y separately published work icon The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety multi chapter work   criticism   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 1999... 1999 The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Analyses the circumstances in which predominantly European children have been 'lost' in the Australian environment. Pierce examines the incidence of lost children in the latter half of the 19th century through depictions in Australian fiction, colonial newspapers and art works, noting in particular the role of Aboriginal trackers in these events. In addressing the 20th century, Pierce incorporates the ideas of abandonment and crimes against children along with the continuing themes of loss and recovery. For this latter period he utilises film and theatre depictions in addition to fiction and factual accounts. Underlying the entire work is the sense that the lost child symbolises the "essential if never fully resolved anxieties within the white settler communities" of Australia.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Melbourne, Victoria,:Cambridge University Press , 1999 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
In the Nineteenth Century: Discovering the Lost Child : [Introduction], Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 3-11)
The Lost Child Introduced: Henry Kingsley's "The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn", Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 11-16)
Come Let Us Sing of This Fair Child Heroic: Jane Duff and Her Brothers, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 16-29)
Alfred Boulter, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 29-34)
A Monument at Daylesford, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 34-40)
Marcus Clarke's Lost Children, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 40-46)
The Case of Clara Crosbie, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 46-54)
Fairytales of the 1890s, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 60-64)
The Bush Balladists' Turn, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 65-71)
Mrs Praed and the Punishment of Mrs Tregaskiss, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 71-77)
Henry Lawson and 'The Babies in the Bush', Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 77-86)
Joseph Furphy's 'Perfect Young-Australian', Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 86-92)
Ray Lawler: Bubba and the Baby Dolls, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 99-104)
'They Wasn't in Our Line': The Lost Children of Patrick White, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 104-113)
'Our Dread of the Coming Society': Thomas Keneally's Fiction, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 116-121)
'Keeping Control of the Young': Frank Moorhouse and the Last Child, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 121-128)
Leone Sperling's 'Mother's Day', Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 128-133)
'Home Time' with Beverley Farmer, Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 133-135)
Who Would Bring Kids into This World? : Ian Moffitt's 'The Colour Man', Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 135-138)
I've Had My Children: Jennifer Maiden's 'Play with Knives', Peter Pierce , single work criticism (p. 138-143)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

“Then Something Started Growing in the Emptiness” : Revisiting the Lost Child in the Bush in Australian Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction Annika Herb , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Storying Plants in Australian Children's and Young Adult Literature : Roots and Winged Seeds 2023; (p. 247=270)

'In colonial Australian children’s literature, the desire to exert control over the land, its inhabitants, and the construction of a national identity has been a central concern, exemplified in the narrative of the lost child in the Australian bush. The lost child trope offers a reflection of “Australian anxiety” (Pierce, The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety. Cambridge University Press, 1999), symbolising the troubled negotiation in integrating European ideals onto an Indigenous landscape (Pierce, The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety, xii. Cambridge University Press, 1999); this is heightened when the lost child is female. Colonial texts place deviant female characters as being subsumed by the bush as a culmination of concerns about national identity and gender roles. This chapter explores the colonial tradition of representation of the girl and the bush as entities to be feared and dominated through A Little Bushmaid by Mary Grant Bruce and Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner. It considers how contemporary Australian Young Adult texts rewrite the lost child in the bush trope through the complex symbolic relationship between the girl and the bush in Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden and The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina. The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf reclaims a focus on Indigenous land, identity, knowledge, and narrative, returning to Indigenous roots.' (Publication abstract)

Leave No Trace Madeleine Watts , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: The Believer , 1 April no. 124 2019;
The Country of Sexualised Children : Whiteness, Innocence, and the “Sexualisation of Childhood” Jay Daniel Thompson , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 42 no. 3 2018; (p. 285-296)

'This article argues that the sexualisation of childhood discourses have a distinct history in Australia. To advance this argument, I will explore the similarities between these discourses and discourses surrounding the iconic Australian “lost child”. In all of these discourses, a white child (here a symbol of White Australia’s future and past) becomes lost in an unforgiving and dangerous environment. This child is assumed to be asexual, though with the likelihood that they will mature into reproductive heterosexuality. This latter point will be illuminated in the final section of the article, which will focus specifically on the 2016 criticisms of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. These criticisms are the most recent examples of anti-sexualisation discourses in Australia.'  (Publication abstract)

The ‘lost Child’ Is a White Australian Anxiety about Innocence Jay Daniel Thompson , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 18 November 2014;
Contrasting Narratives in the History of Twentieth-Century British Child Migration : An Interpretive Essay Geoffrey Sherington , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 9 no. 2 2012; (p. 27-47)
'A narrative of personal loss has now supplanted an earlier narrative of rescue and Empire settlement in the history of child migration to Australia in the twentieth century. This article outlines and seeks to understand how these narratives arose. The discussion then attempts to provide another way to explain child migration which embraces changing contexts while being based on a life cycle analysis of the experiences of child migrants both prior to and in the aftermath of migration.' (Author's abstract)
[Review Essay] Indigenous Australian Voices : A Reader 1998 The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Tony Hughes-d'Aeth , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , Spring vol. 44 no. 3 1999; (p. 123-126)

