'Joan Wise made her fiction debut in the pages of Australia's Bulletin magazine in 1950. A poem of hers had earlier appeared in the same publication, but her arrival as a writer of prose was announced by a series of linked tales, "The Conquest of Emmie" (January), "Poison in the Furrow" (May), and "A Fence for Emma" (August). The stories are a subtly comic triptych about gender politics and hardscrabble bush-farming life in the remote Central Highlands district of Tasmania.' (Introduction)