Lane, William, 1861-1917

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

Lane wrote this novel in the aftermath of the Queensland shearers' strike of 1891. He intended any profits to be used to help the shearers who were still in jail,

If this book assists the Union Prisoners Assistance Fund in any way or if it brings to a single man or woman a clearer conception of the religion of Socialism it will have done its work (p. iv)

The action takes place in Sydney where Ned, a Queensland bushman meets Nell, a Sydney dressmaker, based on Mary Gilmore. Nell shows Ned the poor areas of Sydney and introduces him to radical intellectuals who introduce him to Marxism and socialism. At the end he leaves to return to Queensland to confront Capitalism and organise the Shearers' Strike.

There is an advertisement in the back of the book for a forthcoming sequel which was never published, In New Australia : Nellie Lawton's diary of a happier life. It was to have described life in Cosme, the settlement in Paraguay, which Lane and Mary Gilmore both helped to establish.

In New Australia will not detail a mere dream. In a popular way, continuing the story of Ned Hawkins and Nellie Lawton, it will deal with the scheme for complete co-operation on which the New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association is based. This scheme has been discussed for years among well-known unionists and experienced labour organisers and subjected to the severest criticism by the very men who are now prepared to devote their lives to it in the interest of the Labour movement. … Nearly 500,000 acres are under offer to the Association in one of the most fertile and suitable parts of the world, which immense tract is being prospected by its own agents; sufficient to carry 50,000 people happily under intelligent management.