Set on a station near the fictitious rural town of Waratah Valley,
Love and the Aeroplane is set in a future in which high speed mono-railways (which can travel at 150 miles per hour), biplanes and electrical machinery have effectively ended the need for horses and other work animals. The horse, for example, has been left to survive in the wilderness areas of Australia, but in doing so has become a pest. This has led to the Government declaring them a pest and allowing them to be hunted for money. This forms the foundation for much story's dramatic organisation.
The issue which most directly influences the novel's narrative trajectory, however, involves Alice Hardy, whose jealousy leads her into a compromising situation with the region's mail carrier. This sets in motion a series of unanticipated incidents that involve her husband, Tom, and several other characters.
A number of reviewers have criticised the book for being overly melodramatic and pandering to 'popular tastes.' While Graham Stone refers to it, somewhat kindly, as 'a sentimental novel set in an indefinite future Australia with some material progress' (p. 117), the
Evening Post critic is less complimentary, writing:
Likely to appeal only to those who are easily catered for, [a] husband and wife, and a couple of villains, together with one or two minor characters, fill up the stage, and with plots, and counterplots, and misunderstandings, the tale is dragged out to the bitter end; the villains are properly disposed of to the satisfaction of the most sensational melodrama-loving reader, and the hero and heroine live, we hope, very happily ever after (9 July 1910, p.13).
The opinion of the
Western Mail literary critic is, however, more complimentary: 'Without having claim to be regarded as a great novel, [
Love and the Aeroplane] has an all-round attractiveness, certain to secure for it a wide range of popularity and is a highly creditable addition to Australian fiction' (9 July 1910, p.50).'
