in England as well as Australia.

The dissatisfaction of Ada Cambridge with aspects of her life were given voice in her second volume of poems, Unspoken thoughts (1887) in which she wrote frankly about marriage and sexuality. She suffered a breakdown at his time and moved to Sydney for treatment and convalescence. There she mixed with the artistic and literary set of the time.

She resumed her novel writing with A Marked Man (1890), using some of her own experiences such as a visit to an artists' camp at Mosman, and creating a character, Rutledge, as a vehicle for the discussion of religious doubts.

She published fourteen more novels from 1892 to 1914, and two volumes of memoirs, Thirty years in Australia (1903) and The Retrospect (1912). The latter work is particularly interesting for her account of returning to England after an absence of nearly forty years.

15. Praed, Campbell, Mrs. (1851-1935)

An Australian heroine / by Mrs Campbell Praed. New ed. (London : Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1883)

Longleat of Kooralbyn, or, Policy and passion : a novel of Australian life / by R.M. Praed. Australian ed. (London : Richard Bentley, 1887)

Nyria / by Mrs. Campbell Praed. New and cheaper ed. (London : William Rider & Son, 1913)
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Rosa Praed was born near Beaudesert south of Brisbane. Her father was a pastoralist, and later Postmaster-General of Queensland. Her husband was also a pastoralist and the newly married couple lived on a station near Gladstone for the first three years of their marriage. Rosa used this experience in her first novel, An Australian heroine (1880) and in The Head Station, (1885) as well as in The Romance of the Station (1889).

An Australian heroine opens with descriptions of outback Queensland before the heroine, while still a child, is taken back to her ancestral home in England. Mrs. Praed followed this with Policy and Passion (1881) here seen in its re-titled form Longleat of Kooralbyn, or, Policy and passion : a novel of Australian life. This is sometimes considered her best novel. It deals with political and pastoral life in Queensland. The central character, Longleat is the premier of Leichhardt's-Land [i.e. Queensland]. He is markedly antagonistic towards Englishmen who come to the colony with the view that they are the natural rulers. The scoundrel Hardress Barrington is the representative of this type in the novel. Mrs. Praed was well-placed to write such a work because of her personal experiences and her family background.

In 1875 Mrs. Praed and her husband sold their Queensland property and sailed to England. Although she wrote several novels with Australian backgrounds, from about 1900 onwards the themes of spiritualism and the occult predominated in her work She and her husband separated in the 1890s and from 1899 she lived with Nancy Harward whom she believed to be the re-incarnation of a Roman slave girl. Nancy's story is told in Nyria (1904).

16. Tasma (1848-1897)

Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill : an Australian novel / by Tasma. 2nd. ed. (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1889)

A Sydney sovereign and other tales / by Tasma.(London : Trubner & Co., 1890)

"Tasma", or Jessie Couvreur, was born in London but came to Tasmania in the early 1850s. After her marriage in 1867 she moved to Kyneton and Malmesbury in Victoria, but separated from her husband and returned to England in 1873. She contributed several stories and sketches to magazines and annuals. Many of these were collected in A Sydney sovereign and other tales (1890)

Her first and best-known novel, Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill appeared in 1889. It is set in the 1860s, at sea en route to Melbourne, in Melbourne, and at "Barnesbury" [i.e. Malmesbury] It is a novel in the Jane Austen tradition, written in a sardonic tone with the plot hinging on marriage proposals, centring on a young vicar, and an impoverished but genteel family with two young daughters.

In her five later novels Tasma drew upon the unhappy experiences of her marriage. Her heroines tend to be strong women married to weak, boorish husbands.

17. In Australian wilds, and other colonial tales and sketches / by B. L. Farjeon ... [et al.] ; edited by Philip Mennell. (London : Hutchinson, 1889)
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18. Under the gum tree : Australian "bush" stories / by Mrs Campbell Praed, and various authors ; edited by Mrs H. Patchett Martin. (London : Trischler, 1890)
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19. Coo-ee : tales of Australian life by Australian ladies / edited by Mrs. Patchett Martin. (London : Griffith Farran Okeden & Welsh, [1891])
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These anthologies were important vehicles for popularising Australian writers, especially the lady novelists, in the English market. In her address "To the reader" at the beginning of Coo-ee Mrs. Martin writes,

It is certainly a 'far cry' from the Antipodes to England and back again. Yet in the name of my Australian sisters who have contributed to this little volume, I venture to express a hope that our 'Coo-ee' may succeed in making itself heard on either shore, and that its echoes may linger pleasantly around the Bush Station and by the English fireside. To our kind friends and readers I would therefore only say - 'Coo-ee! Take up the cry and pass it on - Coo-ee! - and again - Coo-ee!'

As well as a story by B. L. Farjeon, In Australian wilds includes one by Tasma.

Under the gum tree is a collection of short stories by various Australian authors who were prominent at the time. They include Tasma and Hume Nisbet. Two of Mrs. Praed's stories were included in the book. The first was "A disturbed Christmas in the bush". Presumably this cheap paperback anthology was produced for the Christmas market. It tells us something of the popularity of fiction set in Australia at the time.

Coo-ee also includes stories by Tasma and Mrs. Praed as well as a long story, "Victims of Circe" by Mrs. Mannington Caffyn. This deals with a scandal on a Victorian station. It was the first of Mrs. Caffyn's works to appear and foreshadowed her interest in the relations of the sexes which was to become the main theme in her novels, published under the pen-name "Iota".

20. Iota (1855-1926)

A yellow aster / by Iota. Copyright ed. (Leipzig : B. Tauchnitz, 1894)

A comedy in spasms / by Iota. (London : Hutchinson, [1895])

"Iota" was the pen-name of Kathleen Caffyn, the wife of Stephen Mannington Caffyn. The Caffyns came to Australia in 1880. Stephen was a doctor and worked as a government health official in Sydney and Wollongong before moving to Melbourne and entering private practice. He wrote two novels before his early death in 1896.

Mrs. Caffyn's first novel A Yellow Aster appeared in three volumes in 1894. The heroine is a modern girl who enters marriage as a form of experiment, having been brought up by parents who were scientists. The novel was quite a success, running through several editions in the first year. The copy on display is a one volume Tauchnitz edition for sale only on the Continent.

A Comedy in Spasms, her third novel begins with the heroine's husband dying on their drought-plagued station in the outback. Much of the novel takes place on the ship with the woman and her child returning to England. The conversations range over such subjects as the contrast between Australian and English girls.

A Comedy in Spasms was published as part of the "Zeit-Geist Library", Hutchinson's answer to Unwin's successful "Pseudonym Library" series. The books were of a similar small folio format.

21. Blitz, A., Mrs. (1847-1923)

An Australian millionaire : a novel / by Mrs. A. Blitz. (London : Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1894)

Mrs. Blitz's first book, Digger Dick's darling, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1888. An Australian millionaire is an extremely complicated story turning upon the terms of a will and the substitution of one child for another, a fact which only comes to light after the boy has fallen in love with his own sister.

