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y separately published work icon A Little Bush Maid single work   children's fiction   children's  
Alternative title: A Little Bushmaid
Is part of Billabong Books Mary Grant Bruce , 1910-1942 series - author children's fiction (number 1 in series)
Issue Details: First known date: 1905... 1905 A Little Bush Maid
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Enjoyed by generations of young Australians since its publication in 1910, A Little Bush Maid is the ultimate, idyllic tale of an adventurous girl growing up in the Australian bush.

'Billabong, a large cattle and sheep property in the Australian countryside, is home to twelve-year-old Norah Linton, her widowed father and her older brother, Jim. Norah's prim and proper aunts, who live in the city, consider she is in danger of "growing up wild" - riding all over Billabong on her beloved pony, Bobs, helping with mustering, and joining in all the holiday fun when Jim and his friends come home from boarding school. A fishing trip results in unexpected drama when they discover a mysterious stranger camped in the bush. Who is this stranger and why is he there? Norah's resourcefulness is tested to the full!' (Publication summary : 2015 edition)

Notes

  • Some imprints have title A Little Bushmaid.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: George Robertson , ca. 1913 .
      Extent: 163p.
      Edition info: Abridged and edited for Victorian schools.
      Description: illus.

Other Formats

  • Braille
  • Sound recording.

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)

Children's and Young Adult Literature Michelle J. Smith , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
Imagining Colonial Environments : Fire in Australian Children's Literature Michelle J. Smith , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: International Research in Children’s Literature , July vol. 13 no. 1 2020; (p. 1-14)

'This article examines children's novels and short stories published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that feature bushfires and the ceremonial fires associated with Indigenous Australians. It suggests that British children's novels emphasise the horror of bushfires and the human struggle involved in conquering them. In contrast, Australian-authored children's fictions represent less anthropocentric understandings of the environment. New attitudes toward the environment are made manifest in Australian women's fiction including J. M. Whitfield's ‘The Spirit of the Bushfire’ (1898), Ethel Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo (1899), Olga D. A. Ernst's ‘The Fire Elves’ (1904), and Amy Eleanor Mack's ‘The Gallant Gum Trees’ (1910). Finally, the article proposes that adult male conquest and control of the environment evident in British fiction is transferred to a child protagonist in Mary Grant Bruce's A Little Bush Maid (1910), dispensing with the long-standing association between the Australian bush and threats to children.' (Publication summary)

y separately published work icon From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 Michelle J. Smith , Kristine Moruzi , Clare Bradford , Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2018 15039944 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)

She Rides Astride : Mateship, Morality and the Outback-Colonial Girl Caroline Campbell , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies , vol. 18 no. 1 2013; (p. 28-39)

'This article focuses on the representation of girlhood, gender and mateship particular to Australia, and to a lesser extent New Zealand, within the context of an emerging nationalism, social change and political upheaval. In it, I apply an illustrator’s perspective to interrogating the cultural significance of Mary Grant Bruce’s iconic outback heroine, Norah of Billabong Station. By comparatively examining Norah’s sequential representation in the narrative text, and the illustrations produced by John MacFarlane, I argue Bruce and her little-known, and rarely discussed immigrant illustrator combined to create an ideal and national type that was counter to anything that had been created for colonial girl readers before.' (Author's abstract)

Untitled Laurie Copping , 1997 single work review
— Appears in: Reading Time : The Journal of the Children's Book Council of Australia , February vol. 41 no. 1 1997; (p. 26)

— Review of A Little Bush Maid Mary Grant Bruce , 1905 single work children's fiction
From the Word Go : Books for Younger Readers Meg Sorensen , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 143 1992; (p. 67-69)

— Review of A Little Bush Maid Mary Grant Bruce , 1905 single work children's fiction ; Keep Me Company Gillian Rubinstein , 1992 single work picture book ; Queen Becky Chris Finkelstein , 1992 single work picture book
Changing Perspectives : The Implied Reader in Australian Children's Literature 1841-1994 H. M. Saxby , 1995 single work criticism
— Appears in: Children's Literature in Education , March vol. 26 no. 1 1995; (p. 25-38)
y separately published work icon Requiem for A Little Bush Maid Robyn Emerson , St Lucia : AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource , 2009 Z1518498 2008 single work criticism
Mary Grant Bruce Madeline Buck (interviewer), 1926 single work interview
— Appears in: The Australian Woman's Mirror , 23 November vol. 2 no. 52 1926; (p. 8)
Too Jolly by Half Bev Roberts , 1993 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 149 1993; (p. 58-60)
The Real Australian Girl? Some Post-Federation Writers for Girls Kerry White , 1993 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993; (p. 73-87)
Last amended 27 Aug 2024 08:18:14
Settings:
  • Northern Victoria, Victoria,
  • Bush,
  • 1900s
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