New anthology of material by one of Australia's greatest writers, covering the full range of his work P journalism, autobiography, letters, fiction and poetry. Lawson's observations on politics, family life, bush life, poverty and culture will rekindle interest in this literary enigma. Includes extensive introduction and bibliography.

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 pared-back bush realism in the early 1890s, as he struggled to forge a career, writing short stories and sketches for the newspapers. Lawson's famous collection came out at a decisive moment for the development of a fully professional Australian literary publishing industry, then in its infancy in Sydney. The volume's editing, design and production were collaborative events that changed the feel and nature of Lawson's writing. He had to give ground on his texts and their sequencing. The collection went on to be reprinted and repackaged countless times. Its production and reception histories act like a geological cross-section, revealing the contours of successive cultural formations in Australia. In unravelling the life of Lawson's classic work Eggert's book-historical approach challenges and clarifies established understandings of crucial moments in Australian literary history and of Lawson himself

Henry Lawson - Miles Franklin - Henry Handel Richardson - Kenneth Slessor - Eleanor Dark - Christina Stead - Kylie Tennant - Patrick White - Thomas Keneally - Mem Fox.

Whenever the history of ecological thought has been written the contributions of Australian thinkers have been omitted. Yet Australia as a continent of extreme, rare and complex environments has produced a startling group of ecological pioneers. Across a wide range of human endeavour, Australian thinkers and innovators - whether they have thought of themselves as environmentalists or not - have made some truly original contributions to ecological thought. Ecological Pioneers traces the emergence of ecological understandings in Australia. By constructing a social history with chapters focusing on different fields in the arts, sciences, politics and public life, the authors bring to life the work of significant individuals. Some of the ecological pioneers featured include Joseph Banks, Russell Drysdale, Judith Wright, Myles Dunphy, Philip Crosbie Morrison, Vincent Serventy, Francis Ratcliffe, the Gurindji and Yolngu peoples, Bill Mollison, Jack Mundey, Val Plumwood, Michael Leunig, and many more.

John Kinsella's essays are concerned with culture, place, and poetic language. From the 'city' to the 'bush', and with 'prospect' and 'refuge' of landscape in mind, his focus is up close. Looking at region through an international lens, he examines subjects as diverse as the pastoral tradition, the flag, forest protests, the meanings of the letterbox, the Western Australian wheatbelt, racism and opera. Describing himself as an international regionalist, in contradistinction to a nationalist, he is always willing to challenge his audience. This gathering of John Kinsella's writings about the intersections of location and writing is a rich contribution to the project of a new language for country . . . John Kinsella's mind starts with a convention and then proceeds to investigate it, testing a settled term like the pastoral, for instance, against his deep knowledge of the inner veins of Australian poetry, and his memory of wheatbins and Nyungar stookers. In an age when monolingualism and monoculturalism have become the watchwords of the powerful, it is a liberation to read these essays in passionate individualism. - Philip Mead

Stories and phrases can powerfully shape the ways we experience and manage our environment. What languages have been used to characterise Australian landscapes and how have they influenced the way we see and treat our environment? How do stories take root in particular places? How do we find the right words for those parts of the country that matter to us? "Words for Country" answers these questions while exploring the inter-relationship between Australia's landscape and language. Tim Bonyhady and Tom Griffiths have brought together a collection of essays whose subjects range from the Ord River in the far north-west to Antarctica in the south, from the centre to the coast, the prehistoric to the present. Their terrain is environmental and cultural, political and poetic. Words for Country reveals not just how language grows out of the landscape but how words and stories shape the places in which we live.

This new general introduction emphasises the importance of the short story to an understanding of modern fiction.In twenty succinct chapters, the study paints a complete portrait of the short story - its history, culture, aesthetics and economics. European innovators such as Chekhov, Flaubert and Kafka are compared to Irish, New Zealand and British practitioners such as Joyce, Mansfield and Carter as well as writers in the American tradition, from Hawthorne and Poe to Barthelme and Carver.Fresh attention is paid to experimental, postcolonial and popular fiction alongside developments in Anglo-American, Hispanic and European literature. Critical approaches to the short story are debated and reassessed, while discussion of the short story is related to contemporary critical theory. In what promises to be essential reading for students and academics, the study sets out to prove that the short story remains vital to the emerging culture of the twenty-first century.