22. Martin, Catherine (1848-1937)

An Australian girl / by Mrs. Alick Macleod. Australian ed. (London : Richard Bentley, 1894)

Catherine Martin lived in South Australia. Her first novel, An Australian girl, was published in three volumes by Bentley in 1890. She had previously published a volume of verse and was to publish three further novels.

An Australian girl is set initially in the Mallee, and later in Berlin. The heroine suffers through a bad marriage and we are treated to much conversation on the subject of the relations of the sexes. Catherine Martin's novels are in the tradition of Jane Austen and George Eliot with well-rounded characters and mature dialogue. Henry Handel Richardson is one of the few other Australian novelists to follow this path until comparatively recently.

23. Lawson, Henry (1867-1922)

Short stories in prose and verse / by Henry Lawson. (Sydney : L. Lawson, [1894])
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Henry Lawson is the best-known Australian fiction writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His world of small farmers, swagmen, and bush workers, with their severely put-upon wives was, and still is, for many Australians the archetype of the phlegmatic, down-trodden, but sardonic "battler". Lawson's work is central to the 1890s Bulletin school of Australian nationalism. "Mateship" is the virtue prized above all others in his fiction.

Henry Lawson first established himself as a poet, having had his first poem "A song of the Republic", published in The Bulletin in October 1887. His mother Louisa was a Sydney radical and edited the monthly magazine, The Republican and in 1888 founded her own journal, The Dawn.

In 1894 she published Henry's first book, Short stories in prose and verse. The book includes some of his best-known stories, in particular "The drover's wife" and "The Union buries its dead".

In his "Preface" Lawson wrote,

This is an attempt to publish, in Australia, a collection of sketches and stories at a time when everything Australian in the shape of a book must bear the imprint of a London publishing firm before our critics will condescend to notice it, and before the "reading public" will think it worth its while to buy nearly so many copies as will pay for the mere cost of printing a presentable volume.

In fact Louisa had not been able to afford a "presentable volume" and owing to an accident with the sheets only about seventy of a print-run of five hundred appeared.

Later in his "Preface" he refers to the circumstances of the publication,

This pamphlet - I can scarcely call it a volume - contains some of my earliest efforts and they are sufficiently crude and faulty. They have been collected and printed hurriedly with an eye to Christmas.

"The Drover's Wife", is perhaps Lawson's most famous story. The woman is isolated in her hut in the bush with her four children. Her husband has been away droving for six months, and she is lonely and depressed. The action centres on killing a snake but Lawson's skill is in presenting the disappointments which resonate in the woman's mind as she waits up all night for the snake to appear from its hiding place. The story ends with a simple but moving line from the young son, "Mother I won't never go drovin'; blast me if I do!" (p. 39)

24. Fraser, Joseph.

Melbourne and Mars : my mysterious life on two planets : extracts from the diary of a Melbourne merchant / edited by Joseph Fraser. (Melbourne : E.W. Cole, [1889?])
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This was the first science-fiction novel written and set in Australia. The hero, Adam Jacobs, comes to Australia with his convict father, succeeds in business, but loses money in the 1840s depression only to regain his fortune at the gold-fields. He has a series of dreams which show that he is really living as a child on Mars. The Utopian civilization of that planet is described in great detail, including flying machines.

25. Potter, Robert (1831-1908)

The germ growers : an Australian story of adventure and mystery / by Robert Easterley and John Wilbraham. (Melbourne : Melville, Mullen & Slade ; London : Hutchinson & Co., 1892)

"Robert Easterley and John Wilbraham" was the pseudonym under which Rev. Robert Potter, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, wrote his science-fiction novel. It is set in Central Australia and involves Aborigines and a tribe with wings.

26. Mackay, Kenneth (1859-1935)

The yellow wave : a romance of the Asiatic invasion of Australia / by Kenneth Mackay. (London : R. Bentley, 1897)

Kenneth Mackay was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. He was a cavalry officer commanding a contingent in the Boer War, and also served in World War I.

The Yellow Wave is set in the future, 1954. Australia is being invaded by Mongol hordes on horseback, while much of the country is being worked by coolie labour.

27. Favenc, Ernest (1846-1908)

The secret of the Australian desert / by Ernest Favenc ; with four illustrations by Percy F.S. Spence and a map. (London : Blackie, 1896)
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Marooned on Australia : being the narration by Diedrich Buys of his discoveries and exploits in Terra Australis Incognita about the year 1630 / by Ernest Favenc ; with four illustrations by Percy F.S. Spence and a map. (London : Blackie, [1896])

Favenc came to Austraia in 1863. After working for a year in Sydney he went to work on a north Queensland station. He began to write for the newspapers under the name, "Dramingo". In 1878 the Queenslander asked him to explore the country between Blackall and Darwin in preparation for the proposed rail link between Queensland and northern Australia. He successfully undertook the journey, following the approximate track taken by Leichhardt some thirty years previously. He remained in the Gulf country and the Kimberleys, exploring various parts of the country which were later opened to cattle grazing.

He began to write historical works, the best-known being, The History of Australian Exploration (1888). From 1893 to 1899 he published five volumes of fiction, both short stories and novels, and in 1905 a book of verse.

The secret of the Australian desert was first published in 1895. It deals with the fate of the explorer Leichhardt. Marooned on Australia is an historical novel based on the wreck of the Batavia on the west coast of Australia in 1629.

Favenc's descriptions of the Australian bush and the hardships experienced by explorers and bushmen have the authentic ring of one who has been there. He did however, add a flavour of fantasy to his fiction by tapping into the contemporary speculation surrounding "Lemuria", a lost civilization perhaps surviving in the unexplored regions of the continent. This concept features in the novels on display and in Favenc's 1893 collection of short stories, The last of six: tales of the Austral tropics.

28. Furphy, Joseph (1843-1912)

Such is life : being certain extracts from the diary of Tom Collins. (Sydney : Bulletin Newspaper Co., 1903)
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Joseph Furphy was born at Yering in the Yarra Valley to Irish Protestant parents. After marrying a French girl, Leonie Germaine, he moved to the Riverina where he worked on the land, then as a bullock driver. The drought ruined his income and he moved to Shepparton to work in his brother's foundry. He was largely self-educated, making use of the local Mechanic's Institute. In 1889 he began to contribute to The Bulletin, using the pen-name, "Warrigal Jack", and later the name "Tom Collins".

He completed the manuscript of Such is Life in 1897 and sent it to Archibald at The Bulletin. Archibald and A. G. Stephens, The Bulletin's literary editor advised Furphy to shorten the novel. This he did and Such is Life was published in 1903. The parts excised later appeared as two separate novels, Rigby's Romance (1921) and The Buln-buln and the Brolga (1948)

Such is Life is arguably the "great Australian novel". It is written in a style akin to that of Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy. There is no obvious plot, but rather a series of apparently rambling anecdotes which gradually reveal details about the characters and life in the Riverina in the 1890s.

