Download or read book Australia s Trail Blazing First Novelist John Lang written by Sean Doyle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-01-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Writer, journalist, barrister, larrikin' Who was the first Australian novelist? John Lang, born in a Parramatta pub in 1816 with the convict ‘stain’ upon him, was a singular character. The first native-born person to have a novel published, he was also a newspaperman, a classical scholar and translator, barrister, celebrity, jailbird … enigma. He was hugely energetic, capable and original, but he also had his demons. A larrikin polymath who refused to be bound by convention, Lang didn’t just want his allotted portion – he wanted all of it. He got a lot of it, too, but not the chalice of immortality. Lang was a serial pioneer. In literature, he also wrote the first ‘detective novel’ in English, the first convict-system satire, the first Indian travelogue by an Australian, and he created the template for the bush novel. In journalism, he was the first Australian to launch and run a newspaper overseas. And in law, he was the only barrister to ever defeat the mighty East India Company in an Indian courtroom. So why have we never heard of him? This long-overdue biography explores answers to this revealing question as it tracks Lang’s rise from those humble beginnings to fortune and fleeting fame. Author Sean Doyle tells the riveting story of Lang’s remarkable life and times across three continents in the age of Empire, when the modern world was young …

Download or read book The Forger s Wife written by John Lang and published by Grattan Street Press. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Lang was Australia's first locally born novelist, publishing early work in Sydney in the 1840s and going on to write several bestsellers. The Forger's Wife (1856) is a lively adventure novel, set in an unruly colonial Sydney where everyone is on the make. The forger's wife is a young woman who follows her rakish husband out to Australia and struggles to survive as her marriage falls apart. She soon meets detective George Flower, a powerful man with a cavalier sense of justice and retribution. Flower literally controls the fortunes of the colony: taking on the local bushrangers, instructing colonial authorities, and helping himself to the spoils along the way. First serialised in Fraser's Magazine in 1853, The Forger's Wife was popular in its day and was reprinted many times over. It is Australia's first detective novel ? and most likely, the first detective novel in the Anglophone world. This edition includes an introduction by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, and a translation of the appendix by Sophie Zins.'It is a powerful, if occasionally painful, book. It sells even now in all the colonies and in England by the thousand...' 'Rolf Boldrewood on Australian Literature', The Advocate (Melbourne), 20 May 1893

Download or read book Botany Bay written by John Lang and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Botany Bay contains Lang's most significant Australian work and was first published in 1853. It includes a number of short stories set in the early years of settlement. These are: The Ghost Upon the Rail The Master and His Man Giles! As I Live! Tracks in the Bush Captain Ketchcalfe Barrington Three Celebrities Baron Wald Sir Henry Hayes Kate Crawford Annie Saint Felix A Ramble with the Blacks Music A Terror John Lang (1816-1864) was born in Parramatta but studied Law in England 1837-1841 and from 1843 to 1845 practised as a lawyer in India. In India also he became editor of an English-language newspaper.From 1853 to 1859 Lang lived in England and Europe becoming a popular literary figure. He returned to India where he died in 1864.

Download or read book Devil Been Walkabout Tonight written by David W. Cameron and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-07-03 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the last three months of Robert O’Hara Burke, William John Wills, and John King on Cooper’s Creek. The original expedition which set out in August 1860 was to explore the centre and northern reaches of the Australian continent. The expedition essentially concluded with the death of Burke and Wills on Coopers Creek from starvation and illness in late June and early July 1861. The tragedy was a sliding doors moment in history. Burke, Wills, and King arrived back at the famous ‘Dig Tree’ camp site, the same day that this manned outpost decided to pack up and return south towards Menindie. They missed each other by a matter of hours. Over the last few decades revisionist history has attempted to place Burke, Wills, and the sole survivor King, within the paradigm of ‘stupid, arrogant white fellas’ who ignored the wisdom and help of the Yandruwandha people who had successfully carved out a niche along and around Cooper’s Creek. The story as told by the participants through their diaries, letters, journals, and oral history from members of the Yandruwandha clan tells a completely different story. The three men appreciated that their very survival was dependent on the Yandruwandha and much time was spent trying to keep good relations with the local indigenous clan, with a few odd exceptions. Overall, relations between the two groups were good, and it was for this reason that King survived with the help of the Yandruwandha people – without them he too would have died. This book places the death of Burke and Wills, and the generosity and good will of the Yandruwandha clan in its proper historical context.

