image of person or book cover 7676775346971581473.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon Oscar and Lucinda single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1988... 1988 Oscar and Lucinda
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)

Exhibitions

18388172
18387981

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Oscar and Lucinda Laura Jones , ( dir. Gillian Armstrong ) Australia United States of America (USA) : Dalton Films Meridian Films Fox Searchlight Pictures , 1997 Z840663 1997 single work film/TV

In England during the early 1800s, Oscar, a young but good-hearted misfit, believes that God has given him a sign to leave his father and his faith and join the Church of England while Lucinda, a teenaged Australian heiress, has a strong desire to liberate her sex from the confines of male-dominated culture. She buys a glass factory, and dreams of building a church made almost entirely of glass and then transporting it to the Australian outback. Oscar and Lucinda meet on a ship going to Australia; once there, they are each ostracised from society for different reasons, and join forces. Since both are passionate gamblers, Lucinda bets Oscar her entire inheritance that he cannot transport the glass church to the outback safely. Oscar accepts her wager, and this leads to the events that change both their lives forever.

Oscar and Lucinda Pierce Wilcox , Elliott Gyger (composer), 2019 single work musical theatre opera

Notes

  • A chapter entitled 'A Degree from Oxford' (Chapter 74) was omitted from the first British and Australian editions and re-instated in subsequent editions.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      1988 .
      image of person or book cover 6685488313983589457.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 512p.
      ISBN: 0571148123
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      1997 .
      image of person or book cover 1204440262977277418.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 11 November 1997.
      ISBN: 9780679777502
      Series: y separately published work icon Vintage International New York (City) : Vintage , 1993- 19532994 1993 series - publisher novel

      'William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, and Cormac McCarthy, among many others: Vintage International is devoted to publishing the best writing of the past century from the world over. Offering both classic and modern fiction and literary nonfiction in elegant editions, Vintage International aims to provide readers with world-class writing that has stood the test of time and essential works by the preeminent authors of today.'

      Source: Vintage.

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Knopf ,
      2011 .
      image of person or book cover 5210921307531713645.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Amazon
      Extent: 448p.
      Edition info: Movie tie-in edition
      ISBN: 9780307787132
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Faber ,
      2011 .
      image of person or book cover 9051240550338889212.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Booktopia
      Extent: 544p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 3rd February 2011
      ISBN: 9780571270163
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2015 .
      image of person or book cover 4458185172830044336.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 688p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 22 April 2015
      ISBN: 9780143571230
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2020 .
      image of person or book cover 7478176516972128682.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 688p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 3rd March 2020
      ISBN: 9781760896515
Notes:
This version includes Chapter 74 'A Degree from Oxford' not included in the first British and Australian editions.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Harper and Row ,
      1988 .
      image of person or book cover 3540190918656313960.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 433p.
      ISBN: 0060159031
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Harper and Row ,
      1989 .
      image of person or book cover 3514600968516222854.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 433p.
      Note/s:
      • 'Perennial Library'
      ISBN: 0060915927 (pbk.)
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      1997 .
      image of person or book cover 5422661035036427460.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 433p.
      Edition info: 1st Vintage International edition.
      ISBN: 0679777504 (pbk.)

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.
  • Dyslexic edition.

Works about this Work

How to Build a Glass Church : Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda Belinda Castles , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Like an Australian Writer 2021;
Australia in Three Books Lucy Treloar , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Spring vol. 78 no. 3 2019; (p. 15-19)

— Review of Midnite : The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy Randolph Stow , 1967 single work children's fiction ; Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel ; Questions of Travel Michelle De Kretser , 2012 single work novel

'Our lives are made up of different arcs—love, family, politics, geography, time and dislocation among them. One of the arcs that has exercised me most is my wondering about post-colonising Australia and its myths and mythmaking propensities, also about my family’s.

'Although my childhood was spent mostly in Melbourne, it was punctuated by our frequent pilgrimages to the promised land (aka South Australia) and inflected by the awareness that Melbourne was exile to my South Australian mother—feelings I do not share. She often reminded us of our ‘free settler’ heritage, and of our roots in the colonial era, no more than a blink of time ago in the face of 50,000 or more years of Aboriginal occupation; my horror has only grown with the intervening years.