29. Montgomery, Alex. (1847-1922)

Five Skull Island : and other tales of the Malay Archipelago from The Sydney Bulletin / by Alex Montgomery. (Melbourne : George Robertson, 1897)
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Alexander Montgomery was an Irishman who came to Australia in 1870, and worked as a journalist in Melbourne. He later travelled in Asia, returning in 1884 to work as a journalist in Sydney where he edited the "Aboriginalities" page in the Bulletin.

Five Skull Island is a collection of short stories, most of which are set in Java, Borneo and the Celebes. The use of the Pacific islands and the islands to the north of Australia as exotic locales for fiction was a distinct trend in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This book is an example of a local production in the same 1890s style as the "Pseudonym Library" and the "Zeit-Geist Library", an example of which we saw with Iota's Comedy of Spasms. The publisher, George Robertson used the name, "Warrigal Series".

30. Dawe, Carlton (1865-1935)

Zantha / by William Dawe. (Melbourne : W. Inglis, 1886)
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The golden lake, or, The marvellous history of a journey through the great lone land of Australia / by W. Carlton Dawe. New ed. (London : A.P. Marsden, 1894)

William Dawe, or "Carlton" Dawe as he styled himself in his later books, was born in Adelaide. He moved with his parents to Melbourne in 1880. Zantha was his first novel. It is an exotic work centring on a Greek man detained in a French hospital. The plot deals with murder and madness.

Dawe moved permanently to England in 1892 where he became a successful novelist. His early novels, apart from Zantha, are set in Australia. The Golden Lake was first published in 1891. The novel opens in Melbourne but the action concerns a story told of a supposed cavern of gold in Western Australia and an expedition mounted to find it. The illustrations were by Hume Nisbet, an artist and novelist who visited Australia on several occasions.

31. Warung, Price (1855-1911)

Tales of the convict system / by Price Warung. (Sydney : Bulletin Newspaper Co., 1892)
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"Price Warung" was the pen-name of William Astley. His convict stories first appeared in The Bulletin and the Truth during the 1890s. Tales of the Convict System was the first collection to appear in book form. It is dedicated "to the memory of Marcus Clarke", Warung's inspiration for his historical fiction.

Warung had a radical agenda in his work. He was the editor of the Australian Workman and involved himself in labour causes and in the debates over Federation.

32. Kennedy, E. B. (Edward B.)

Blacks and bushrangers : adventures in Queensland / by E.B. Kennedy ; with illustrations by Stanley Berkeley. New and cheaper ed. London : Sampson Low, Marston, 1892.
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Kennedy was one of the early settlers in Queensland. He wrote two factual books on his experiences there, Four years in Queensland (1870) and The Black Police of Queensland: reminiscences of official work (1902). Blacks and bushrangers (1889) was the first of two novels by Kennedy set in Queensland and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. It deals with settlers on the Burdekin River and contains much detail on the customs of the Aborigines.

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Yellowbacks

"Yellowbacks" were a style of cheap hardback book published in the second half of the nineteenth century. They had pictorial covers usually on a bright yellow background. Their popularity was based to some extent on the fact that they were sold to travellers at the railway station bookstalls. Most of the publishers of the period tried the format. The books themselves were usually reprints of popular fiction. The Melbourne publisher, George Robertson published several titles as "Yellowbacks".

33. Donnison, A. (?-1932)

Winning a wife in Australia : a story drawn from actual experiences and illustrative of life in the present day in the Antipodes / by A. Donnison. (London : Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1894)
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34. McIver, G.

Neuroomia : a new continent : a manuscript delivered by the deep / by G. McIver. (London ; Melbourne : George Robertson, 1894)
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Arthur Donnison wrote two novels, Winning a wife in Australia (1894) and With the banks at her mercy: an Australian banking story (1908). Both deal with characters involved in the commercial life of Sydney. Parts of Winning a wife are also set on a Darling Downs property.

McIver's Neuroomia is a Utopian novel in which a whaler sets out from Hobart and finds an uncharted continent to the south.

35. Becke, Louis (1855-1913)

By reef and palm / With an introduction by the late Earl of Pembroke. (London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1898)

Louis Becke first went to sea at fourteen. His experiences as a sailor over the next twenty-five years provided him with material for his thirty-five books. He returned to Sydney in 1893 and began to write stories for The Bulletin. He also contributed the plot-line to Rolf Boldrewood for use in that author's 1893 novel, A Modern Buccaneer.

By Reef and Palm, a collection of short stories first appeared in 1894. It, along with His Native Wife, another collection published in 1895, established Becke as a popular writer of Pacific island fiction.

This "Half-Crown Re-issue" of 1898 includes all of the stories of the first two books, and a frontispiece portrait of Becke.

36. Rudd, Steele (1868-1935)

On our selection! / by Arthur H. Davis (Steele Rudd) ; illustrated by A.J. Fischer ... [et al]. 24th ed. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall, 1930)
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"Steele Rudd", or Arthur Hoey Davis, was the son of a Darling Downs blacksmith. Rudd worked in Brisbane as a public servant, and began to contribute short stories to The Bulletin. On our selection was the first set of these sketches to be collected into book form. The stories are concerned with Dad and Dave and their family living on a small farm or "selection".

His treatment of the hardships of the rural poor with a broad slapstick humour proved extremely popular with the Australian public. He published twenty-three novels and collections of stories, the last in 1934. His books were the mainstay of A. C. Rowlandson's New South Wales Bookstall Company. Many of them were made into films and over two thousand episodes of the radio serial, "Dad and Dave" were made from 1937 to 1951, with re-runs still being regularly broadcast in the 1960s.

37. Baynton, Barbara (1857-1929)

The chosen vessel / by Barbara Baynton. (Sydney : F. Cunninghame [1896?]
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Bush studies / by Barbara Baynton. (London : Duckworth, 1902)
Human toll / by Barbara Baynton. (London : Duckworth, 1907)

Barbara Baynton was born in Scone, NSW. She married a selector, and they had three children. Her husband ran off with the servant in 1887, after which Barbara moved to Sydney, divorced him and married Thomas Baynton, a retired surgeon who mixed in literary circles. She began to write short stories, the first appearing in The Bulletin in 1896. It was probably in that year that she had her first book published, The chosen vessel. This is a pamphlet in which she printed one of her stories. She collected these early sketches as Bush Studies in 1902.

These stories are similar in their settings to those of Henry Lawson but Barbara Baynton's style is much more grim and gives the air of unvarnished realism. Her bitterness is apparent when we read of the plight of women on small farms in the Australian countryside. The brutality of the conditions, and in particular of the men, makes Bush Studies harrowing to read. Human Toll, her only novel, is also relentlessly bleak.

The vision Barbara Baynton offers is an effective antidote to the romanticism of the bush yarn and the bush ballad. For her, Nature in Australia is pitiless, and humanity in the bush, removed from the restraints of civilised society, merciless.

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New South Wales Bookstall novels.

The New South Wales Bookstall was one of the largest publishers of Australian fiction in the early twentieth century. The Company was run by A. C. Rowlandson, and published over 250 titles in the period up to his death in 1922. The company continued into the 1940s, and sold more than five million books during its existence. However, as Bertram Stevens stated in the Lone Hand (October 1918), Rowlandson had to sell 10,000 copies of each title to break even.

