The Union Buries Its Dead single work   short story   humour  
Alternative title: The Union Buries Its Dead : A Bushman's Funeral. A Sketch from Life
  • Author:agent Henry Lawson http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry
Issue Details: First known date: 1893... 1893 The Union Buries Its Dead
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Describes a bush funeral.

Adaptations

form Joe Wilson's Mates Rex Rienits , 1956 single work film/TV
— Appears in: Three in One 1956;

Based on Henry Lawson's poem 'The Union Buries its Dead,' Joe Wilson's Mates is set in a small country town during the 1890s. Joe Wilson is a stranger in town, with no known family or friends. When he dies, he is found to be carrying a union card, so the local members decide to honour one of their own with a decent funeral. The narrative sees the sweating union men making frequent stops on their way to the graveyard to rest, drink beer, and bicker.

form y separately published work icon Bob Brothers Cliff Green , Australia : ABC Television , 1980 7140630 1980 single work film/TV
— Appears in: Lawson's Mates 1980; (p. 1-57)

'Bob, a young country bumpkin with a heart of gold, is always helping people in distress.

'He is attracted to Hannah, a pretty, young Salvation Army girl, but she is clearly disapproving of his friendship with three prostitutes who pay a visit to the town.

'Hannah, however, is not all she seems to be, but Bob is not one to censure, nor abandon his generous ways.'

Source:

'Kind-hearted Bob: ABC to Show Series Based on Lawson', The Canberra Times, 4 January 1980, p.9.

Notes

  • This work was originally published in the Bulletin in 1893 with the title 'The Union Buries Its Dead : A Bushman's Funeral. A Sketch from Life'. The title was shortened to 'The Union Buries Its Dead' for inclusion in While the Billy Boils (1896).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: The Union Buries Its Dead : A Bushman's Funeral. A Sketch from Life
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Truth 16 April 1893 6167812 1893 newspaper issue 1893
    Note: With title: 'The Union Buries Its Dead : A Bushman's Funeral. A Sketch from Life'
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Country I Come From Henry Lawson , Edinburgh : William Blackwood , 1901 Z1335319 1901 selected work short story Edinburgh : William Blackwood , 1901 pg. 44-51
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon While the Billy Boils : The Original Newspaper Versions Henry Lawson , Paul Eggert (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2013 6155517 2013 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)

    'Fifty-two of Henry Lawson's stories and sketches that he had first published in newspapers and magazines from 1888 onwards were gathered in his collection While the Billy Boils (Angus & Robertson, 1896). Lawson was not responsible for their ordering and he had to give ground on their texts, especially on his idiosyncratic presentation of wordings that helped to breathe life into his characters and situations. The present edition dismantles the fait accompli of 1896 by presenting the individual items in the chronological order of their first publication and with their original newspaper texts. This will allow a new appreciation of Lawson's writing, one that is attentive to his developing powers.

    'The edition also facilitates a close study of Lawson's collaboration with the producers of the collection in 1896, in particular with his copy-editor Arthur W. Jose and publisher George Robertson. Facsimile images (available online) of the printer's copy that they prepared for While the Billy Boils supplement the edition's listing of the alterations that each of them made, revealing the textual history of each story or sketch.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2013
    pg. 100-108
Notes:
Adapted for the 1956 film 'Joe Wilson's Mates' directed by Cecil Holmes. Screenplay by Rex Rienits

