y separately published work icon Classic Australian Works series - publisher  
Alternative title: CAW
Issue Details: First known date: 2003-... 2003- Classic Australian Works
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This collection features books that should always be available for readers and students as part of our national cultural heritage. These works retain their influence and impact, the richness and quality of their writing, and their importance as a record and reflection of Australian life and perspectives, but have disappeared from traditional publication.'

(Source: Classic Australian Works website, http://www.sup.usyd.edu.au/projects_cal_about.html )

Notes

  • Classic Australian Works was launched at The University of Sydney on 8 December 2003 by the Hon. Daryl Williams, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Includes

y separately published work icon The Cardboard Crown Martin Boyd , London : Cresset Press , 1952 Z501486 1952 single work novel (taught in 1 units) Dominic Langton dies, leaving the family home to his brother, Guy Langton. There, Guy's discovery of letters written by his grandmother, Alice, provokes him to tell his family's history, with Alice as the central figure, in a novel. As a writer, he sets himself the task of discovering, narrating, and creating from the remnants of the past. (Source: Sydney University Press) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Charco Harbour : A Novel of Unknown Seas and a Fabled Shore Passaged with Coral Reefs and Magnetical Islands, of Shipwreck and a Lonely Haven -- the True Story of the Last of the Great Navigators, His Bark and the Men in Her Godfrey Blunden , London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson , 1968 Z78231 1968 single work novel historical fiction Charco Harbour is the story of Captain James Cook's first Pacific voyage in 1768, a journey into a world to which Europeans had never been and reported back before, a journey which leads to shipwreck at Charco (near what is now Cooktown in Queensland). At a time when Australia was still terra incognita, a man like Cook could be one of the world's great navigators, yet still full of human failings. This closely researched book is a warts and all portrait of the man who first mapped the great southern land. (Source: Sydney University Press) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Commandant Jessica Anderson , London : Macmillan , 1975 Z796227 1975 single work novel historical fiction 'The Commandant (1975) evolves from the history of the early Moreton Bay penal settlement, now Brisbane. When prisoners escape from Moreton Bay to Sydney with their stories of harsh punishment, the fledgling press takes their side. Commandant Logan, convinced of the rectitude of his severe administration, is faced with an enemy he has never known before, but he ignores it. Logan is forced to face the reaction to his harsh discipline after the arrival of his young sister-in-law, Frances, who is unable to bear the brutality and whippings that are everyday life in Moreton Bay. The reader is left with the question, who is the prisoner: convict, or harsh commandant.' (Source: Sydney University Press) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Count Your Dead : A Novel of Vietnam John Rowe , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1968 Z362947 1968 single work novel war literature Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon A Difficult Young Man Martin Boyd , London : Cresset Press , 1955 Z500015 1955 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

' Handsome, proud, reprehensible, misunderstood. Dominic Langton is the dark heart of A Difficult Young Man. His brother Guy can scarcely understand where he fits into the pattern of things or what he might do next. Martin Boyd’s much loved novel is an elegant, witty and compelling family tale about the contradictions of growing up.' (Publication summary)

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Estuary Georgia Savage , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1987 Z374708 1987 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Foveaux Kylie Tennant , London : Gollancz , 1939 Z250323 1939 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Glass Canoe David Ireland , South Melbourne : Macmillan , 1976 Z125181 1976 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'On hot days we jumped fully clothed into our bottomless beer glasses and pushed off from shore without a backward look. Heading for the deep, where it was calm and cool.

'Meat Man is a regular at the Southern Cross pub in Sydney. With his tribe he sits and drinks and watches as life spirals around him. David Ireland’s novel tells his stories, about the pub, its patrons and their women, about the brutal, tender and unexpected places his glass canoe takes him.' (Publication summary)