The novels were Australian and were written by some of the best-known authors of the time including Steele Rudd, Louis Becke, Edward Dyson, and Vance Palmer. The works themselves catered for a variety of tastes. Some were set in the city, some in the country, and especially in the islands of the Pacific. The covers were designed by many of the prominent artists of the day, in particular the Lindsays: Norman, Percy, Ruby and Lionel.

On display is a small sample of titles from our large collection of NSW Bookstall publications.

38. Rudd, Steele (1868-1935)

Sandy's selection / by Steele Rudd. (Sydney : New South Wales Bookstall, 1904)

Steele Rudd was Rowlandson's most popular writer. His first book, On our selection although originally published by The Bulletin, appeared in over thirty Bookstall editions. Sandy's selection was the first Rudd title to appear in the Bookstall series. Rowlandson caused a sensation at the time by paying £500 for the copyright.

39. Dyson, Edward (1865-1931)

Fact'ry 'ands / by Edward Dyson ; with illustrations by Will Dyson. 4th ed. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co., 1920)
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This collection of short stories about the larrikins in the Melbourne "push" first appeared in the Bookstall series in 1912; it had earlier been published by George Robertson in 1906. The cover illustration of two larrikins trying to impress two passing women is by Lionel Lindsay.

40. Lindsay, Norman (1879-1969)

A curate in Bohemia / by Norman Lindsay. (Sydney : NSW Bookstall Co., 1932)
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This was Norman Lindsay's first novel, first published in 1913 by the Bookstall Company. It is based on his own early life as a student in Melbourne trying to make money as an artist. The novel is famous partly for its original cover illustration, by Norman himself. It shows an artist's studio. Norman Lindsay has drawn himself with a pipe and fez. The curate has stumbled upon the artist's model behind a screen, hastily draping herself in a wrap. In the original artwork the model had not had time to cover one of her breasts. This appeared on the first edition, but was quickly withdrawn and is now extremely scarce.

41. Wright, Arthur (1870-1932)

A game of chance / by Arthur Wright ; illustrations by Percy Lindsay. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall, 1927)

This novel first appeared as a Bookstall publication in 1919. Wright was a crime novelist who usually set his works in the world of horse-racing. He was a writer in the tradition of Nat Gould; Dick Francis could be seen as one of his successors. Wright's novels were set in Sydney with the characters drawn from the habitués of Randwick racecourse.

42. Palmer, Vance (1885-1959)

The shantykeeper's daughter / by Vance Palmer ; illustrations by Percy Lindsay. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co., 1921)

This novel was written especially for the NSW Bookstall and first appeared in 1920. Vance Palmer had begun his career in 1915 with a volume of verse, The Forerunners, and one of short stories, The World of Men. The Shantykeepers Daughter was his first novel. His second novel, The Boss of Killara was also published by NSW Bookstall. In later years he dropped these titles from his list of works. Nevertheless they cover themes and relationships which he was to return to in his more ambitious books. They represent the tradition of the Australian station novel, set on a pastoral property.

43. Powell, S. W. (Sydney Walter) (1878-?)

The maker of pearls / by S.W. Powell ; illus. by Percy Lindsay. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co., 1921)
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Sydney Powell published five novels with the Bookstall. He was an Englishman who had served in the Boer War before coming to Australia. He went to Thursday Island and contributed articles on life there for The Bulletin. He then went to New Zealand and Tahiti, joined the AIF and served at Gallipoli. After the war he became a trader in the South Pacific. He wrote seventeen novels as well as volumes of verse and his memoirs, Adventures of a Wanderer (1928).

His novels and stories are typical of a genre very popular in the early twentieth century, the tale of life among the natives in the islands. Louis Becke had earlier popularised this vein; perhaps the greatest exponent was Joseph Conrad with his novels set in the Malay archipelago.

The cover by Percy Lindsay seems not to have met with the interference of censorship suffered by his brother Norman in 1913 (see item 39).

44. Grimshaw, Beatrice Ethel (1870-1953)

The coral queen. (Sydney, NSW Bookstall, 1920)
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This was first published in 1919. Beatrice Grimshaw was an Irish-woman who worked as a tourist promoter in the South Seas. She settled in New Guinea and wrote many travel books as well as about forty novels. Percy Lindsay's cover, showing the heroine with her riding crop coming upon a noble black man, is a classic of its type.

Rowlandson published many women novelists, including Capel Boake, Sumner Locke, Mabel Forrest and Louise Mack.

45. McLaren, Jack (1887-1954)

The skipper of the "Roaring Meg" / by Jack McLaren ; illustrations by Percy Lindsay. (Sydney : N.S.W. Bookstall Co., 1923)
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Another South-Seas novel, but Percy Lindsay's cover illustration is the ultimate strong woman image. We see the heroine brandishing the severed head of a brutal-looking savage while her male companion recoils in horror.

Jack McLaren worked as a sailor on trading vessels along the Queensland coast, New Guinea, and the islands, eventually setting-up a coconut plantation on the west coast of Cape York. He contributed sketches to The Bulletin under the pen-name Jack McNorth, and published his first book, Red Mountain: a romance of tropical Australia in 1919, with the NSW Bookstall. Two more of his books appeared in that year including the first edition of The skipper of the "Roaring Meg".

He published eighteen volumes of fiction, a book of verse, and several travel accounts as well as four volumes of his memoirs and an account of the New Guinea patrol officers.

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46. Lane, William (1861-1917)

Workingman's Paradise: an Australian labour novel / by John Miller. (Sydney : Edwards, Dunlop & Co. ; Brisbane : Worker Board of Trustees, 1892)

William Lane was born in Bristol and went to America at sixteen. There he worked in the printing industry and as a journalist. He became interested in radical ideas, particularly those of Edward Bellamy and Henry George.

In 1885 he came to Queensland where he worked as a journalist in Brisbane on The Boomerang and, as editor of The Worker. He was involved in the Union activities around the Maritime strike of 1890 and the Shearers' strike of 1891. Workingman's Paradise was written partly to raise funds for jailed strikers.

The title, quoted from Henry Kingsley's Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn, is meant to be read ironically. The hero, Ned Hawkins, a Queensland bushman, is taken by a woman, Nellie Lawton, based on Mary Gilmore, to see the conditions of the poor in Sydney. She introduces him to the city's radical circles, including Arty, the poet, based on Henry Lawson. Ned becomes a committed Marxist and Unionist and the novel ends with him returning to Queensland to become involved in the Shearers' strike.

Lane is perhaps best-known for leading the attempt to set up "New Australia", a settlement in Paraguay organised on Communist lines. Mary Gilmore was one of the early participants in this Utopian venture.

