SOURCE: Turner, Henry Gyles, and Alexander Sutherland. “Fiction.” In The Development of Australian Literature, pp. 78-106. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898.

[In the following excerpt, Turner and Sutherland present an overview of Australian fiction from the later years of the nineteenth century, including the works of many notable female writers.]

Excluding the numerous Australian stories which have been published in England by writers as yet unknown to fame, many of which may have been written in the Colonies, and leaving out of count the hundreds of stories that began and ended their career in the local magazines and weekly journals, a list of something over two hundred books and booklets devoted to Australian fiction may be catalogued. Some of these, published in Sydney, date back to the Forties, and acquired a certain local popularity, though their authors are long since forgotten. Bushrangers and convicts—the former generally an apotheosis of the latter—figured largely in the dramatis personæ, and, roughly judged by a few samples, literary style was subordinated to stirring action and sensationalism. With the arrival of the gold-digger, a new and attractive figure was pressed into the ranks to serve for the ideal hero.

More than forty years ago, the late Mr. Frederic Sinnett published two articles in the Journal of Australasia (Melbourne, Nov. 1856) on ‘The Fiction Fields of Australia,’ in which he cleverly pointed out the unoccupied domain awaiting the vivifying touch of the man of genius, to people it with the creatures of his imagination, whose successes and failures, joys and sorrows, should alternately delight and depress us. But he had to admit that the man of genius was not in evidence at the time he wrote, and further, that the breed was rare, and required certain conditions of environment for their full fruition, which we did not possess. To point his moral, he took a brief survey of what had been done up to that time in working the field. The result will appear curious to readers of to-day, for he says: “Decidedly the best Australian novel is Clara Morison,¹ the work of a young lady who for many years has resided in South Australia, in which colony the story is laid. Considered entirely apart from its Australian scenery and colouring, Clara Morison would be a book deserving careful criticism and much praise. … It is not a work of mere description, but a work of art,” etc. etc. Few people in this generation have ever heard of the novel, but it is noteworthy that the lady who wrote it still continues to enlighten the Australian public through the medium of the press, and on subjects much weightier than fiction. The writings and lectures of Miss C. H. Spence of Adelaide on political subjects have made her a reputation in both England and America with thousands who never heard of her in the field of fiction, though she published at least four novels in orthodox three volume form, of which Clara Morison was the first.

To this early period belong Rowcroft's Tales of the Colonies, and kindred collections, which were once much in vogue, in default of something more artistic. The tentative character of much of this early fiction is shown by the fact, that of the large number of volumes published, fully 90 per cent. of them were single efforts, presumably, in most cases, not repeated, for the very convincing reason of want of success. It is only fair to say, that though a large proportion were feeble in conception and destitute of any literary merit, yet some deserved success, and were quite equal to the average of the fiction in demand at the circulating libraries in Great Britain. Many of those stories that had a claim to live fell on stony ground, and failed to take root. They appealed to a limited population, largely composed of immigrants, who not only cherished the traditions of their home reading, but who were supplied promptly with the newest books of the authors they had learned to appreciate at a less cost than those of the local scribe, whom they had to take on trust. Until late in the Fifties there were no circulating libraries worthy of the name in Australian cities, and the few private citizens who formed collections wanted some assurance of value for the money they spent in books.

To-day all this is changed, and a score of Australian “Mudies,” of book clubs, and book exchanges, enable our citizens with a taste for reading to wander at will through every path of literature, at a mere nominal cost, and in several public institutions at no cost at all.

Hence the Australian writer of fiction is now fairly certain of an audience, and if he or she fails to charm that audience into asking for more, then surely the fault must lie in the quality of the product, and should not be imputed to the would-be consumer. Although the issue of a large number of works of fiction does not necessarily indicate that the author has either acquired or deserved fame, yet it is a fact that no writer has made an enduring reputation on one novel. The greatest novelists of the Old World, men of the calibre of Scott and Dickens, have been notable for the fertility of their production. If, therefore, account is only taken of those Australian writers who have each published several novels during the last twenty years or so, the survey of Australian fiction may be reduced within fairly reasonable limits.

