The Project Gutenberg eBook, Australian Writers, by Desmond Byrne

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Title: Australian Writers

Author: Desmond Byrne

Release Date: April 24, 2009 [eBook #28599]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIAN WRITERS***

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AUSTRALIAN WRITERS

by

DESMOND BYRNE

London
Richard Bentley and Son
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen
1896

[All rights reserved]

CONTENTS.

PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1

MARCUS CLARKE 29

HENRY KINGSLEY 90

ADA CAMBRIDGE 131

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON 159

ROLF BOLDREWOOD 189

MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED 229

TASMA 260

INTRODUCTION.

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 in the literature of a young
country self-governing to the extent of being a republic in all but
name, isolated in position, highly civilised, enjoying all the modern
luxuries available to the English-speaking race in older lands, and with
a population fully two-thirds native. The common saying that a country
cannot be expected to produce literature during the earlier state of its
growth is too vague a generalisation. There are circumstances by which
its application may be modified. It certainly does not apply with equal
force to a country whose early difficulties included race conflicts,
war with an external power and political labours of great magnitude, and
to another whose commercial and social development, carried on under
more modern conditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous, has been
facile, unbroken and extraordinarily rapid.

Nor can paucity of literary product, where it exists, be satisfactorily
explained by the unrest that continues in a new land long after it has
attained material prosperit