47. Dorrington, Albert (1874-1953)

Castro's Last Sacrament and other stories / by Albert Dorrington. (Sydney, Bulletin Newspaper Co, 1900)

Albert Dorrington was an Englishman who travelled widely before settling in Sydney in the 1890s where he began to contribute stories to The Bulletin. Castro's Last Sacrament was a collection of these and included perhaps his best-known short story, "A Bush Tanqueray". The title-story is also an interesting one, typical, one imagines, of those told around the bar at night in the tropics. Castro was the publican of the Orient Hotel on Thursday Island. Herrick, a keen young fellow, is sent to the Island by the Torres Strait Pearling Company, and the old timers, led by Castro play a trick on him. It all goes innocently enough until, late at night, when Castro, drunk, and disguised as a Papuan chief (part of the trick), goes to bed with Mrs. Castro, his attractive Italian wife. The young man thinks the publican's wife is being violated by an intruder, goes to her rescue and is knifed by Castro. He dies, but had been able to wound Castro in the fight. A priest is called to minister to the publican, and Castro's wife exasperated at the brutality of her husband, slips Prussic acid into the chalice with the wine. At the end of the story both men are dead. The heat, boredom, hard work, sexual tension and casual violence all go together to create a minor masterpiece.

He published The Lady Calphurnia Royal with A. G. Stephens, first as a serial in The Bookfellow (1907) later as a book (1909). The lady of the title has an eventful life which led her from Paris to the French penal colony of Noumea, and then to outback Australia.

Dorrington returned to England in 1907 where he enjoyed a successful career as a novelist, often using Australia as a background to his tales.

48. Franklin, Miles (1879-1954)

My Brilliant Career / by Miles Franklin ; with a preface by Henry Lawson. (Edinburgh : William Blackwood and Sons, 1901)
Up the country / by Brent of Bin Bin (Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1928)
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Miles Franklin came from a long-established Australian family, one of her ancestors having been a convict in the "First Fleet". She was born on a grazing property in the Monaro district. Their station, "Brindabella" was used as a setting in her novels, though by the time she wrote My Brilliant Career, the family were living on a dairy farm which she depicted as the hateful, "Possum Gully".

My Brilliant Career was written when Miles Franklin was only nineteen. It tells the story of Sybylla, a fiercely independent girl who is rebelling at the limits imposed by circumstance on her life. The stresses felt by women who have to live in the Australian bush are graphically described. Henry Lawson wrote the introduction, describing the book as "true to Australia, the truest I ever read."

Miles Franklin ultimately became unhappy with the book, withdrawing it from circulation in 1910 and refusing to allow it to be reprinted.

She wrote six novels under her own name and six as "Brent of Bin Bin"; Bin Bin was a neighbouring property in the Monaro district. The Brent of Bin Bin novels present a saga of life on the land. The first, Up the Country appeared in 1928, and the last, Gentleman of Gyang Gyang in 1956. The identity of the author of these works was the subject of some speculation in the 1930s. Franklin refused to admit she had written them and the full story was not revealed until after her death.

In 1948 she used her family money to set up the Miles Franklin Award for Australian fiction. The first award was made to Patrick White for Voss, in 1957.

49. Manning, Frederic (1882-1935)

The Middle parts of fortune : Somme and Ancre 1916 / Frederic Manning. (London : Piazza Press ; issued to subscribers by Peter Davies, 1929) 2 v.

Frederic Manning was born in Sydney. He went to England at the age of fifteen, and published two volumes of verse and a volume of philosophical dialogues before the outbreak of the First World War. He joined the army early in the war and served at the Somme and Ancre. His experiences are fictionalised as those of Private Bourne in the novel.

The Middle parts of fortune was published anonymously in 1929 to literary acclaim. When the first, limited edition was sold out, Manning published an expurgated version for the popular market, entitled, Her privates we (1930).

50. Mann, Leonard (1895-1981)

Flesh in Armour : a novel / Leonard Mann. (Melbourne : Phaedrus, 1932)
A murder in Sydney : a novel / by Leonard Mann. (London : Jonathan Cape, 1937)
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Leonard Mann was a Melbourne public servant who enlisted in the War. Flesh in Armour was his first novel. It deals with his experiences on the Western Front. The hero, Jim Blount, is brave in battle, but irreverent towards authority. The emphasis on the spirit of mateship among the Australian troops contributes to building the popular ideal of the Aussie soldier. Like Manning's Private Bourne, Jim Blount dies heroically at the end.

An interesting variation on the war theme is the inclusion, as a sympathetic figure, of Frank Jeffreys, the socialist school-teacher who spends much of his time at the front almost paralysed with fear, and finally shoots himself.

Although Mann initially had trouble finding a publisher for his work, it was soon hailed as the best Australian novel from the War.

A Murder in Sydney was one of six further novels which Mann wrote The plot deals with a girl who murders her father's fiancée. It is a murder story, but is rather the study of a psychosis, than a mystery.

51. Richardson, Henry Handel

Maurice Guest / by Henry Handel Richardson. (London : Heinemann, 1908)

Henry Handel Richardson was born Ethel Richardson. Her father was a doctor in Victoria. The tragic fluctuations of his career leading to his eventual death in 1879, form the basis of his daughter's most famous work, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, a trilogy of novels published from 1917 to 1929, and in one volume in 1930.

Ethel was educated at Presbyterian Ladies College, East Melbourne. Her experiences there were later used in The Getting of Wisdom (1910). Her mother took her to Germany to live in 1888 to further her musical studies. There she met her future husband J. G. Robertson, and began her career as a writer. Her first two books were translations of Scandinavian novels.

Maurice Guest was begun in 1897 in Strasbourg where her husband worked as a lecturer, and completed in London once the couple had moved there after Robertson's appointment to the Chair of German at the University of London.

Maurice Guest is set among the expatriates in Leipzig. Maurice is a young English music student who develops a passion for Louise, an older Australian woman. The novel's cast of characters inhabit a highly-charged emotional world. Maurice eventually succeeds in having an affair with Louise only to discover his passion is not reciprocated. He commits suicide, and Louise marries Schilsky, a Polish musician who had previously deserted her. It is a precocious novel dealing with sophisticated relationships. In 1954 the novel was made into an MGM film, Rhapsody, starring Elizabeth Taylor.

52. Stone, Louis (1871-1935)

Jonah / Louis Stone. (Sydney : Endeavour Press, 1933)
Betty Wayside [in Lone Hand, July 1913-Aug. 1914]
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Louis Stone was born in England, but came to Australia with his family when only thirteen. They lived in Redfern and Waterloo, two of Sydney's poorer areas. Louis became a teacher, and married Abigail Allen, who was also a teacher.

Jonah was published in England in 1911 and, with a Norman Lindsay cover, in Sydney in 1933. It appeared in a US edition at that time re-titled Larrikin. The novel is set in the Sydney slums around the turn of the century. Jonah is the leader of a larrikin push who is reformed by the feelings for his illegitimate child. He marries the mother, becomes a successful shopkeeper but does not achieve happiness. The novel is enlivened partly by the Dickensian washerwoman, Mrs.Yabsley, Louis' mother-in-law.

Betty Wayside, is seen here in its original form as a serial in The Lone Hand, with Lionel Lindsay's illustrations. It deals with the musical ambitions of a middle-class girl in Paddington and Woollahra. The serial version was edited for publication in book-form in 1915.

