Secondhand Australian Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box SP2700

Secondhand Australian Literary Fiction Bargain Book Box — 16 Books

A box that takes Australian literature seriously across more than a century — from Banjo Paterson's complete collected works to Frank Moorhouse's Geneva-set epic, from Mary Durack's pastoral tragedy to Manning Clark's rarely seen short fiction. The two Paterson volumes together constitute his entire output from 1885 to 1941; Dymphna Cusack contributes two novels; Marele Day moves between biographical fiction and crime; and Jean Devanny appears in a Virago Modern Classics edition that testifies to the international recognition her work has finally received.

1. A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson — Singer of the Bush: Complete Works 1885–1900 The first of two volumes collecting everything Paterson wrote — the poems that gave Australia "The Man from Snowy River," "Clancy of the Overflow," and the words to "Waltzing Matilda." The foundation of a national literary mythology, gathered in one place.
2. Frank Moorhouse — Grand Days The first book in Moorhouse's celebrated diptych about Edith Campbell Berry and the League of Nations in interwar Geneva — idealism, diplomacy, and sexual liberation in the 1920s. The companion volume Dark Palace won the Miles Franklin Award in 2001; Grand Days is where it all begins.
3. Marele Day — Mrs Cook: The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain's Wife Elizabeth Cook spent decades waiting for a husband who was always somewhere over the horizon — and Day's biographical fiction gives voice to one of history's most eloquently silent women. Meticulous research and genuine imaginative sympathy.
4. [Ed.] — The World of Henry Lawson A generously illustrated survey of Lawson's life, work, and times — the man and his world brought together in a volume that serves equally as introduction and celebration of Australia's most beloved prose writer.
5. M. Barnard Eldershaw — A House is Built The remarkable collaborative novel by Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw, first published in 1929 — a family saga set in colonial Sydney's mercantile world that stands as one of the earliest and most accomplished Australian historical novels. A significant find.
6. A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson — Song of the Pen: Complete Works 1901–1941 The second and final volume of Paterson's complete works — together with Singer of the Bush, forming the definitive collection of one of Australia's most beloved writers. Both volumes in the same box is a rare and welcome occurrence.
7. Frank Moorhouse — Loose Living Moorhouse's comic masterpiece — a novel incorporating "Cuisine Cruelle" and the elaborate misadventures of his alter ego the Duc — shows the other side of the writer who produced the grand Geneva sequence: anarchic, satirical, and very funny.
8. Jennifer Dabbs — Beyond Redemption A novel about falling capriciously in love during the social rigidities of the 1950s — Dabbs capturing the particular atmosphere of an era whose conformity made every deviation feel simultaneously thrilling and dangerous.
9. Dymphna Cusack — Southern Steel Cusack was one of the most important and politically committed Australian novelists of the mid-twentieth century. Southern Steel — set in the industrial world of the steel towns — brings her characteristic social realism and feminist intelligence to bear on working-class life.
10. Dymphna Cusack — Picnic Races Cusack's second appearance in this box — a novel that takes the rituals of country racing life as its frame for an examination of Australian social dynamics, class, and the gap between performance and reality.
11. Marele Day — The Case of the Chinese Boxes (A Claudia Valentine Thriller) Day's second appearance, but in a different register entirely — this is one of the Claudia Valentine crime novels that made Day a pioneer of Australian feminist crime fiction. Pacy, sharp, and very Sydney.
12. Mary Durack — Keep Him My Country Durack — whose family history Kings in Grass Castles is one of the great documents of Australian pastoral life — turns here to fiction: a station owner's love for an Aboriginal woman, and everything that stands between them. Compassionate, unflinching, and ahead of its time in 1955.
13. Jean Devanny — Cindie (Virago Modern Classics) Devanny was a New Zealand-born Australian novelist, Communist activist, and one of the more remarkable figures in the country's literary history. Cindie, set in the Queensland sugar industry, is her finest novel — and the Virago Modern Classics edition marks its proper place in the broader tradition of women's writing.
14. Alex Buzo — The Beauty of Henry Allman Buzo was one of the great figures of Australian theatre — Norm and Ahmed, Rooted, The Front Room Boys — and his prose fiction carries the same ear for dialogue and the same satirical intelligence that made his plays essential.
15. Joan Dugdale — The Gripping Beast Dugdale's UQP novel takes its title from the interlaced animal designs of Viking ornament — and brings a similarly intricate, knotted quality to its fiction. An interesting and distinctive Australian literary voice.
16. Manning Clark — Collected Short Stories The great historian — author of the monumental six-volume A History of Australia — is almost unknown as a short fiction writer, which makes this collection genuinely rare. Clark's stories reveal the same preoccupations with fate, guilt, and the Australian character that run through his historical work, but in a more intimate register.