'We loved South Australia for our own reasons: for heat, our peerless great-grandmother, wild freedom and the beach. But an awareness of myth, of the stories we tell and the ways we frame present and past, was kindled. If there is an arc in this selection, it is that the postcolonial Australia that I first began to think about as a child—if only at the edges of my mind—is a myth. It always has been.' (Introduction)

Protesting 1938 & 1988 – from Capricornia to Oscar & Lucinda Craig Munro , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , September 2018;

'I first read Xavier Herbert’s remarkable novel Capricornia in 1972 – the year I was married – and it led to several heated discussions with my newly acquired father-in-law. Later I discovered that his grazier forebears had been – for their time – enlightened squatters. Around 1900, they commissioned Steele Rudd’s father, the ex-convict Thomas Davis, to write a memoir of his early days on the Darling Downs. As well as a frank account of frontier violence, it included an extensive glossary of Aboriginal words.'  (Introduction)

guo jia qing dian yu ao da li ya li shi xiao shuo Celebration of a Nation : The Bicentenary and the Australian Historical Novels Jie Huang , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Foreign Literature Review , vol. [2017] no. 3 2017; (p. 122-140)

'1988年澳洲殖民二百周年庆是一个具有重大历史意义的事件。该庆典的官方组织者希望这次庆祝活动成为民族自我欢庆的和谐大合唱,可实际上它却成了各种政治势力和利益群体竞技的话语场。凯特·格伦维尔的《琼创造历史》和彼得·凯里的《奥斯卡与露辛达》这两部当年出版的历史小说是典型的"二百周年庆作品",反映了该时期独特的期待视野、价值观和利益;它们也是作家以写作方式积极参与社会大辩论、表达自己政治立场、历史观和对民族接触问题态度的产物'

Source: CAOD.

Viaxes Literarias E Culturais Entre Galicia E Australia María Jesús Lorenzo Modia , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Rosendo Salvado Eo Aborixe of Australia 2015; (p. 209-228)
[Review] Jack Maggs Melissa Bellanta , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , April no. 14 2003;

— Review of Jack Maggs Peter Carey , 1997 single work novel ; The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Peter Carey , 1994 single work novel ; Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel ; Illywhacker Peter Carey , 1985 single work novel ; The Tax Inspector Peter Carey , 1991 single work novel ; Collected Stories Peter Carey , 1994 selected work short story
Untitled Rod Moran , 1988 single work review
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Review , August vol. 3 no. 8 1988; (p. 15)

— Review of Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel
Untitled E. F. (fl. 2006) , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die 2006; (p. 766)

— Review of Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel
Plotting (2) : a Quarterly Account of Recent Fiction D. J. O'Hearn , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , May no. 114 1989; (p. 52-57)

— Review of Down the Breakie W. R. Olson , 1989 single work novel ; Dear You Kate Llewellyn , 1988 single work novel ; Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel ; The Velodrome Liam Davison , 1988 single work novel ; The Best Picture Barry Hill , 1988 single work novel
Glass Bead Game John Slavin , 1988 single work review
— Appears in: The Age Monthly Review , October 1988; (p. 5-6)

— Review of Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey , 1988 single work novel
Altering Horizons : An Aesthetic of Reception and Reproduction in Oscar and Lucinda Alice Healy , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies in the 21st Century 2001; (p. [145]-150)
"[Explores] the changing conditions under which texts, such as Oscar and Lucinda are read, interpreted, translated and reproduced by using the theories of [Hans Robert] Jauss and [Wolfgang] Iser."
Dominionisation or Infiltration : Religion and the Territorial Imperative in Post-Colonial Writing Dorothy Lane , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Resistance and Reconciliation : Writing in the Commonwealth 2003; (p. 114-129)
Colonial Folly : Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda (1988) Luke Strongman , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire 2002; (p. 93-99)
A Prophetic Vision of the Past : Allegories of Difference in Shasi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel and Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda Bill Ashcroft , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Austral-Asian Encounters : From Literature and Women's Studies to Politics and Tourism 2003; (p. 226-242)
'There can seem very little, on the surface to link India and Australia. This essay argues that it is the reaction to, and transformations of history that unite these two former colonies. History is one of the primary tools of imperial domination because by instituting a record of the past as European it confirms the dominance of Eurocentrism established by the invention of the world map. When colonial societies are historicized they are brought into history, brought into the discourse of modernity as a function of imperial control—mapped, named, organized, legislated, inscribed. But at the same time they are kept at History’s margins, implanting the joint sense of loss and desire. This essay demonstrates the role of literature in transforming the record of the past. Excluded from world history, colonies relied on the role of writers to narrate the story of cultures that had been subsumed into empire. They do this by allegorizing the movement of history in place. The Great Indian Novel and Oscar and Lucinda offer very different re-conceptions of history based on the culturally disparate functions of myth and chance. Though very different, they are united in their project to reconceive imperial history and thus establish a story outside that history for colonial societies.' (Publication abstract)
Land Nationalisers, Single Taxers and Environmentalism in Late Nineteenth Century Australia Melissa Bellanta , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Melbourne Historical Journal , vol. 32 no. 2004; (p. 13-30)
The paper explores an early form of environmentalism in Australia, the agrarian radicalism of the late nineteenth century.
Last amended 1 May 2024 14:06:01
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    c
    c
    United Kingdom (UK),
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    Western Europe, Europe,
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