Download or read book The Even More Complete Book Of Australian Verse Text Classics written by John Clarke and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possibly the most important anthology ever published. The definitive collection featuring key works by such famous Australian poets as Gavin Milton, Arnold Wordsworth, Sylvia Blath, Very Manly Hopkins, R.A.C.V. Milne and Dylan Thompson.

Download or read book The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse written by John Clarke and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Watch Tower Text Classics written by Elizabeth Harrower and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Harrower's greatest novel [is] The Watch Tower (1966), the bitter story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who lose their parents and fall under the sway of Felix Shaw, an abusive and controlling drunk...[It is] her masterpiece.’ James Wood, New Yorker After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control. Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power. Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two. 'Haunting and delicate.' Kirkus Reviews 'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Washington Post 'Haunting...Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian ‘Each of Harrower’s four novels is concerned with entrapment of one sort or another, through family or youth or love. But The Watch Tower, her last novel, is almost like a distillation in its vision of the forces of good and evil. Something runs clear and strong through this wonderful, painful novel, the dark and the light. The victim and the survivor. Suffering and joy. The knowledge of both. Reality.’ Joan London, Lit Hub 'Elizabeth Harrower's thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Tower comes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature's most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.' Helen Garner, Australian 'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Michelle de Kretser, The Monthly 'I read The Watch Tower with a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down...Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian ‘To create a monster as continually credible, comic and nauseating as Felix is a feat of a very high order. But to control that creation, as Miss Harrower does, so that Clare remains the centre of interest is an achievement even more rare. The Watch Tower is a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.’ H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1966 ‘As gripping and terrifying as any horror story...An astonishing book.’ Guardian

Download or read book An Iron Rose Text Classics written by Peter Temple and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic thriller by the five-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award. Introduction by Les Carlyon. When Mac Faraday's best friend is found hanging, the assumption is suicide. But Mac is far from convinced, and he's a man who knows not to accept things at face value. A regular at the local pub, a mainstay of the footy team, Mac is living the quiet life of a country blacksmith - a life connected to a place, connected to its people. But Mac carries a burden of fear and vigilance from his old life. And as this past of secrets, corruption, abuse and murder begins to close in, he must turn to long-forgotten resources to hang on to everything he holds dear, including his own life. Peter Temple is one of Australia's finest writers, the winner of Australia's premier prize for literature in 2010, the Miles Franklin Award, and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for his novel Truth. Born in South Africa, Peter Temple settled in Australia in 1980 and worked as a journalist and teacher before becoming a full-time novelist. Temple has written nine novels and has won the Ned Kelly Award for crime fiction five times. Les Carlyon is the author of Gallipoli, a bestseller in Australia, Britain and New Zealand, The Great War, which was voted book of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and The Master: A Personal Portrait of Bart Cummings. 'Peter Temple has a way with words and the richness of his language alone makes this book rewarding...This is a great book.' Sacramento/San Francisco Book Review 'Temple invests his characters' thought, speech, and deeds with an arresting immediacy and freshness.' Booklist 'A wonderfully controlled piece of writing with some delightfully wry observations...the quality of the prose alone makes the book worth reading.' Opinionator 'A must for thriller seekers.' Who Weekly 'Fast, funny and assured.' Australian Book Review 'The coolest and most elegant of Australian crime writers.' Age 'Temple is a phenomenon.' Sydney Morning Herald 'An Iron Rose has Temple's usual grizzled police veteran as the central character, a despicable and mystifying crime and a support crew of goodies and baddies...Temple's dry Australian vernacular and wit should be required reading for everyone above the age of 16. This edition is introduced by Les Carlyon, a better match for Temple's writing I could not imagine.' Melbourne Weekly

Download or read book Stiff Text Classics written by Shane Maloney and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was a nice little earner for all concerned until Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in number 3 chiller. An accident, of course, but just the excuse a devious political operator might grab to stir up trouble with the unions. Enter Murray Whelan, minder and fixer for the Minister of Industry.