Works about this Work

The Accommodation of Ada Cambridge Greg Manning , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 71-79)
'The reading of Ada Cambridge's fiction described in this paper is part of a pursuit of an undercurrent in Australian self-representations of what I can perhaps best describe as a strain of ontological doubt - doubt not about what it means to be Australian so much as about what it might mean, in Australia, to be. As is to be expected, intimations of this uncertainty - not quite an idea, nor yet an emotion, nor a self-consistent state - emerge first in colonial writings, often around the figure of disappearance, or of being invisible. They concern the intersubjective European response to Australian space, the sense that to live in the antipodes was not merely to live, in the world's terms, an eclipsed and therefore insignificant life - that much was obvious - but was to be silent, invisible, not to signify: semiotically speaking, to cease to be. One associative consequence of this sense is the thought that antipodean space is itself liminal, para-real, otherworldly. Such an imaginary landscape is of course both constructed by and significantly constructive of any sense of being-yet-not-being in the world. The doubt of which I speak is ideological only in the sense that it emerged in the colonies as part of the imaginary relation to the real condition of inhabiting Australian space, as an element in what we might call the colonial imaginary. It was never programmatically imposed to serve hegemonic interests; to the contrary, it served no interest at all. Its emergence can be compared to the formation of a national accent, in that both are more or less apparent but quite unintended and uncontrolled consequences of establishing a new society. Perhaps, in the context of our conference topic, this idea might be imagined as the shadow of the fear of meaninglessness, stretching itself across colonial attempts to make newly claimed spaces, and lives in those spaces, meaningful.' (Author's abstract p. 71)
The Camaraderie of Not Caring : Misreading Henry Lawson Patrick Morgan , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 51 no. 11 2007; (p. 60-64)
Henry Lawson's Nihilism in 'The Union Buries It's Dead' Jose Maria Tejedor , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Atlantis , December vol. 27 no. 2 2005; (p. 87-100)
Death and Burial in the Bush: A Distinctive Australian Culture of Death Pat Jalland , 2001 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 236 2001; (p. 43-48)
Henry Lawson's Socialist Vision Michael Wilding , 1997 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: Studies in Classic Australian Fiction 1997; (p. 32-75) The AustLit Anthology of Criticism 2010; (p. 30)
Wilding challenges the critical consensus that dismisses Lawson's political writing. Wilding demonstrates that when these stories are analysed in historical and intellectual contexts a "rich specificity of social observation and political thought" is revealed.
Henry Lawson's Nihilism in 'The Union Buries It's Dead' Jose Maria Tejedor , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Atlantis , December vol. 27 no. 2 2005; (p. 87-100)
The Camaraderie of Not Caring : Misreading Henry Lawson Patrick Morgan , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 51 no. 11 2007; (p. 60-64)
Henry Lawson's Short Stories Michael Wilding , 1993 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Radical Tradition : Lawson, Furphy, Stead 1993; (p. 1-29)
The Accommodation of Ada Cambridge Greg Manning , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 71-79)
'The reading of Ada Cambridge's fiction described in this paper is part of a pursuit of an undercurrent in Australian self-representations of what I can perhaps best describe as a strain of ontological doubt - doubt not about what it means to be Australian so much as about what it might mean, in Australia, to be. As is to be expected, intimations of this uncertainty - not quite an idea, nor yet an emotion, nor a self-consistent state - emerge first in colonial writings, often around the figure of disappearance, or of being invisible. They concern the intersubjective European response to Australian space, the sense that to live in the antipodes was not merely to live, in the world's terms, an eclipsed and therefore insignificant life - that much was obvious - but was to be silent, invisible, not to signify: semiotically speaking, to cease to be. One associative consequence of this sense is the thought that antipodean space is itself liminal, para-real, otherworldly. Such an imaginary landscape is of course both constructed by and significantly constructive of any sense of being-yet-not-being in the world. The doubt of which I speak is ideological only in the sense that it emerged in the colonies as part of the imaginary relation to the real condition of inhabiting Australian space, as an element in what we might call the colonial imaginary. It was never programmatically imposed to serve hegemonic interests; to the contrary, it served no interest at all. Its emergence can be compared to the formation of a national accent, in that both are more or less apparent but quite unintended and uncontrolled consequences of establishing a new society. Perhaps, in the context of our conference topic, this idea might be imagined as the shadow of the fear of meaninglessness, stretching itself across colonial attempts to make newly claimed spaces, and lives in those spaces, meaningful.' (Author's abstract p. 71)
Nationality and Australian Literature Patrick Buckridge , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies : A Survey 1989; (p. 136-155)
Last amended 9 Jun 2016 14:30:02
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