Literature: history and criticism

Gail Jones is one of Australia's foremost contemporary novelists. Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award, the Miles Franklin Award, the Stella Prize, and numerous state literary awards. They are taught in high...

Since its publication in 1903, Joseph Furphy's Such is Life has become established as an Australian classic. But which version of the novel is the authoritative text, and what does its history reveal about Australian cultural life?From Furphy's...

One of the giants of Australian literature and the only Australian writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Patrick White received less acclaim when he turned his hand to playwriting.In Patrick White's Theatre, Denise Varney offers a new...

Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880) arrived in Sydney in 1838 and became almost immediately notorious for her poem The Aboriginal Mother, written in response to the infamous Myall Creek massacre. She published more poetry in colonial newspapers during her...

RichardFlanagan: Critical Essays is the first book to be published about thelife and work of this major world author. Written by twelve leading criticsfrom Australia, Europe and North America, these richly varied essays offer newways of understanding...

Macbeth is often read in a singular fashion: either as a cautionarymorality tale warning against ambition, or as a psychological studyof evil. In Ambivalent Macbeth, renowned Shakespeare scholar R.S.White argues that these differing readings result from...

The Romantic period is the most appealing but also the most confusing period of English literature for the student. Crucially, this book distinguishes between 'the Romantic' as modern critics use the term and 'the romantic' as it was used during the...

Over the course of the 19th century a remarkable array of types appeared in Australian literature: the swagman, the larrikin, the colonial detective, the bushranger, the "currency lass", the squatter, and more. Some had a powerful influence on the...

Christina Stead set five of her novels in the United States, capturing and critiquing American life with uncanny sharpness. Yet her relationship with place and nation remains difficult to pin down: she resisted the label 'expatriate' and her books defy...

A wave of life stories and autobiographical narratives by Aboriginal women began in the late 1970s and gained momentum a decade later with the publication of Sally Morgan's My Place (1987), which became a bestseller. While some of the books of the first...

Biography of a Book traces the life of an iconic Australian literary work in the lead-up to, and for a century after, its initial publication: Henry Lawson's 1896 collection While the Billy Boils. Paul Eggert follows Lawson's gradual development of a...

We are living in the moment of the essay. The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in essays that interrogate personal experience; contemporary Australian writers are using their lives to think through the ways we connect, remember, and live,...

From inside her Toorakmansion, Margaret, matriarch, widow of Edmund RiceO'Day of O'Day Funerals, secretly surveys her familyin the garden. Everyone, including Margaret herself, isoblivious to the secrets that...

Aileen Palmer poet, translator, political activist, adventurer was the daughter of two writers prominent in Australian literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Vance and Nettie Palmer were well known as...

Randolph Stow was one of the great Australian writers of his generation. His novel To the Islands - written in his early twenties after living on a remote Aboriginal mission - won the Miles Franklin Award for 1958. In later life, after...

In September 2013 just before the weatherturned even more intense a group of intrepid writers made their wayto three Australian desert settings to work with groups and individualswishing to write. Both Aboriginal people with a...

The first collection of Joseph Campbell’s writings and lectures on the Arthurian romances of the Middle Ages, a central focus of his celebrated scholarship, now in paperback Throughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the...

A puzzle just for book lovers! You know you’re a book nerd because you never once thought the movie was better. Your favorite mug says “I’d rather be reading.” You have a minimum of five books on your nightstand, and your favorite activity is browsing...

With over 7 million Instagram posts tagged #booknerd, and millions more tagged with the likes of #bookworm and #bibliophile, it’s clear: Book nerds rule! And what better gift than this joyous celebration of their singular passion.It’s sweet, it’s...