Download or read book The Women in Black Text Classics written by Madeleine St John and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a superb novelist of contemporary manners, The Women in Black is a fairytale which illuminates the extraordinariness of ordinary lives. The women in black are run off their feet, what with the Christmas rush and the summer sales that follow. But it's Sydney in the 1950s, and there's still just enough time left on a hot and frantic day to dream and scheme...By the time the last marked-down frock has been sold, most of the staff of the Ladies' Cocktail section at F. G. Goode's have been launched into slightly different careers. With the lightest touch and the most tender of comic instincts, Madeleine St John conjures a vanished summer of innocence. The Women in Black, introduced by Bruce Beresford, is a great novel, a lost Australian classic. Madeleine St John was born in Sydney in 1941. She studied Arts at Sydney University, where her contemporaries included Bruce Beresford, Germaine Greer, Clive James and Robert Hughes. In 1993, St John published her first novel, The Women in Black, the only book she set in Australia. Her third novel, The Essence of the Thing (1997), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Bruce Beresford is one of Australia's best known film and opera directors. His films include The Getting of Wisdom, Driving Miss Daisy and Breaker Morant. textclassics.com.au 'Seductive, hilarious, brilliantly observed, this novel shimmers with wit and tenderness.' Helen Garner 'An exceptional writer. Those of us who knew her at Sydney University back in the late 1950s are still trying to forgive ourselves that we never guessed what she would become.' Clive James 'A knockout - ironic, sharp, alive, and then you're stopped in your tracks by the warmth of her insights.' Joan London 'A little gem...shot through with old-fashioned innocence and sly humour.' Vogue 'A highly sophisticated work, full of funny, sharp and subtle observations...a small masterpiece.' Sunday Times(UK) 'There is something special about...The Women in Black. St John's tone is...a joy: brisk, perfectly managed and, in its disdain for clutter, oddly life-affirming. She casts an airy spell with the deftness of her prose, which moves gracefully, swiftly and with perfect manners...[St John] conjures a Sydney on the cusp of modern promise; a place where her characters can meet the future with a bright face and step out of the past like an old dress, where limits can be lightly shaken off.' Delia Falconer, Australian ‘An excellent read.’ Starts at 60

Download or read book Dark Places Text Classics written by Kate Grenville and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian’s Story, is the tale of a man with a comically grand exterior who believes he has the right, and the duty, to conquer the mocking flesh of any woman. Even his own daughter.

Download or read book 1788 Text Classics written by Watkin Tench and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1788 Watkin Tench stepped ashore at Botany Bay with the First Fleet. This curious young captain of the marines was an effortless storyteller. His account of the infant colony is the first classic of Australian literature.

Download or read book Swords and Crowns and Rings Text Classics written by Ruth Park and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Park’s Miles Franklin-winning novel brilliantly evokes Australia in the midst of the Great Depression. Written with warmth and affection, Swords and Crowns and Rings is a powerful story about human nature and the strength of an unlikely love.

Download or read book Wake In Fright Text Classics written by Kenneth Cook and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. It is the original and the greatest outback horror story. Bundanyabba and its citizens will forever haunt its readers. This edition includes an introduction by Peter Temple and an afterword by David Stratton. Wake in Fright was made into a film in 1971, arguably the greatest film ever made in Australia. It starred Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, and Jack Thompson in his first screen role. Lost for many years, the restored film was re-released to acclaim in 2009. Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney in 1929. Wake in Fright was published in 1961 to high praise in New York and London, and launched Cook's writing career. Cook wrote twenty-one books in all, along with screenplays and scripts for radio and TV. Peter Temple is one of Australia's finest writers. His novel Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Award and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Temple has written nine novels and has been published in more than twenty countries. David Stratton is co-presenter of At the Movies on ABC television and film critic for the Australian. He has also served as a President of the International Critics Jury for the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, written three books and is currently lecturing in Film History at the University of Sydney. textclassics.com.au 'It might be fifty years since the novel appeared yet it retains its freshness, its narrative still compels, and its bleak vision still disquiets...Cook can make us feel the heat, see the endless horizon, hear the sad singing on a little train as it traverses the monotonous plain.' Peter Temple, from the Introduction 'Wake in Fright deserves its status as a modern classic. Cook's prose is masterful and the story is gripping from the first page to the last.' M. J. Hyland 'A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.' Robert Drewe 'Wake in Fright is a classic of the ugly side of Menzies' Australia, its brutality, its drunkenness, its anxiety to crush all sensibility. All of this is harrowingly reacorded - the destruction of a young soul fresh to Australia - in Kenneth Cook's remarkable novel.' Thomas Keneally 'A true dark classic of Australian literature.' J. M. Coetzee '...a kind of outback Lord of the Flies...Written entirely from Grant's point of view, the prose is at first straightforward, the landscape and its people evoked simply and vividly. But later, as Grant descends into his own personal hell and finally to the depths of despair, the writing takes on the quality of a delirious dream. The concluding narrative twists will rock both Grant (and the reader) back on their heels.' Crime Time UK ‘A chilling outback horror and an Australian classic.’ Guardian, Top 10 tales from the frontier

Download or read book Life and Adventures 1776 1801 Text Classics written by John Nicol and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1822, this is the extraordinary story of John Nicol, a sailor who circled the globe twice, fought Napoleon’s navy, was in Hawaii just after Cook’s death, and went to Port Jackson on a Second Fleet vessel with its cargo of female convicts.