53. Quin, Tarella.

Paying guests/ by Tarella Quin (Mrs. Daskein). (Melbourne : Lothian, 1917)
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Tarella Quin is best-known as an author of children's books. Her Gum Tree Brownie (1910, enl. ed. 1918) and The Other Side of Nowhere (1934) both illustrated by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, have been often reprinted. However, she wrote several adult novels. Paying Guests is set on a station in South Australia where the owners have to start taking in guests. Part of the action features a search for fossils.

54. Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), (1885-1930)

[and] Skinner, M. L. (Mary Louisa), (1876-1955)  
The boy in the bush / by D.H. Lawrence and M.L. Skinner. (New York : T. Seltzer, 1924)
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D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda came to Australia in 1922. They arrived in Fremantle, and during the fortnight they spent in Perth, met Mollie Skinner. Mollie had written an account of her wartime experiences, Letters of a V.A.D. (1918), and now showed Lawrence the manuscript of her first novel. It tells the story of a new settler in Western Australia in the 1880s. He took it with him, re-worked it, giving it "a little more psychic development" and had it published in 1924.

Lawrence's most famous Australian work was Kangaroo (1923). After leaving Perth, the Lawrences went to Sydney and this novel deals with their experiences there. In particular we are given portraits of the leaders of right and left wing populist revolutionary groups, with the character of "Kangaroo" in the foreground as the leader of a "New Guard" style movement.

55. Watkin, May.

A spray of wattle-blossom : Australian stories / by May Watkin. (London : Robert Culley, [192-?])
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May Watkin was a Victorian author. This was her only published work. It consists of short stories set in Melbourne, Sydney, and the Riverina.

56. Prichard, Katherine Susannah (1883-1969)

Working Bullocks / by Katharine Susannah Prichard. (London : Jonathan Cape, 1927)
Wild Oats of Han / by Katharine Susannah Prichard. (Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1928)
Coonardoo : the well in the shadow / by Katharine Susannah Prichard. (London : Jonathan Cape, 1929)
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Haxby's Circus : the lightest, brightest little show on earth / by Katharine Susannah Prichard. (London : Jonathan Cape, 1930)

Katherine Susannah Prichard was born in Fiji where her father was editor of the Fiji Times. The family migrated to Tasmania, and from there settled in Melbourne. The Wild Oats of Han (1928) draws on her childhood experiences. She worked as a governess in Gippsland and in western New South Wales, before returning to Melbourne and working for The Herald newspaper. She went to England in 1908, and on her return became the editor of The Herald's social pages. She returned to London in 1912 and wrote two novels, one of which, The Pioneers, set in Gippsland, won a prize. It was published in 1915, and made into a film in 1916.

She returned to Australia in 1916, married Ric Throssell, a VC winner in the war, and settled in Western Australia. There she became involved in radical politics, becoming a founder member of the Communist Party of Australia in 1920. Her fiction became a means of drawing attention to the plight of the working class. Black Opal (1921) deals with the determination of opal miners to stave off the threat of take-over from a large mining company. Working Bullocks (1926) is set in the Karri forests where the logging industry causes its workers to become alienated from their environment in nature.

Coonardoo is usually thought to be her best novel. It deals with the sexual relationships between white and black on a cattle station in the Kimberleys. The owner of the station had grown up with Coonardoo and they fall in love. She has his child, but he marries a white woman. The situation worsens, the man loses his property, Coonardoo ends up in Broome, eventually returning to the land of her birth to die.

Haxby's Circus has two main characters, Gina Haxby, deformed from a circus accident and Roca, the hunchback clown. The world of the small travelling circus is convincingly detailed, with the emphasis on the personal dignity of the performers.

Her most ambitious work was her goldfields trilogy published from 1946 to 1950. Unfortunately her political message tends to over-weigh her plot and characterisation, and these novels have never been as popular as her earlier works.

57. Palmer, Vance (1885-1959)

Sea and Spinifex / by Vance Palmer. (Sydney : The Shakespeare Head Press, 1934)
Legend for Sanderson / by Vance Palmer. (Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1937)
Cyclone / by Vance Palmer. (Sydney : Angus and Robertson, 1947)

We have already seen Vance Palmer as one of the NSW Bookstall authors in the 1920s, but from the 1930s to the 1950s he and his wife Nettie established themselves as the foremost Australian literary couple. Nettie wrote poetry, criticism and reviews, and Vance wrote several novels, plays, and collections of short stories as well as historical and biographical works such as National Portraits (1940), and the influential Legend of the Nineties (1954) Both were tireless promoters of Australian literature, and were well-known for their encouragement of fellow writers.

Vance Palmer was born in Bundaberg in Queensland, the son of a school-teacher. He lived in various country towns. In 1905 he went to London where he tried to make his living from his pen. He returned through Russia and Japan, then worked on Queensland cattle stations. He went back to London where he married Janet "Nettie" Higgins in 1914. They returned to Australia in 1915.

During the war and through the 1920s the Palmers were intent on establishing themselves as professional writers. Vance contributed short stories and serials to many magazines, often under the pen-name, "Rann Daly". Some of these, such as "Dubonnet's daughter" which appeared in The Australian Journal, Nov. -Dec. 1928, remain uncollected.

The Palmers lived at Emerald outside Melbourne, and published volumes of verse, and, in the case of Vance, short stories and novels, as well as contributing articles to magazines and newspapers. They were active in the Pioneer Players and Vance wrote several plays collected as The Black Horse and other plays (1924)

In 1925 they moved to Caloundra on the Queensland coast north of Brisbane. One of the most successful of Vance's early novels, The Passage (1930) was set there. They returned to Melbourne in 1929, living in Kew, but later in life established the pattern of living during the winter in Caloundra, staying in Melbourne for the summer.

Sea and Spinifex is one of his collections of short stories. It is in this genre that many believe Palmer excelled. Certainly his craftsmanship is apparent in his stories, but he was also a skilful novelist, who is too often overlooked by academics and literary historians.

His intention was to build a national fiction populated by a cast of fully realised Australian characters.

Cyclone is set in Cairns and Legend for Sanderson in Melbourne, but he also wrote about the pastoral properties of the outback and the small holdings of the farmer.

As with Katherine Susannah Prichard, he concluded his output with an ambitious series of novels with a mining background. Palmer's Golconda trilogy was published from 1948 to 1959. These books centre on Macy Donovan, a character based on "Red" Ted Theodore. As with Theodore, Donovan is deeply involved in developing the Queensland mining industry, becomes Premier of the state, but falls as a result of a scandal around the sale of government mines.

These are ambitious works and interesting partly for their insight into the machinations behind Australian politics, but it must be confessed they are heavy going compared with his earlier novels.