Download or read book Kokoda Legend written by David Howell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-06-05 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the finest soldiers and most courageous leaders I have ever known. – Lt Doug McClean, D Coy, 39th Battalion If you have trekked Kokoda, then the campsite of Templeton's Crossing will be familiar. Discover the story of the man behind the name. Captain Sam Templeton was the first Australian Officer to be captured by the Japanese in the Kokoda Campaign. After being interrogated by his captors he was executed on the battlefield. Templeton had predicted his fate, telling a platoon commander, if ‘he went into action, he wouldn’t come back’. Having resigned himself to his destiny, Templeton misled his captors on the numerical strength of the Australian forces waiting in Kokoda and Port Moresby. Did Templeton’s misinformation slow the initial push by the Yokoyama Advance Force into the Owen Stanley Range, allowing the Australian Imperial Force to join the fight earlier? Did Templeton create doubt in the mind of the commander of the South Seas Force, influencing an operational change for the attack on Port Moresby? A quiet and often aloof character, Templeton’s name and actions became synonymous with Kokoda. Originally from Belfast, Templeton is reputed to have helped quash the Irish rebellion, served in submarines with the Royal Navy during the First World War and to have fought with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Kokoda Legend goes beyond the myth to discover the real contribution Captain Sam Templeton made to stopping the Japanese advance over the Owen Stanley Range in 1942.

Download or read book Everyman s Encyclopaedia written by Ernest Franklin Bozman and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book John Lang The Forger s Wife written by Nancy Keesing and published by Ferguson, John, Limited. This book was released on 1979-01-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Peter s Wars written by Peter Geddes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-09-04 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fiercely funny memoir is set in Melbourne during the 1940s. The entrenched Protestant–Catholic divide of those times informs the narrative. Juxtaposed is the gulf between Melburnians and the thousands of Yanks stationed in their city following Pearl Harbor; the dizzying effect on the women had far-reaching consequences. Growing resentment and the increasing fear of a Japanese invasion add to the tension. Born in 1938, Peter relates that he was conceived twice. The conception resulting in his parents’ marriage occurs in the back of a ’36 Chevy. Five months after the wedding, his mother (who wasn’t above telling a little fib) experiences the first signs of pregnancy: it is then she knows that she doesn’t want to be a mother. As the war escalates Peter’s father joins the RAAF, leaving Peter with a mother who resents having a small child to care for. Neglected, cold and hungry, shame engulfs him when his mother entertains a stream of GIs. Blending the matter-of-fact voice of a child with the accomplished voice of a journalist, Peter’s Wars captures the precise detail of the period: a kitchen without heating or running water, black market grog, rationing … the combination of satire and realism highlighting human truths with stark acuity. When Peter turns ten, his rich Catholic grandmother decides his religious education should not be neglected any longer and enrols him at Xavier College. There, Peter learns about eternal damnation and hellfire. Terrified, he responds by trying to make up for ten years of religious ignorance by attending daily mass and amassing enough ‘good’ points to save his soul. Peter’s Wars is a memoir that begins and ends with the defining factors of every human life: time and place. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK 'Peter's vivid writing has a fly-on-the-wall immediacy which, when filtered through a child's all-seeing eyes, captures the very essence of Melbourne society and Australia as a whole during World War II.' - Sean Doyle, author of Australia's Trail-Blazing First Novelist: John Lang 'This sparkling memoir is as uniquely Australian as Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and The Castle.’ - Carrolline Rhodes, author and editor

Download or read book Botany Bay written by Barbara Baynton and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Botany Bay contains Lang's most significant Australian work and was first published in 1853. It includes a number of short stories set in the early years of settlement. These are:The Ghost Upon the Rail The Master and His Man Giles! As I Live! Tracks in the Bush Captain Ketchcalfe Barrington Three Celebrities Baron Wald Sir Henry Hayes Kate Crawford Annie Saint Felix A Ramble with the Blacks Music A Terror John Lang (1816-1864) was born in Parramatta but studied Law in England 1837-1841 and from 1843 to 1845 practised as a lawyer in India. In India also he became editor of an English-language newspaper.From 1853 to 1859 Lang lived in England and Europe becoming a popular literary figure. He returned to India where he died in 1864.