Download or read book Sydney Bridge Upside Down Text Classics written by David Ballantyne and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great, untamed story about childhood, a summer holiday and a sinister tragedy that looms over everything.

Download or read book All The Green Year written by Don Charlwood and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-22 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All the Green Year is the story of a boy’s journey towards adulthood. It was the end of an era; a year of ‘outlandish happenings’; a time when everything seemed to change for Charlie Reeve, a daydreaming lad growing up in a small town on the Mornington Peninsula.

Download or read book The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke written by C.J. Dennis and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-21 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, a comic verse novel, was first published in book form in 1915 and sold more than sixty thousand copies in nine editions within a year. By the mid-1970s nearly three hundred thousand copies had been sold internationally.

Download or read book Such is Life written by Joseph Furphy and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-20 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic of the Australian outback, Such Is Life is the farcical, tragic reminiscences of Tom Collins, philosopher and rogue. As Tom drives his team across the plains of the Riverina and northern Victoria, he gets entangled in the fate of others like Rory O'Halloran, the two Alfs (Nosey and Warrigal) and Hungry Buckley of Baroona recreating the humour, the pathos, the irony of life in the bush. His is the tough-talking, law-dodging world of the 1880s, where swagmen and bullockies slept under the stars with 'grandeur, peace and purity above; squalor, worry and profanity below'. These inspired yarns, 'fatally governed by an inveterate truthfulness', are woven into one of the greatest books of Australian literature, combining a genius for story-telling with a wry wit and a deep feeling for the harsh sun-baked land and the people who worked it. Joseph Furphy was born at Port Phillip, Victoria, in 1843. 'Half bushman and half bookworm', Furphy worked as a goldminer, labourer and farmer before coming to the profession that would inspire Such Is Life, bullock driving. In 1904 he settled in Fremantle, Western Australia, to join his children. Such Is Life was originally published in 1903 and was soon regarded as one of Australia's great novels. Furphy's three other books - Poems, Rigby's Romance and The Buln Buln and the Brolga - were all published after his death in 1912.

Download or read book They Found a Cave written by Nan Chauncy and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-22 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four English orphans - Cherry, Nigel, Brick and Nippy - migrate to Tasmania, to the care of their Aunt Jandie on her farm outside Hobart. Their arrival is greeted with enthusiasm by young farm boy Tas, and weeks of exploration and good times follow before Aunt Jandie goes to hospital, leaving the children in the care of Ma and Pa Pinner, her foreman and housekeeper. A few days of tyrannical treatment by the Pinners forces the children to seek refuge in a secret cave, where they set up home to await the return of Jandie. Despite Pa's repeated efforts to recapture them, the children stay, fending for themselves in the bush, until Nigel's secret trip to town uncovers a plot by the Pinners to abandon the farm and swindle Aunt Jandie. Nan Chauncy was born in England and emigrated to Tasmania with her family in 1912. She became one of Australia's most beloved authors, winning the CBCA Book of the Year three times and becoming the first Australian writer to win the Hans Christian Anderson Diploma of Merit. They Found a Cave was first published in 1949. It was made into a popular feature film in 1962, which won Best Children's Film at the Venice Film Festival. The Children's Book Council of Australia presents the Nan Chauncy Award to recognise an outstanding contribution to the field of children's literature in Australia. Nan Chauncy died in 1970. textclassics.com.au

Download or read book I Saw a Strange Land written by Arthur Groom and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-27 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While living in Central Australia Arthur Groom fell under the spell of our harsh and fascinating country, captivated by its limitless distances and unbelievable colour. Hermannsburg, the home of artist Albert Namatjira and of other well-known painters, became Groom's headquarters, and from there he made numerous expeditions into wilder and more inaccessible regions. Travelling on foot with an Indigenous guide and a team of camels, Groom explored the Macdonnell and Krichauff ranges, the desert country past the salty Lake Amadeus, Uluru and the Olgas. Based on the notes and photographs he took as he travelled, I Saw a Strange Land is Groom's wonderful record of his extensive journey through the heart of our continent - our 'strange land.' Arthur Groom (1904-1953) was the son of Arthur Champion Groom, member for Flinders in Australia's first Federal Parliament. Groom grew up on a cattle station in Rosabelle Downs, Queensland and later worked as a jackaroo and a journalist. Groom was passionate about the promotion of national parks and environmental protection and he went on to become the first honorary secretary of the National Parks Association of Queensland in 1930. He founded Binna Burra Lodge on the edge of Lamington Nation Park in Southeast Queensland in 1933 with Romeo Lahey. He is the author of four books including One Mountain After Another (1949) and I Saw A Strange Land (1953).