'Fifty-two of Henry Lawson's stories and sketches that he had first published in newspapers and magazines from 1888 onwards were gathered in his collection While the Billy Boils (Angus & Robertson, 1896). Lawson was not responsible for their ordering and he had to give ground on their texts, especially on his idiosyncratic presentation of wordings that helped to breathe life into his characters and situations. The present edition dismantles the fait accompli of 1896 by presenting the individual items in the chronological order of their first publication and with their original newspaper texts. This will allow a new appreciation of Lawson's writing, one that is attentive to his developing powers.
'The edition also facilitates a close study of Lawson's collaboration with the producers of the collection in 1896, in particular with his copy-editor Arthur W. Jose and publisher George Robertson. Facsimile images (available online) of the printer's copy that they prepared for While the Billy Boils supplement the edition's listing of the alterations that each of them made, revealing the textual history of each story or sketch.' (Publisher's blurb)
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 10 (NSW Stage 5). This unit is designed for AC: Year 10, but can be adapted for the Australian Curriculum: Senior Secondary English Unit 1. Rich assessment tasks have been provided for Unit 1 at the end of this teaching sequence.
Themes
mateship, poverty and injustice, the Australian 'bush', The Australian experience and identity, the ridiculous
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Literacy
First appearing in The Bulletin in 1892, Henry Lawson's short story 'The Drovers Wife' is today regarded as a seminal work in the Australian literary tradition. Noted for it's depiction of the bush as harsh, potentially threatening and both isolated and isolating, the story opens with a simple enough premise: an aggressive--and presumably deadly--snake disrupts the working life of a bushwoman and her young children. Brave but cautious, the woman resolves to protect her children since her husband is, characteristically, away from home and of no help.
As time passes within the story, tension builds, and the snake's symbolic threat takes on layers of meaning as the sleepless heroine recalls previous challenges she faced while her husband was away. A series of flashbacks and recollections propel the story through the single night over which it takes place, and by the time the climax arrives--the confrontation with the snake--readers have learned much about the heroine's strengths and fears, most of the latter involving the loss of children and dark figures who encroach upon her small, vulnerable homestead. To be sure, this "darkness" is highly symbolic, and Lawson's use of imagery invokes Western notions of good and evil as well as gendered and racial stereotypes.
While the Billy Boils
Sydney
:
Angus and Robertson
,
1896
Z822461
1896
selected work
short story
This new scholarly edition by Professor Paul Eggert of Henry Lawson’s most famous collection of short stories While the Billy Boils, originally published by Angus and Robertson in 1896, is supplemented by a monographic companion study, Biography of a Book, in which Eggert investigates the phases of production, distribution and reception of the book and meticulously traces the editorial and critical fortunes of the stories and sketches included in the collection, from their earliest single appearance in local colonial newspapers and magazines since the late 1880s, to the several 20th-century editions and selections, until the latest commercial printings in the first decade of the present century. [From the journal's webpage]
This new scholarly edition by Professor Paul Eggert of Henry Lawson’s most famous collection of short stories While the Billy Boils, originally published by Angus and Robertson in 1896, is supplemented by a monographic companion study, Biography of a Book, in which Eggert investigates the phases of production, distribution and reception of the book and meticulously traces the editorial and critical fortunes of the stories and sketches included in the collection, from their earliest single appearance in local colonial newspapers and magazines since the late 1880s, to the several 20th-century editions and selections, until the latest commercial printings in the first decade of the present century. [From the journal's webpage]
'Henry Lawson is the great goanna lurking in the dark and sometimes drab bush of Australian literature. He is the man with the moustache who made his way onto the ten dollar note and he was also the first Australian writer to be given a state funeral. It was Lawson who conducted the debate with Banjo Paterson and he has always been seen as the opposite number and complement of the author of “The Man from Snowy River” and “Clancy of the Overflow”. It’s not as simple as the fact that Paterson wrote verse of remarkable buoyancy that lodged itself in the national memory and Lawson wrote prose. Nor that they debated about the bush. Lawson also wrote verse – some of it memorable enough in its way – but that their visions epitomised the opposite poles of a comprehensive vision of Australia (or at any rate a mythology) which The Bulletin in its early vastly influential days was doing its best to articulate, in the 1890s, in that period of nationalistic self-scrutiny and self-dramatisation that would have its culmination politically in Federation and the creation of the Australian nation.' (Introduction)
