Mary Grant Bruce, Billabong Series
My newest favourite character, Norah Linton, lived with her widowed father and beloved older brother on a huge and prosperous farming property, called Billabong, in country Victoria in the early 1900s
May Kendall, The mechanical housekeeper (poem)
by May Kendall aka Adelina Mabel Kendall (1873-1953) Comic verse about two men and an automaton from a little-known Australian poet, published in 1906. Two men I know – Eugene and Joe – And one is always moping, The other’s bright and ready wit Doth keep him...
The poet of Kiama: May Kendall (essay)
by Elizabeth Lhuede Another in our series of forgotten Australian women writers. In 1907, The Catholic Press published the following column which referred to writers belonging to literary families: We have several examples in Australia of the Literary and artistic...Barbara Baynton, A dreamer (short story)
by Barbara Baynton A short story, the first in the collection, Bush studies (1902). A swirl of wet leaves from the night-hidden trees decorating the little station beat against the closed doors of the carriages. The porter hurried along holding his blear-eyed lantern...
Barbara Baynton, A dreamer
by Whispering Gums A review of the first story in Barbara Baynton’s collection, Bush studies. This month we have featured Barbara Baynton in a few posts – two articles (a review of Penne Hackforth-Jones’ biography, and a review of Baynton’s...
Barbara Baynton, Human Toll (fiction extract)
by Barbara Baynton (1857-1929) Baynton’s Human Toll is a gothic novel, almost unrelievably dark. The passage we have chosen here is a relatively lighter one, illustrating Ursula’s yearning for freedom from her oppressive foster parents, the Rev and Mrs...
Barbara Baynton, Human Toll
we must own that it will not please one man in twenty. But for that we must blame not the author’s genius, but our public’s aesthetic limitations.
Barbara Baynton, Indignity of domestic service (prose)
by Barbara Baynton “Do use your influence to send out a shipload of good servants. There are none to be got here for love or money. All the old ones are too independent and the young ones are all going to the factories.” In short, with a difference it was...
Penne Hackforth-Jones’ Barbara Baynton (review)
Baynton began to write, drawing on the loneliness and fear she felt while isolated in the Bush, found an ally in AG Stephens, editor of the Bulletin, and a lifelong friend in her Woollahra neighbour, suffragist Rose Scott.