Download or read book Byobu written by Ida Vitale and published by Charco Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Byobu reveals a rich inner world, one driven by its meticulous attention to our rich outer one. "a story’s existence, even if not well defined or well assigned, even if only in its formative stage, just barely latent, emits vague but urgent emanations." Byobu's every interaction trembles with possibility and faint menace. A crack in the walls of his house, marring it forever, means he must burn it down. A stoplight asks what the value of obedience is, what hopefulness it contains, and what insensible anarchy it defies. In brief episodes, aphorisms, and moments of spiritual turbulence and gentle scrutiny, reside a wealth of habits, worries, curiosities, pleasures, peculiarities, and efforts to understand. Representative of the modesty and complexity of Ida Vitale’s poetic universe, Byobu flushes the world with meaning and playfully offers another way of inhabiting the every day.

Download or read book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet written by David Mitchell and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply “a genius.” Now David Mitchell lends fresh credence to The Guardian’s claim that “each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it.” The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a stunning departure for this brilliant, restless, and wildly ambitious author, a giant leap forward by even his own high standards. A bold and epic novel of a rarely visited point in history, it is a work as exquisitely rendered as it is irresistibly readable. The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?” A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author. Praise for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet “A page-turner . . . [David] Mitchell’s masterpiece; and also, I am convinced, a masterpiece of our time.”—Richard Eder, The Boston Globe “An achingly romantic story of forbidden love . . . Mitchell’s incredible prose is on stunning display. . . . A novel of ideas, of longing, of good and evil and those who fall somewhere in between [that] confirms Mitchell as one of the more fascinating and fearless writers alive.”—Dave Eggers, The New York Times Book Review “The novelist who’s been showing us the future of fiction has published a classic, old-fashioned tale . . . an epic of sacrificial love, clashing civilizations and enemies who won’t rest until whole family lines have been snuffed out.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post “By any standards, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a formidable marvel.”—James Wood, The New Yorker “A beautiful novel, full of life and authenticity, atmosphere and characters that breathe.”—Maureen Corrigan, NPR

Download or read book Pony Express Courier written by and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Public Square Project written by Peter Lewis and published by Melbourne Univ. Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Western democracy has always been anchored by the idea of a public space where people gather to share ideas, mediate difference and make sense of the world. When Facebook blocked Australian users from viewing or sharing news in 2021, it sounded the alarm worldwide on our growing reliance on global tech companies to fulfil this critical role in a digital world. Facebook's hostile act, constituting a very real threat to participatory democracy, was a direct response to government attempts to regulate Big Tech's advertising monopoly and to mediate its impact on public interest journalism. The conflict sparked a new sense of urgency around the growing movement to imagine alternative digital spaces that operate in the public interest rather than simply for a commercial bottom line. Can we create sustainable media models to help us tackle society's problems? Can we engender a civic platform built on facts and civility? Can we control the power of our data and use it to promote the common good? The Public Square Project draws together leading tech scholars, industry experts, writers and activists to chart a path towards a public square worthy of the name.