Mr. Thomas Alexander Browne, better known under his nom de plume of ‘Rolf Boldrewood,’ stands in the front rank of the workers in the fiction fields of Australia. He has been more productive, and far more exclusively Australian in the selection of his subjects and the development of his characters, than any of his male competitors. Though not an Australian by birth, Mr. Browne was only an infant when he landed in Sydney in 1830, and he has had more than half-a-century's experience in the varied phases of colonial life, covering the most momentous and exciting period in the development of his adopted country. The changes that he has seen, and has borne his share in effecting, may be gleaned from a perusal of his pleasant gossipy little book, Old Melbourne Memories (George Robertson, Melbourne, 1884), wherein will be found faithful word-pictures of life in Victoria in 1840 onwards.

While yet in his teens, Mr. Browne formed a cattle station in the far west of Victoria, then an almost unexplored wilderness, where the aborigines were not only numerous but full of fight. After passing successfully through all the pioneering stages of the squatting life, and reaping a fair reward for his toils, he was tempted by the larger areas and more liberal pastoral laws of New South Wales, to take up a station in Riverina. Here, after a year or two of fair promise, he was visited by one of those terribly prolonged periodical droughts which are the scourge of the country, and which overwhelmed him and scores of other good men in financial disaster. In The Squatter's Dream (Macmillan, London, 1890), a realistic picture is given of the painful surroundings of the grim struggle in which the squatter is so often involved with the relentless forces of nature. The story is told with an earnestness of feeling and fidelity of detail that could only have come of personal experience, and that experience intensified by suffering. It may be in part autobiographical, but whether it is so or not, there is no doubt that in this story, and in A Colonial Reformer (Macmillan, London, 1890), we have, apart altogether from the interest of the narrative, the most faithful picture of squatting life to be found anywhere in fiction. Even the delightful story of Geoffrey Hamlyn, notwithstanding Kingsley's more finished literary style, has to yield to Rolf Boldrewood on these points.

When Mr. Browne abandoned squatting in 1870, he was appointed a Police Magistrate and Goldfields Warden in New South Wales, and entered upon a new phase of experience, which, with his keen observation and quick perception of character, must have been a very mine of material for novel writing. He had long been a contributor to the serials and journals at Sydney and Melbourne without attracting that attention which his writing deserved. But the publication of Robbery under Arms in London, in 1888, brought home to him the truth of the scriptural saying, “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.” For the success of the book in England was both prompt and substantial, and it received strongly appreciative notices from most of the critical journals. When it was re-issued for the Colonies in Macmillan's Library, with the imprimatur of English approval, thousands read it in Australia who had never heard of its tentative publication in the Sydney Mail years before. It may be said in excuse of this neglect, that even an intelligent and interested reader cannot form any very definite idea of the merits of a book that is doled out to him in weekly instalments over a whole year. In the busy life of the ordinary citizen, a chapter here and there gets dropped out, and the interdependency of the characters and incidents gets sadly blurred. Hence the British critics were the first to fully recognize its merits, because they, and the public whom they advised, were the first to see it under suitable conditions.

