Cirrus@Austlit

Encounter with a maniac in a country town in Gippsland, Victoria. An orphan living with his kindly uncle has music lessons from a neighbouring professor until the day arrives when the professor seeks his soul for his music. Fair example of the genre; perhaps the first in the AJ set explicitly in Australia. (PB)

A London bachelor informs a friend of his intention to marry a pretty heiress, the daughter of a friend of his aunt's in South Devon. A Highland walking tour and a quarrel with an innkeeper introduce the friend to her first - and she marries him instead. (PB)

An aspiring author is advised on the realities of romance by a newspaper reporter. Humour. (PB)

Woman's faithful love redeems claim-jumping husband in a Colorado mining town. A hard-working boarding-house cook wins the respect of all men in the town - and saves the husband who deserted her from a lynching, making an honest man of him. Plain tale of woman's influence and men's honest respect; set in the peak mining period though told in the present. (PB)

Set in a castle. The narrator, recovering from a fever, experiences a vision of the terrible deaths of three earlier inhabitants of the castle - in 1465. Mad Sir Phillip Margrave extracts the eyes of Lady Alice Tremaine, and her lover Cyril Verehurst kills him in a swordfight resulting also in his own death and the suicide of Lady Alice. Sir Phillip's mad obsession to mutilate the human form is experienced by the narrator - and on his awakening he discovers Lady Alice's eyes preserved in a casket over the centuries ... Costume horror laced with obsession; violently fascinating in parts rather than artistically pleasing as a whole. (PB)

A temperance tale set principally during the gold rush days. Two English youths love the one girl, and she loves the one inclined to drink. His faithful friend follows him out to Australia but when he fails to save him from drink on the diggings, shoots him rather than allow him to marry her. He returns to England but eventually she learns the truth and all three lives are blighted ... This tale told to a station owner by a reclusive shepherd in his employ ... Sentimental but a certain strength in the 'murder before marriage' determination. Weakest in the introduction and conclusion where the narrator tells of his conversion to temperance. (PB)

White men watch a courageous wounded Apache as a mountain Puma tracks and kills him. Unable to intervene because he or they would attract others of his implacable tribe. Descriptive. Courage admired. (PB)

Historical narrative of Prussian Field-Marshal Blucher's confession to the King of Prussia of his first encounter with the ghosts of his family killed in the Seven Years War of the 1750s, and their return as his own death approaches around 1815. Interesting - 'historical' ghost tale; competently written. (PB)

A wife wins back her husband's love from a rival by pretended indifference to it and a close friendship with an Austrian gentleman. Three years patience leave their reward ... Well crafted 'sophisticated' depiction of a man's love from two contrasting women; and a conventionally reassuring victory of loving virtue and sagacity over passion. (PB)

Domestic. A wife's tears and tale of a minister's visit gain her a sealskin coat. Humour. (PB)

An old maid's complaints of the terrace house next door in Chiswick Street Melbourne attract Detective Sinclair to the neighbourhood and eventually lead to her murder by thieves. Investigations point to the house complained of - a gambling house with a beautiful French woman as decoy. She and her husband committed the murder. Bloody description of body. (PB)

An army scout is tracked and killed by an Indian warrior he shot at in the fort. Persistence of revenge. (PB)