58. Lindsay, Norman (1879-1969)

Redheap / by Norman Lindsay (London : Faber and Faber, 1934)
The Cautious Amorist / by Norman Lindsay ; illustrated by the author. (London : Werner Laurie, 1932)
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Age of Consent / by Norman Lindsay ; with illustrations by the author. (New York : Farrar & Rinehart, 1938)

As with Vance Palmer, we have seen Norman Lindsay as one of Rowlandson's Bookstall novelists. Although best-known as an artist, he wrote thirteen novels, including the classic children's book, The Magic Pudding (1918)

Lindsay's philosophical position was that sexual expression is the key to creativity. Unfortunately this ensured that many of his works suffered unwanted attention at the hands of the censors. Redheap (1930) and The Cautious Amorist (1932) were both banned in Australia until 1958. The books were however successful overseas; some of the items on display are American editions. Lindsay's dust-wrapper designs of playful semi-nude girls did nothing to re-assure the censorious, although they have helped make the books collectible.

Norman Lindsay was born in Creswick in country Victoria. His best novels such as Redheap are set in such small towns and deal with the adolescent awakening of sexual adventure against a backdrop of sanctimonious, more or less comically ineffective, adults.

Age of Consent takes place on the Barrier Reef. The main characters are an artist and his young model. This novel was made into a movie in 1969 starring James Mason and Helen Mirren.

59. Lindsay, Philip (1906-1958)

The mangle : a novel [typescript] / by Philip Lindsay. (1927)

Philip Lindsay was Norman Lindsay's son, and Jack Lindsay's brother. He left for England in 1929 where he established himself as an historical novelist, but this typescript of an unpublished work shows he began by writing about people he knew. The Mangle is set in contemporary Sydney and its characters are recognisable people in the artistic and literary set in which Philip moved.

60. Stephensen, P. R. (1901-1965)

The Bushwhackers (London: Mandrake Press, 1929)

Percy Reginald Stephensen was born in Biggenden in Queensland. He was one of the young Australians who went to London in the 1920s to establish themselves as writers. Stephensen was a friend of Jack Lindsay and Eric Partridge. In the mid-twenties Lindsay with a young printer, John Kirtley, set up the Fanfrolico Press. When Kirtley left to return to Australia, Stephensen became involved. After the demise of Fanfrolico, Stephensen set up the Mandrake Press. One of the publications, The Bushwhackers was a collection of Stephensen's own stories, many of which are set in the Australian countryside, drawing upon the author's youth.

The Mandrake Press folded in 1931 and Stephensen returned to Australia in 1932. He became managing editor of the Endeavour Press, the publishing outlet of The Bulletin, then turned again to publishing in his own right. His nationalist political views brought him to the attention of W. J. Miles who ran the right-wing radical magazine, The Publicist. Stephensen became the editor. Xavier Herbert's novel, Capricornia first appeared over the imprint of The Publicist Publishing Co. (1938)

As a result of his political views Stephensen was interned during the Second World War, from 1942 to 1945.

After the war Stephensen made his living researching and ghost-writing for Frank Clune, the writer of popular Australian historical works.

61. Herbert, Xavier (1901-1984)

Capricornia : a novel / by Xavier Herbert. (Sydney : The Publicist, 1938)

Xavier Herbert was born in Western Australia. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he came to Melbourne. In 1927 he moved to Darwin and visited the South Pacific. These experiences were used in his first novel, Capricornia. Herbert sailed for England in 1930, writing the first draft on the way. It was called "Black Velvet". He expanded and re-worked it while in England. There he met Sadie who was to become his wife, and P. R. Stephensen who was to revise, edit, and finally publish his novel.

Capricornia is set in the Northern Territory. Although it is in part a celebration of the Australian frontier life, the most striking message Herbert conveys is the indictment of the brutal intolerance of the whites towards the Aborigines and especially towards the half-castes.

The novel won the Sesquicentenary Novel Competition in March 1938, and was then published by Angus & Robertson, a firm which had previously rejected the manuscript. It was also published in the United States.

His next novel, Seven Emus (1959) was set in the Kimberleys, and is most memorable for the satirical handling of the academic who is visiting the outback to conduct an anthropological study.

Soldiers' Women (1961) is set in Sydney during World War II. It is one of the most truly awful novels by an established Australian author; a good example of a writer out of his element. It deals with the adventures of Australian women while their men are away in the services, and features large sections of prose describing, for example, women's fashions or the Sydney social scene, which seem to have been lifted verbatim from the women's magazines of the period.

His final work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975) is the longest novel published in Australia. It is set in the Northern Territory, and, with its theme of the tragic effects of white settlement on the aboriginal inhabitants, is essentially a re-working of Capricornia. It won the Miles Franklin Award for 1975.

62. Harcourt, J. M. (John Mewton), (1902-1971)

Upsurge : a novel / by J.M. Harcourt. (London : John Long, 1934)
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John Harcourt was born in Melbourne but worked in the early 1920s in the pearling industry in Broome. He then went to Perth where he worked as a newspaper journalist.

His first novel, The Pearlers was published in 1933. Upsurge, his second novel, created a controversy when it appeared in 1934. Harcourt's intention had been to produce a socialist-realist novel describing the effects of the depression in Western Australia. The book describes strikes and life in relief camps. Contemporary reviewers noted the "Communist agitators, crude caricatures of magistrates and business magnates", and the police, who "are made to behave like a lot of Bashi-Bazooks."

However, the reviewers seemed more interested in the descriptions of "petting parties". Another reviewer wrote that Harcourt "has taken the misguidedly bold course of giving his story an overpowering taint of the sexual." The same reviewer shrewdly noted, "The sort of stuff in Upsurge may have provided excitement of some sort to the author in the writing of it: it may provide excitement for some of his readers - those who carry prohibited Parisian picture-cards in their pocket wallets and scribble on walls."

Communist writer and fellow-West Australian Katherine Susannah Prichard, proclaimed Upsurge "Australia's first truly proletarian novel."

The book was published in March 1934. It had provoked controversy, both for its sexual content and for its advocacy of worker revolution. In July 1934, the book was seized by Perth detectives. It was also seized in Sydney. This led to its banning federally on 20 November 1934 on grounds of indecency. There was much speculation in left-wing circles that the radical political agenda was the real reason for its prosecution.

63. Boyd, Martin (1893-1972)

Dearest Idol / by Walter Beckett (Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1929)
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Martin Boyd was born in Lucerne in Switzerland. His family were equally at home in Melbourne and in England, and the European cultural tradition compared and contrasted with the nascent Australian culture, was one of the enduring themes in his work. Boyd has been seen as an Australian Henry James.

He served in the First World War and the horrors he witnessed provided material for many of his novels. Pacifism was one of the issues he returned to in some of the most important works, and was the topic of a pamphlet he wrote during World War II.

His three earliest novels, published from 1925 to 1928, were written under the pen-name, "Martin Mills". Dearest Idol, his fourth novel appeared under the name, Walter Beckett. It is set in England and Europe and centres on a character, described as a "beautiful sulky angel", who is spoiled by his mother and everyone else he meets. The brittle, clever conversation and the hint of homosexuality, puts one in mind of the novels of Ronald Firbank.

The fact that "Walter Beckett" was one of Boyd's pseudonyms was first discovered by Terry O'Neill, now at Monash University's National Centre For Australian Studies. (see his article, "Martin Boyd's Missing Novels : A Partial Solution" in Australian Literary Studies, May 1978, p. 366-68)

The Montforts, the third of the Martin Mills novels, was his first significant work. It is a novel of several generations based on his own family history from the 1850s in Victoria to the end of the First World War.

