The Legend Of The Nineties
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few decades in Australian cultural history have been mythologised with such enduring intensity as the 1890s, and Vance Palmer's The Legend of the Nineties stands as the definitive examination of why that era captured — and continues to captivate — the national imagination. Palmer chronicles the social, literary, and political ferment of a pivotal decade, arguing that the bush ethos, the rise of radical unionism, and the flowering of a distinctly Australian literary voice collectively forged a national identity that persists long after the century's turn. With a historian's rigour and a literary critic's sensitivity, he presents figures such as Henry Lawson and Joseph Furphy not merely as writers, but as architects of a mythology that shaped how Australians understood themselves and their place in the world. Palmer's prose is measured yet impassioned, commanding authority without sacrificing accessibility, and his analysis cuts through romantic nostalgia to interrogate the tensions — between city and bush, between labour and capital, between colonial deference and emergent nationalism — that gave the nineties their charged, legendary status. Published by Currey O'Neil in a quality reprint edition, this work remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the ideological foundations of modern Australia. Whether the legend Palmer so meticulously reconstructs was a truth faithfully recorded or a myth carefully constructed is a question the reader is left to answer for themselves.
Author: Vance Palmer
Format: Hardback
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few decades in Australian cultural history have been mythologised with such enduring intensity as the 1890s, and Vance Palmer's The Legend of the Nineties stands as the definitive examination of why that era captured — and continues to captivate — the national imagination. Palmer chronicles the social, literary, and political ferment of a pivotal decade, arguing that the bush ethos, the rise of radical unionism, and the flowering of a distinctly Australian literary voice collectively forged a national identity that persists long after the century's turn. With a historian's rigour and a literary critic's sensitivity, he presents figures such as Henry Lawson and Joseph Furphy not merely as writers, but as architects of a mythology that shaped how Australians understood themselves and their place in the world. Palmer's prose is measured yet impassioned, commanding authority without sacrificing accessibility, and his analysis cuts through romantic nostalgia to interrogate the tensions — between city and bush, between labour and capital, between colonial deference and emergent nationalism — that gave the nineties their charged, legendary status. Published by Currey O'Neil in a quality reprint edition, this work remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the ideological foundations of modern Australia. Whether the legend Palmer so meticulously reconstructs was a truth faithfully recorded or a myth carefully constructed is a question the reader is left to answer for themselves.