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Impersonators Jessica Anderson , South Melbourne : Macmillan , 1980 Z796237 1980 single work novel When Sylvia Foley returns to Australia after twenty years, she finds her father, Jack Cornock, ill. This and his obstinate silence provoke speculation about his will among the families of his two marriages, Sylvia becomes enmeshed in the webs of their alliances and disaffections. The Impersonators portrays the breakdown of family relationships and the endurance of love in a materialistic age. (Source: Sydney University Press) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Inland Gerald Murnane , Richmond : Heinemann , 1988 Z374812 1988 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Landscape with Landscape Gerald Murnane , Carlton : Norstrilia Press , 1985 Z427426 1985 selected work short story 'Murnane's innovative fictional techniques in Landscape with Landscape have inspired debates regarding whether the text is a novel or a collection of stories. The cover of the Penguin edition uses the terms "stories" and "fiction," but does not label the text either a novel or a collection of short stories [...] In the last section of the work, 'Landscape with Artist,' Murnane's narrator directly addresses the issue, stating, "I had considered again one of the problems that had kept me from showing my manuscripts to a publisher. I tried to decide whether they were a collection of short stories or whether I could combine them and unify them to make them a single novel ... [I] told myself that ... I would ... devise a new form of prose fiction - neither short story nor novel."' (Nathanael O'Reilly Exploring Suburbia p.217) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Lantana Lane Eleanor Dark , London Sydney : Collins , 1959 Z23397 1959 single work novel

'We have lived round the corner from the world, with not even a signpost to betray our whereabouts. and if the treasure we have accumulated makes no show upon our bank statements, neither is it subject to income tax.'

Lantana, bushy and massive, is Australia's most uncontrollable tropical weed. Inland from the Pacific coast, where the pineapple plantations grow, sprawls the lantana in all its luxuriance. Here, too, putting up constant fight against the weed, is the small farming community of Lantana Lane. Though they stoutly declare that farming means drudgery, misery, penury, monotony, bankruptcy and calamity - that it is, in short, a mug's game - they are all firmly and happily wedded to the land, and therefore, naturally, to the lantana. From Aunt Isabelle, part-pioneer, part-Parisienne, to Nelson the one-eyed kookaburra bird, each of the Lane's inhabitants makes their own inimitable contribution to this engaging and witty portrait of community life.

Source: Allen & Unwin https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/Lantana-Lane-Eleanor-Dark-9781743313367 

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Letters to Live Poets Bruce Beaver , Sydney : South Head Press , 1969 Z59685 1969 selected work poetry

Letters to Live Poets (1969) is a series of confessional poems arranged as a livre compose. It is a major work of Australian poetry having had a profound influence since it was first published.

(Source: Sydney University Press)

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Little Company Eleanor Dark , Sydney : Collins , 1945 Z897263 1945 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Lucinda Brayford Martin Boyd , London : Cresset Press , 1946 Z501697 1946 single work novel Lucinda Brayford (1946) chronicles three generations of an Anglo-Australian family around the turn of the twentieth century and contrasts both Australian and English societies. At the same time, the book is a sensitive study of one woman's life. Lucinda's family, originally arriving in Australia in disgrace, become wealthy though farming, eventually owning a magnificent house in Toorak where the cream of Melbourne society gathers for social events. Lucinda meets Captain Hugo Brayford and they marry and leave for England where her marriage fails. A life of ease and wealth in Melbourne is replaced by hardship and austerity in wartime England. Some of the anti-authoritarianism and pacifism that emerged from Martin Boyd's experiences in World War I can be seen in this book, considered by some to be his finest work. (Source: Sydney University Press) Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Paese Fortunato : Romanzo Rosa R. Cappiello , Milan : Feltrinelli , 1981 Z1081324 1981 single work novel (taught in 1 units) Depicting 'migrant life in Sydney...Rosa Cappiello follows the tormented lives of a random group of European women, from their incarceration in a hostel to their struggles in a series of derelict rooms and flats. They keep in touch with each other not through affection or genuine solidarity but purely through need, to escape their own desolation and solitude...This unusual and disconcerting view of migrant life does not aim to stand in judgment or reveal general truths on Australian conditions and society. It is instead a subjective account with a universal application, relating not just to Italian migrants in Australia but to all migrants everywhere. The characters are victims less of their new environment than of the circumstances which led them to seek change; ultimately they are the victims of their own natures and of the inevitable discrepancy between dream and reality.' (Source: dustjacket, Oh Lucky Country, 1984 edition) Oh Lucky Country Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Pioneers Katharine Susannah Prichard , London : Hodder and Stoughton , 1915 Z547525 1915 single work novel historical fiction

'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).