Download or read book Girt Nation written by David Hunt and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Hunt tramples the tall poppies of the past in charting Australia's transformation from aspiration to nation - an epic tale of charlatans and costermongers, of bush bards and bushier beards, of workers and women who weren't going to take it anymore. Girt Nation introduces Alfred Deakin, the Liberal necromancer whose dead advisors made Australia a better place to live, and Banjo Paterson, the jihadist who called on God and the Prophet to drive the Australian infidels from the Sudan 'like sand before the gale'. And meet Catherine Helen Spence, the feminist polymath who envisaged a utopian future of free contraceptives, easy divorce and immigration restrictions to prevent the 'Chinese coming to destroy all we have struggled for!' Thrill as Jandamarra leads the Bunuba against Western Australia, and Valentine Keating leads the Crutchy Push, an all-amputee street gang, against the conventionally limbed. Gasp as Essendon Football Club trainer Carl von Ledebur injects his charges with crushed dog and goat testicles. Weep as Scott Morrison's communist great-great-aunt Mary Gilmore holds a hose in New Australia. And marvel at how Labor, a political party that spent a quarter of a century infighting over how to spell its own name, ever rose to power. 'Makes you wish David Hunt had been your history teacher. Laugh-out-loud funny and you'll actually learn something.' —Mark Humphries 'An entertaining and instructive historical romp through the formative period of Australian nation-making with a colourful cast of rhymesters, revolutionaries, rebels, racists, reprobates and rabbits.' —Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, The Australian National University 'Once again, David Hunt uses his sharpened wit to chisel away at misconceptions from Australian history leaving us with the cold, hard truth of how our nation came to be.' —Osher Günsberg 'Australian history told intelligently, but with more humour than ever before ... Girt Nation is fabulous storytelling, putting meat on the bones of the national story.' —The Weekend Australian

Download or read book The Anchoress written by Robyn Cadwallader and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a remarkable new Australian author comes THE ANCHORESS, a story set within the confines of a stone cell measuring seven paces by nine. Tiny in scope but universal in themes, it is a wonderful, wholly compelling fictional achievement. Set in the twelfth century, THE ANCHORESS tells the story of Sarah, only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer and service to God. But as she slowly begins to understand, even the thick, unforgiving walls of her cell cannot keep the outside world away, and it is soon clear that Sarah's body and soul are still in great danger ... Telling an absorbing story of faith, desire, shame, fear and the very human need for connection and touch, THE ANCHORESS is both mesmerising and thrillingly unpredictable. 'Sarah's story is so beautiful, so rich, so strange, unexpected and thoughtful - also suspenseful. I loved this book.' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVE 'Robyn Cadwallader does the real work of historical fiction, creating a detailed, sensuous and richly imagined shard of the past. She has successfully placed her narrator, the anchoress, in that tantalizing, precarious, delicate realm: convincingly of her own distant era, yet emotionally engaging and vividly present to us in our own.' Geraldine Brooks 'An intense, atmospheric and very assured debut, this is one of the most eagerly anticipated novels of the year ... this one will appeal to readers who loved Hannah Kent's bestselling BURIAL RITES.' Caroline Baum 'Absorbing and finely structured .. surprisingly suspenseful ... The contemplative tone of this beautiful novel leaves behind a feeling of calm and restoration, and a deeper sense of the power of the written word.' Australian Book Review 'Cadwallader has chosen a rich subject, for while a story located in a single small room might sound claustrophobic, this is in fact what heightens Sarah's observations. It is precisely this limitation that drives the narrative - in the same way it does in Emma Donoghue's Room and Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl ... Cadwallader's writing evokes a heightened attention to the senses: you might never read a novel so sensuous yet unconcerned with romantic love. For this alone it is worth seeking out. But also because The Anchoress achieves what every historical novel attempts: reimagining the past while opening a new window - like a squint, perhaps - to our present lives.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Affecting ... finely drawn ... a considerable achievement.' Sarah Dunant, The New York Times The Anchoress was highly commended in the 2016 ACT Book of the Year Award, and winner of the People's Choice Award

Download or read book Fiction Folklore Fantasy Poetry for Children 1876 1985 Authors illustrators written by and published by New York : Bowker. This book was released on 1986 with total page 1446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Life in the Australian Backblocks written by Edward S. Sorenson and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-10 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Life in the Australian Backblocks" is a short story collection by the prominent Australian author Edward Sorenson. This collection aimed to explain Sorenson's fascination with the manner of life in the bush and the traditions of the native. Namely, Sorenson was surprised by the complete lack of egoism inherent to those people, the absence of crime, and the high moral standards, which often were hard to reach for the white men.