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'... With the publication of Rosetta: A Scandalous True Story, Rosetta Raphael joins the chorus of young colonial women who thrived as a consequence of identity alteration. Written by her great granddaughter, Alexandra Joel, this fictionalised biography begins in Melbourne in 1899, with the marriage between 18-year-old virgin Rosetta and her respectable older beau, Louis. ...'
'Along with Robert Adamson, Anthony Lawrence is known as one of Australia's key romantic poets. As with earlier romantics, Lawrence, over several decades now, has been looking for a personal metaphysics in the untamed aspects of "Nature", its landscapes and its more dramatic creatures. ...'
'... John Hughes' novella, Asylum, is no less astringent and tough-minded. It is a more abstract meditation on similar themes to those at work in Chasing Asylum but with an underpinning as much in philosophy as in any immediate political crisis. ...'
'A hundred years ago Germans described England as "the land without music", wrongly. But perhaps Australia could be termed the land without history. We have our commemorations, increasingly dominated by Anzac Day, and there is the ever-growing interest in family history. But - for ill as much as an unburdened good - historical consciousness does not inform our lives. ...'
'In these days, when you can see everything - and I do mean everything - on the internet, it seems strange that librarians once collected supposedly naughty books and locked them away from the public. ...'
'Recent events might suggest that Australia has taken a turn for the worse, but Ben Pobjie lets us know that we have never really been up to much. His stint as TV columnist for this paper has given him the skills to approach the national story as if it were a parade of reality TV contestants, so his take is not so much black armband as red nose and spinning light-up bow tie: more than irreverent, it's mean and derisive. ...'
'Kate Leigh (1881-1964) seems to have had some cracking criminal competition for the title of Sydney's worst woman, but the police bestowed the honour on her. ...'