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Retreat of Radiance Ian Moffitt , Sydney : Collins , 1982 Z425063 1982 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Seven Emus Xavier Herbert , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1959 Z355497 1959 single work novel humour

'Bronco Jones, part-Aboriginal owner of Emu Station in the north of Western Australia, struggles against the machinations of a businessman and an anthropologist in this satirical portrait of anthropological exploitation of Aboriginal sacred sites.

'Seven Emus Station lies in the wild, red sandstone country back of the north-west port of Dampier. It is the prized property of Bronco Jones, his wife Possum and their bright, honey-coloured brood.

'The wealth of the property lures Appleby Gaunt, 'The Baron' who sweeps Bronco into a series of ruinous financial deals.

'Goborrow, a second-rate anthropologist, seizes the predicament as a means to boost his own credibility, with disastrous results for himself and 'The Baron'.

'An experimental novella, Seven Emus deals with issues of identity, ancestral fidelity and the misguided appropriation of cultural artefacts.'  (Publication summary)

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon The Smiling Buddha Margaret Jones , London : Hamish Hamilton , 1985 Z12431 1985 single work novel crime Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Trap : A Novel Peter Mathers , Melbourne : Cassell Australia , 1966 Z509774 1966 single work novel Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Moondyne : A Story from the Under-world John Boyle O'Reilly , 1878-1879 Z1213748 1878-1879 single work novel

'Cross-cutting between England and Western Australia, which is described here as "a vast and unknown country, almost mysterious in its solitude and unlikeness to any other part of the earth," O'Reilly's novel mixes romance, transportation, and discussion of penal policy, with Moondyne Joe himself, a prisoner who escapes to the Australian bush, re-emerging subsequently as "Comptroller-General of Convicts in Australia," in which role he propounds a system of reform based upon "the radical principles of humanity".

'The novel's plot develops through a romance between an English Catholic with an Irish name, Will Sheridan, and his childhood sweetheart Alice Walmsley, who is wrongly convicted of murdering her own child and held in London's Millbank Prison, after being transported to Australia.'

Source: Giles, Paul. Antipodean America: Australasia and the Constitution of U.S. Literature. USA: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003
y separately published work icon Quintus Servinton : A Tale, Founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence Henry Savery , Hobart : Henry Melville , 1830 Z897205 1830-1831 single work novel

'By setting, by date of publication, and the residence of the author, Quintus Servinton is rightly regarded as Australia's first novel. Printed in Hobart Town in three volumes, in 1830-1, and expressly intended for dispatch to England (where it was re-issued in London in 1832), only a few copies were reserved for sale in Tasmania. Of these, only three are known to survive, and the book has long been inaccessible to any but the most persistent of readers.'

'It presents an invaluable and fascinating picture - first of English provincial life and of contemporary business dealing, and then of convict life as experienced by an educated convict, a contrast and complement to the Ralph Rashleigh picture of the convict of humble birth and little or no education crushed by brutality and manual labour.'

'In his introduction, Cecil Hadgraft traces the author's own chequered career - an amazing sequence of misfortunes and miscalculations both before and after his twenty-four hour reprieve from the gallows, and particularly significant for the assessment and appreciation of a novel known to be largely autobiographical.' (Source: Online)

Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2003

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 2003-

Works about this Work

Overflow Rosemary Sorensen , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 July 2010; (p. 25)
A column canvassing current literary news including a comment on the availablity of Australian literature in libraries and for sale.
Classics Return with a Click of the Mouse Angela Bennie , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 December 2003; (p. 11)
Bennie reports on the launch of the Classic Australian Works project. The project uses print-on-demand technology to enable the publication of out-of-print, but still in copyright, Australian classics.
Classics Return with a Click of the Mouse Angela Bennie , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 6-7 December 2003; (p. 11)
Bennie reports on the launch of the Classic Australian Works project. The project uses print-on-demand technology to enable the publication of out-of-print, but still in copyright, Australian classics.
Overflow Rosemary Sorensen , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 July 2010; (p. 25)
A column canvassing current literary news including a comment on the availablity of Australian literature in libraries and for sale.
Last amended 16 Jul 2005 15:53:30
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