image of person or book cover 6628507524962332280.jpg
Colonial Australian Popular Fiction Digital Archive
y separately published work icon The Pioneers single work   novel   historical fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 1915... 1915 The Pioneers
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This endearing 19th-century family saga follows the lives, loves and losses of one pioneering family and two escaped convicts as they open up the land in Victoria, Australia. This classic Australian story, which won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, commands an important place in the canon of Australian literature' (Monsoon Books edition).

Exhibitions

18005813
18005672

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon The Pioneers Franklyn Barrett , ( dir. Franklyn Barrett ) Australia : 1916 Z1876216 1916 single work film/TV

This early adaptation of Katherine Susannah Pritchard's novel (published only the preceding year) is one of Australia's 'lost films': only a fragment, described by the NSFA as showing 'a woman with her head tied in a scarf crouching behind a log and aiming a rifle', remains.

The film appeared at a time of heightened nationalism: an advertisment for a screening at the Strand Theatre, for example, reads:

'Drovers! Cattle Dealers! Bush-rangers! Pioneers! Roustabouts! "Pub" Keepers! Bushgirls! ALL combine in presenting early Australian life as it actually was. [...] It tells of those intrepid men and women who, in spite of tremendous hardships, carved their homes out of the Virgin Bush. They were THE MEN WHO MADE AUSTRALIA. Their sons, the Anzacs, coming from this hardy stock, are now, by their glorious deeds, ringing the name "Australia" throughout the entire world.'

Source: The Brisbane Courier, Wednesday 18 October 1916, p.2.

y separately published work icon The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1923 1923 (Manuscript version)x401076 Z897258 1923 single work drama
— Appears in: Best Australian One-Act Plays 1937; (p. 87-115)

Set in the interior of a hut in the Gippsland forest, in the 1850s, the play has six characters. Donald Cameron, an honest dour Scot, and Mary, his wife, whom he picked off the boat at the wharf, are pioneers sharing a strange, strong love. Thad McNab, the double-crossing shanty keeper, and McLaughlin, a trooper, pursue two escaped convicts, Dan and Steve. Mary befriends them during Donald's absence. Donald, McNab and McLaughlin return. Mary successfully conceals the fact that the convicts have been at the hut from all but Donald. He cannot understand her charity and humanity, but admires her strength of character. (Abstract adapted from The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955)


Characters

The Pioneers: 

DONALD CAMERON

MARY CAMERON his wife


Escaped Convicts:

DAN FARRELL 

STEVE


Shanty keeper:

THAD M'NAB


The trooper: 

M'LAUGHLIN

form y separately published work icon The Pioneers Lottie Lyell , ( dir. Raymond Longford ) Australia : Australasian Films Master Pictures , 1926 Z1876178 1926 single work film/TV

This story of a settler and his wife living in the Gippsland bush, the second film to have been made of Pritchard's novel in the ten years since its publication, is one of Australia's 'lost films'.

According to the Camperdown Chronicle (Tuesday 29 June 1926, p.4):

'When Katharine Susannah Prichard won the 1000 pounds offered by Hodder and Stoughton for a prize novel, she incidentally furnished the screen with a vivid and realistic pictorial version of the struggles and hardships of the early pioneers who laid the foundations of the Australia of to-day. "The Pioneers" which has been described by the New York "Bookview" as a truthful picture of the time it depicts, has been filmed in the cattle country on the North Coast of New South Wales and under the guidance of Director Longford--remembered for his production of "The Sentimental Bloke," the atmosphere of this typical Australian story has been transferred in all its realistic detail to the silver sheet.'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Hodder and Stoughton ,
      1915 .
      image of person or book cover 6628507524962332280.jpg
      Colonial Australian Popular Fiction Digital Archive
      Extent: 320p.p.
      Written as: K. S. Prichard
    • Adelaide, South Australia,: Rigby , 1963 .
      image of person or book cover 6664766186156021052.png
      Source: Nathan Hobby. 'Katharine Susannah Prichard’s The Pioneers, redux part 1'
      Extent: 255p.
    • c
      Singapore,
      c
      Southeast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
      :
      Monsoon Books ,
      2011 .
      image of person or book cover 7723829350759332786.png
      Source: Good Reads
      Extent: 272p.
      ISBN: 9810848803
Alternative title: Pionererne : roman
Language: Danish

Other Formats

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon Contemporary Settler Literature : Resources for Students and Teachers Travis Franks , St Lucia : AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource , 2017 13356230 2017 single work multimedia bibliography

'Here you will find an introduction to settler colonial theory and contemporary settler colonial literature. This exhibition is intended to survey the major and minor authors, works, and ideas involved with settler colonial writing in Australia, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, since the 1990s.

'In addition to the overview statements on this page, you can click on other tabs to see timeline of publication dates in historical context, a glossary of common terms, an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, brief discussions of themes and motifs useful for student researchers and teachers interested in including settler colonialism in their curricula, and information about comparative settler colonial studies between Australia and the US.'

Source: Abstract.

Cooper, Cather, Prichard, 'Pioneer' : The Chronotope of Settler Colonialism Tony Hughes-d'Aeth , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 1 June vol. 31 no. 3 2016;
'This essay considers three novels which each bear the word ‘pioneer’ in their titles: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) and Katharine Susannah Prichard’s The Pioneers (1915). The three novels, although moving widely across time and space, are taken as representative of the creative literature of settler colonialism. A model of reading settler colonial literature is advanced that draws on four distinct features found across the three novels. These are: a tendency to spatialise the historical time of settler colonialism within the geography of the novel; the condensation of settler legal anxiety into a legal drama in the text; the application of a generational structure to Indigenise the settler; and the recurrence in the text of a ‘primal scene’ by which the settler society remembers its foundational violence in repressed form.' (Publication summary)
Kathy Come Home : The Dubious Cartographies of a Young Novelist Richard Nile , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Story / Telling 2001; (p. 223-232)
The Apprentice Years I Jack Beasley , 1993 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: A Gallop of Fire : Katharine Susannah Prichard: on Guard for Humanity : a Study of Creative Personality 1993; (p. 29-41)
Katharine Susannah Prichard: `She Did What She Could' Sandra Burchill , 1993 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993; (p. 139-161)
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 13 November 1915; (p. 3)

— Review of The Isle of Palms : A Story of Adventure Charles Barrett , 1915 single work children's fiction ; The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1915 single work novel
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Bookfellow , 15 October 1915;

— Review of The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1915 single work novel
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 14 October vol. 36 no. 1861 1915; (p. 2)

— Review of The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1915 single work novel
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 9 September 1915; (p. 302)

— Review of The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1915 single work novel
Germinal Works Peter Ward , 1963 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May vol. 2 no. 7 1963; (p. 117)

— Review of The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , 1915 single work novel
Katharine Susannah Prichard Nettie Palmer , 1926 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian Woman's Mirror , 27 July vol. 2 no. 35 1926; (p. 11, 54)
Kathy Come Home : The Dubious Cartographies of a Young Novelist Richard Nile , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Story / Telling 2001; (p. 223-232)
Katharine Susannah Prichard Interviewed Tony Thomas (interviewer), 1967 single work interview
— Appears in: Critic The , 3 October vol. 8 no. 3 1967; (p. 55-56)
Katharine Susannah Prichard : A Relunctant Daughter of Mark Twain Ric Throssell , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , Winter vol. 3 no. 2 1989; (p. 89-93)
Katharine Susannah Prichard: `She Did What She Could' Sandra Burchill , 1993 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993; (p. 139-161)

Awards

Last amended 17 Jun 2021 16:27:00
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