Cirrus@Austlit

'This anthology, unprecedented for its subject, gathers together twenty-nine of the sharpest and most entertaining stories written by Australian women from the early nineteenth century to the late 1990s. Selected by acclaimed critic and writer Kerryn Goldsworthy--editor of the highly successful Australian Love Stories--the stories cover a wide range of styles and subject matter. Included in the collection are the works of well-known writers such as Henry Handel Richardson and Christina Stead, those of contemporary authors Elizabeth Jolley, Beverley Farmer, Kate Grenville, Carmel Bird, and Beth Yahp, and a generous selection from the work of Asian, Aboriginal, and European Australian writers. With a strong local or regional emphasis the volume vividly moves readers from Thea Astley's North Queensland and Carmel Bird's Tasmania to Helen Garner's Carlton and Fitzroy. This volume is sure to be the definitive introduction for years to come to the rich and accomplished tradition of fiction by Australian women.' (Publication summary) 

'A young singer runs into the desert of gold rush Kalgoorlie; Chagall comes to Paris in the twenties; a hippie couple survey their ideals as Whitlam is deposed; a middle-aged man looks at his life after cancer on the eve of the millennium . . . Fourteen luminous stories from Joan London's award-winning collections, Sister Ships and Letter to Constantine, together with two later stories, span the twentieth century in a volume that is storytelling at its very best.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2018 ed.).