— Review of Indigenous Australian Voices : A Reader 1998 anthology extract poetry criticism autobiography prose short story ; The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Peter Pierce , 1999 multi chapter work criticism biography
Australia as Lost Child Mervyn F. Bendle , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: LiNQ , October vol. 26 no. 2 1999; (p. 92-95)

— Review of The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Peter Pierce , 1999 multi chapter work criticism biography
Counting the Loss Ralph Elliott , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 19 June 1999; (p. 23)

— Review of The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Peter Pierce , 1999 multi chapter work criticism biography
Innocents Lost Liam Davison , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , April vol. 4 no. 3 1999; (p. 16-17)

— Review of The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Peter Pierce , 1999 multi chapter work criticism biography
Legend of the Lost Child Laurie Clancy , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May no. 210 1999; (p. 11-12)

— Review of The Country of Lost Children : An Australian Anxiety Peter Pierce , 1999 multi chapter work criticism biography
Telling the Nation Paul Gillen , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Studies Review , November vol. 8 no. 2 2002; (p. 157-178)
'..identifying, seeking out and evaluating the distinguishing features of Australian culture or Australian people remains a popular activity. This essay discusses some recent books that do so, focusing on their underlying assumptions and motivations, and attempting to put them into historical perspective.' (p.157)
The Accommodation of Ada Cambridge Greg Manning , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 71-79)
'The reading of Ada Cambridge's fiction described in this paper is part of a pursuit of an undercurrent in Australian self-representations of what I can perhaps best describe as a strain of ontological doubt - doubt not about what it means to be Australian so much as about what it might mean, in Australia, to be. As is to be expected, intimations of this uncertainty - not quite an idea, nor yet an emotion, nor a self-consistent state - emerge first in colonial writings, often around the figure of disappearance, or of being invisible. They concern the intersubjective European response to Australian space, the sense that to live in the antipodes was not merely to live, in the world's terms, an eclipsed and therefore insignificant life - that much was obvious - but was to be silent, invisible, not to signify: semiotically speaking, to cease to be. One associative consequence of this sense is the thought that antipodean space is itself liminal, para-real, otherworldly. Such an imaginary landscape is of course both constructed by and significantly constructive of any sense of being-yet-not-being in the world. The doubt of which I speak is ideological only in the sense that it emerged in the colonies as part of the imaginary relation to the real condition of inhabiting Australian space, as an element in what we might call the colonial imaginary. It was never programmatically imposed to serve hegemonic interests; to the contrary, it served no interest at all. Its emergence can be compared to the formation of a national accent, in that both are more or less apparent but quite unintended and uncontrolled consequences of establishing a new society. Perhaps, in the context of our conference topic, this idea might be imagined as the shadow of the fear of meaninglessness, stretching itself across colonial attempts to make newly claimed spaces, and lives in those spaces, meaningful.' (Author's abstract p. 71)
Samson & Delilah : Herstory, Trauma and Survival Susan Ryan-Fazileau , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011;
'The historical trauma of the Aborigines and white Australian nation-building are not simply contemporaneous - the latter is part of what made the former possible. The subject of black-on-black violence within Aboriginal communities has been a hot issue in Australia for the past few years, more specifically that perpetrated by Indigenous men against Indigenous women and children. The situation of many Aborigines today demonstrates a paradoxical relation between destruction and survival, the incomprehensibility at the heart of traumatic experience. Aboriginal film-maker Warwick Thornton's 2009 movie, "Samson & Delilah", tells the story of two teenagers caught up in this situation. Trauma theory, which focuses on the destructive repetition of violence is used as a tool for the analysis of this film, repetition being a structural principle in the narrative. For example, after repeating the same self-defeating ritual every day, Samson sniffs petrol to escape from the desolation and neglect, in the throes of what appears to be a post-traumatic death drive. Delilah's life is equally repetitive but less desolate until her grandmother's death plunges her into a cycle of violence and horror that also leads to petrol-sniffing and near death. But, in Thornton's fictional world, the women are the Samsons. Delilah defends herself and her intended against both white and black violence and, through 'herstory', the film-maker passes on not only the story of a crisis but that of a survival.' (Author's abstract)
An Apocalyptic Map : New Worlds and the Colonization of Australia Roslyn Weaver , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film : A Critical Study 2011; (p. 23-53)
'This chapter examines the map that preceded, and eventually superseded, the territory of Australia, in order to demonstrate that early maps of the south land established an apocalyptic tradition that still resonates in contemporary fictions. If one reinterprets Jean Baudrillard's comments in the context of colonization and Australia, it is possible to see how European imagination delineated an apocalyptic map of the country before explorers and settlers even arrived, a map that located Australia as a tabula rasa, a blank slate where heaven and hell might equally be feasible. This chapter surveys the dialectic emerging from these confliction visions.' (24)
Contrasting Narratives in the History of Twentieth-Century British Child Migration : An Interpretive Essay Geoffrey Sherington , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 9 no. 2 2012; (p. 27-47)
'A narrative of personal loss has now supplanted an earlier narrative of rescue and Empire settlement in the history of child migration to Australia in the twentieth century. This article outlines and seeks to understand how these narratives arose. The discussion then attempts to provide another way to explain child migration which embraces changing contexts while being based on a life cycle analysis of the experiences of child migrants both prior to and in the aftermath of migration.' (Author's abstract)
Last amended 13 Aug 2001 11:06:41
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