Robbery under Arms is a vividly written story of stirring adventure, with no complicated plot to unravel, and no moral, sexual, or social problems to discuss. Indeed, it will probably be regarded by some as wanting in the creative faculty of imagination, so strictly does it seem to adhere to the records of incidents which are all fairly within the bounds of probability. Doubtless some of the most exciting incidents are, in effect, real history and not fiction at all, though the names of the actors, the motives for action, and even the result of that action, may have been quite different from that into which the novelist's art has shaped them. The result is a story that from the first chapter awakens interest, which grows into sympathy, and that maintains those qualities in tension to the last. The autobiographical form in which the story is cast is one that imposes severe limitations; but the personality of the writer is cleverly and consistently maintained throughout, though he has a tendency to get rather more refined in his ideas as he approaches the end. But his story is told with a fine manly ring in it; where there is pathos, it is genuine, both in act and expression. The character of the narrator is so thoroughly well defined, that one recognizes at a glance the impossibility of any feeble sentimentality in his words or deeds. The strongest work that Mr. Browne has done in the portrayal of character is in this book. The Marston family and the aboriginal Warrigal are picturesque types that could be found in no other country; but the daughter, Aileen Marston, is, both in conception and development, an original creation of which the author may be justifiably proud. The bushranger hero, ‘Starlight,’ is the vehicle for displaying the combined characteristics of the half-dozen outlaws who have made for themselves a reputation with Australian youth, before which Dick Turpin and Claude Duval must stand humbled and abashed. And yet, unlike his English prototypes, whatever ‘Starlight’ says or does is as believable as the simple truthfulness of Robinson Crusoe. All that Mr. Browne does to present him acceptably to the reader, is to make him more polished in manner than Gardiner or Power, and less sanguinary than Mike Howe or Morgan. But his ways were not the ways of pleasantness, and he gets to the recognized end of the evil-doer all the same as if he had been the most bloodthirsty of his tribe. It may be said, that the prominence given to this type of character has an injurious reaction on the community; but the function of the novelist is—or rather, before the era of the novel with a purpose, was—to entertain, not to preach, and the swashbucklers whom Dumas has immortalized in ‘The Three Musqueteers’ were quite as incorrigible ruffians as Mr. Browne's idealized bushranger. If we want edification on this subject we must turn to the narratives of Bonwick, or Francis Hare, who paint the genuine article with the gilt off, and then admire the talent which can, from such unpromising materials, evoke a character that rivets our interest, and often stirs our pity.

If in Robbery under Arms we have the most vividly-drawn picture of the conditions of outlawry in New South Wales a generation ago, we have in The Miner's Right (London, Macmillan, 1890) one of the most realistic accounts of the exciting life of the gold-digger in the Fifties. The story must by this time be too well known to need any description. Notwithstanding a tendency to over-amplification of detail in description, it is, without doubt, entitled to a prominent place in the fiction of incident and adventure. It does not pretend to any analysis of character, nor does it indulge in any politico-economic reflections on the hardships under which the diggers suffered, but it goes straight on with a bright and breezy account of the courage and endurance which were the general characteristics of the parti-coloured crowd of all sorts and conditions of men, who toiled at the most exciting occupation the world of labour has ever known. The picture bears the impress of extended personal experience, and the result is the fixing in a permanent form of the photograph of a condition of society distinctive of Australia, but now only a fading tradition, even to us. And underlying all the stirring incidents of the story, there is the necessary phase of the love that endures through trial and separation, and is rewarded with orthodox propriety in the end by the happy union and prospective earthly paradise, sought, alas! in this case, away from Australia.

In addition to the four novels already mentioned, Mr. Browne has published A Sydney-Side Saxon (London, 1891) and Nevermore (London, 1892), the latter having originally appeared in The Centennial Magazine (Sydney, 1889). He has also reprinted some of his shorter stories in book form, and in his latest production, The Sealskin Cloak (London, 1896), breaks fresh ground altogether. The impressions acquired in the few weeks of a rapid overland journey to Europe, though they may serve as a peg on which to hang some pictorial writing, and a good deal of sentimental conversation, are but a poor substitute for the full knowledge which made Mr. Browne such a master of the subjects he dealt with in his earlier novels. But it is possible that the English reader, taking both on trust, may consider the Egyptian episodes quite as realistic as the Australian.

