Australian Writers

Any survey of the work done by Australian authors suggests a question as to what length of time ought to be allowed for the development of distinctive national characteristics i...

On the main question of a national literature it will perhaps be concluded that Australia has yet scarcely any need to be concerned: that not much must be expected from a civili...

'My friend,' says one writer, 'was one of those many geniuses who appear to be born to prove the vast amount of contradictory elements which can exist in the same individual. In...

In making all the subsequent career of Rufus Dawes abnormally painful--that of a dumb sufferer who in sixteen years' confinement, ending only in a tragic death, experiences by t...

Henry Kingsley was one of the many impecunious young Englishmen of education and adventurous spirit who sought fortune on the gold-fields of Australia between 1851 and 1860, and...

Nor is the kindred subject of lounging in midsummer forgotten. Anyone in an armchair under a broad Australian verandah, who fetched anything for himself, would, in the author's...

Three out of five of the later novels are, like _A Marked Man_, made comparatively independent of the distinctively local interest to which we have been accustomed in the works...

Though not a satirist--she does not hate well enough to be that--Ada Cambridge has occasionally a neat and forcible way of describing character. Richard Delavel's first wife was...

But where, save in the retrospect of 'The Sick Stockrider' and a verse or two of 'From the Wreck,' shall we find any of the air of the lovely, transient Australian spring? It is...

His frequently expressed anxiety about the impression they were making upon the reader was not always an affectation. There is a real solicitude in the confidences concerning Wi...

Boldrewood has more than once insisted with evident pleasure upon the general good behaviour and manliness of the miners, and, having been one of those all-seeing autocrats, the...

'This is only a state of half-existence,' said Honoria in reference to her country life in Australia. 'Books are so unsatisfying! I read them greedily at first, then throw them...

To hold up the assembled party to the eyes of English readers as thoroughly typical Australians would be as unjust a proceeding as was that of Dumas _père_ when he declared that...

Cavendish is the only character that the author has treated in a consistently farcical vein. Eila Frost's canting old father-in-law in _Not Counting the Cost_ is made ridiculous...