This is the subject matter he returned to in Lucinda Brayford in 1946 and most notably in the Langton tetralogy. This is his most ambitious work consisting of four novels, The Cardboard Crown (1952), A Difficult Young Man (1955) Outbreak of Love (1957) and When Blackbirds Sing (1962).

64. Devanny, Jean (1894-1962)

The Butcher Shop / by Jean Devanny (New York : Macaulay, 1926)
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Jean Devanny was a New Zealand novelist who came to Australia in 1929. She had married Hal Devanny, a radical miner when she was only seventeen. By the time she arrived in Australia she had already published four novels and a book of short stories.

The Butcher Shop was her first novel. It created controversy because of its feminist and socialist attitudes, the frank depiction of sex, and the brutality of life in rural New Zealand. It was banned in Australia, New Zealand, Boston, and Nazi Germany.

After coming to Australia, Devanny settled in north Queensland. Sugar Heaven is set there and deals with the 1935 canefields strike. Her fiction is in the Socialist Realist mode. She believed Sugar Heaven to be "the first really proletarian novel in Australia." (See Penguin New literary history  .... p. 378)

65. Collins, Dale (1897-1956)

Race the sun : novel / by Dale Collins. (London : Constable, 1936)
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Dale Collins was a journalist who accompanied an American millionaire on an around the world voyage in 1922. This gave Collins material for his novels and a taste for travel, especially in the East. Race the sun deals with the world of pilots and air travel between England and Australia, a field which was being commercially developed in the 1930s.

66. Penton, Brian (1904-1951)

Landtakers : the story of an epoch / by Brian Penton. (New York : Farrar & Rinehart, 1935)

Brian Penton was born in Brisbane and began work as a journalist on the Brisbane Courier. He later became the Canberra correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald.

In the late twenties and early thirties Penton lived in London, working on the Fanfrolico Press, as a journalist on the Daily Express, and as correspondent for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. On his return to Australia he worked for the Daily Telegraph, becoming the editor in 1941.

Landtakers (1934) is an historical novel set in the Moreton Bay District, in early Queensland. The brutality of pioneering life is graphically depicted. The effect of these hardships on the central character is a feature which is not usually dwelt upon in novels on the pioneering theme. Penton wrote a sequel, Inheritors (1936), but the planned third novel in the trilogy never appeared.

67. Davison, Frank Dalby (1893-1970)

Man-shy / by F.D. Davison. (Sydney : Australian Authors', 1931)
The white thorntree; a novel. (Melbourne, National Press, 1968)

Frank Dalby Davison was the son of Fred Davison, the editor of several magazines, including Advance Australia and Australia. The son's short stories and early novels both appeared in these magazines. Man-shy ran as a serial and was later published by Davison's father. It won the Australian Literature Society's gold medal in 1931, but had to be sold by the Davisons door to door. It was bound in wall-paper and survives in a variety of colours and patterns.

It tells the story of a wild heifer. Davison's ability to write about life in the outback came from his experiences on a farm in Queensland after his return in 1919 from the War. Man-shy is Davison's most popular work and has been in print almost continually since 1931. He wrote several other novels, volumes of short stories, a travel book, Caribbean Interlude (1936), and The Wells of Beersheba (1933) an account of the Australian light horse in Palestine.

In 1946 he returned to his initial formula with Dusty a novel centring on a half dingo, half kelpie dog. His most ambitious novel was his final work, The White Thorntree (1968). This novel is similar in some ways to John Updike's Couples. It deals with the sexual relationships between a group of people in Sydney between the wars. Davison found it very difficult to have this published, mainly owing to its length. It eventually appeared in an edition of 500 copies published by the National Press in Melbourne. Its length however meant that it was printed in double columns, a fact that has always deterred readers.

68. Cox, Erle (1873-1950)

Out of the silence / Erle Cox. (Melbourne : Robertson & Mullens, 1947)
Fool's harvest / by Erle Cox. (Melbourne : Robertson & Mullen, 1939)
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Erle Cox was a Melbourne journalist who worked on the Argus, the Australasian and the Age. Out of the silence was his first novel; it was originally published in 1925. It is reminiscent of the Ernest Favenc novels (item 27) in that it is set in the Australian outback and involves a supposed superior civilization now lost. It is referred to on the dust-wrapper as "this vital wonder-novel".

Fool's Harvest was published just before the Second World War and describes in graphic detail how vulnerable Australia would be to invasion from a predatory, oriental power. In light of subsequent events, Cox's novel was seen as remarkably prophetic.

69. Murder pie / by J. L. Ranken ... [et al] ; edited by J. L. Ranken, Jane Clunies Ross. 3rd ed. (Sydney : Angus & Robertson, 1936)

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The nineteen-thirties saw a rise in interest in detective fiction. Various publishing novelties were tried to further stimulate the public's interest. In 1931 Hodder and Stoughton in London published The floating admiral, with each chapter written by a different detective novelist. So there was a chapter by Agatha Christie and one by Dorothy Sayers for example. Angus and Robertson picked up the idea for Australia and, in 1936, published Murder Pie, with chapters by such authors as Walter Murdoch, M. Barnard Eldershaw, and Ethel Turner.

70. Dark, Eleanor (1901-1985)

Sun across the sky / by Eleanor Dark. (London : Collins, 1937)
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Eleanor Dark was a Sydney novelist who spent much of her life living in the Blue Mountains. She began to contribute short stories to The Bulletin in the 1920s and had her first novel, Slow Dawning, published in 1932. She was influenced by the modernist movement of the 1920s and 1930s and used such techniques in her novels as the interior monologue and the emphasis on the psychological motivations of her characters. He novel on display, Sun across the sky, is set in a fishing village with the action taking place on a single day. One of the characters, Kavanagh, is based on the poet, Christopher Brennan.

Although her best work was in her novels of contemporary life such as Prelude to Christopher (1934), Return to Coolami (1936), and especially The little Company (1945), her most ambitious work was a trilogy of novels dealing with the early settlement of Sydney, Timeless land (1941), Storm of time (1948), and No Barrier (1953)

71. Stead, Christina (1902-1983)

The palace with several sides : a sort of love story / Christina Stead ; edited by R.G. Geering ; wood engravings by Mike Hudson. (Canberra : Officina Brindabella, 1986)

Sydney writer, Christina Stead worked as a teacher, then in an office, before leaving for England in 1928. There she married, and in 1929 moved with her husband to Paris. They later moved to the United States where they lived from 1937 to 1947. After the war they returned to England where they lived until her husband's death in 1968. Christina returned to Australia in 1969, before going back to England once again, returning to live in Australia in 1974.

Her first book was The Salzburg Tales (1934) followed in the same year by Seven Poor men of Sydney, still one of her best-known works. Although virtually all of her novels were written overseas, many of them have Australian settings, at least in part.

The item on display appeared posthumously. It is a short-story, previously unpublished, seen