[p i]
AUSTRALIAN WRITERS
BY
DESMOND BYRNE
LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON
1896
[All rights reserved]
[p iii]
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 |
[p 1]
INTRODUCTION.
Any survey of the work done by Australianauthors suggests a question as to what lengthof time ought to be allowed for the developmentof distinctive national characteristics inthe literature of a young country self-governingto the extent of being a republic in allbut name, isolated in position, highly civilised,enjoying all the modern luxuries available tothe English-speaking race in older lands, andwith a population fully two-thirds native.The common saying that a country cannotbe expected to produce literature during theearlier state of its growth is too vague ageneralisation. There are circumstances bywhich its application may be modified. Itcertainly does not apply with equal force to[p 2] a country whose early difficulties includedrace conflicts, war with an external powerand political labours of great magnitude, andto another whose commercial and social development,carried on under more modernconditions by a people almost entirely homogeneous,has been facile, unbroken and extraordinarilyrapid.
Nor can paucity of literary product, whereit exists, be satisfactorily explained by theunrest that continues in a new land longafter it has attained material prosperity andthe higher refinements of life. The Americansare a type of an extremely restless people.They have been so throughout the greaterpart of their history, and the characteristic isnow more marked than ever. It is a fixedcondition of their national being, an expressionof the cumulative ambition that is thesource of their varied progress. Yet fromtime t