Mrs. Cross, or, as she is better known to local readers by her maiden name, ‘Ada Cambridge,’ is entitled to the first place amongst the novelists of her sex in Australia, not merely because she has published ten volumes, and one or two more are announced as nearly ready, but by reason of the quality of her work, and the varied distinctiveness of her several stories. In this respect she is in marked contrast to Rolf Boldrewood, whose repertoire is so circumscribed, that by the time the reader has finished a course of his novels, it is almost impossible to mentally distinguish one from the other.

Mrs. Cross has a happy faculty in the delineation of character by light suggestive touches, rather than by elaborate introductions. She is extremely prolific in the production of the children of her imagination, but she keeps them all well in hand, with the result that they play their parts, important or trivial, with a fidelity to their antecedents which seems born of much careful rehearsing. In A Marked Man, probably the strongest of her stories, and in Not all in Vain, there are powerful elements of the tragic and romantic, and in ‘Fidelis’ there is very genuine pathos; and yet the general tenor of her stories is one of a graceful peacefulness, implied by a certain delicacy of touch, and a pervading sense of fidelity to nature. Take as a sample The Three Miss Kings (London, 1891), one of the most popular of her novels, without intending to give it preference over all the others. It narrates the fortunes and misfortunes of three young girls, who have been brought up to womanhood almost isolated from their fellow-creatures, in a picturesque but unpretending bush home on the western sea-board of Victoria. The death of their father, a morbidly secretive recluse, leaves them their own mistresses, with a little property, and a modest income of £100 a year each. The “restless, unsatisfied longing” natural to their age and surroundings impels them to see the world, and on their way to accomplish this desire, they take Melbourne as a foretaste of the anticipated delights of European travel. In the mind of the ordinary novel-reader, youth and beauty are too generally held to include naturally all other perfections, but the critical caviller might possibly object that these young ladies possessed accomplishments almost incompatible with their earlier surroundings. The gradual unfolding of the mystery of their accomplished mother's secluded life, accounts for inherited tastes not commonly found in the bush, and the tender devotion that had supervised their up-bringing explains the result. The diverse characteristics of the respective suitors by whom they are respectively captured, are sketched with distinctive force, and the modest plot which develops their eventual great fortune is neatly worked out, without trying the reader's credulity. On the whole, it is a simple, cheerful, natural story, the chief end of which, as of all legitimate story-telling, is entertainment; for though it does touch on some of the problems which made ‘Robert Elsmere’ famous, they are very incidentally disposed of. The tendency of so much recent fiction is to harrow up the reader's feelings, that it comes as a relief to read a book in which there is not a single villain, male or female. If from its placidity it may not take a strong hold upon male readers, its delicate insight into the ways of girlhood, and the loving tenderness with which they are presented, ought to make it popular with the gentler sex of all ages.

In striking contrast to the story just mentioned is A Marked Man (London, 1890), called, when first published in the Australasian, A Black Sheep, which is undoubtedly the most powerful, as it is probably the best known of this writer's stories. For full and consistently maintained delineation of character, for sequence and interest of action, and for vivid glimpses of the struggles of a tempestuous and rebellious heart, that scorns all conventional discipline, there has been nothing finer produced in Australia. Indeed, it is not easy to call to mind any novel in which the great masters of English fiction have treated of the carking miseries of a mésalliance, extending over a quarter of a century, with equal power. And, apart from the sustained interest of the narrative, and the delicate humour that relieves the strain of deep pathos surrounding Richard Delavel's later life, the book contains some exceptionally brilliant descriptive touches. They are not, as is often the case, expanded to fill up an episodal interval, but are as much a part of the story as the raciest dialogue, and some of them, even taken out of their context, are admirable specimens of literary skill.

The book has been so widely circulated in Australia, that it is unnecessary to give any outline of the story. Those who have read it will need no eulogium; those who have not can confidently be promised a pleasure to come.

Not all in Vain (London, 1892) illustrates the capacity of Mrs. Cross to awaken the reader's fullest sympathy with her heroines without endowing them with angelic beauty, or fascinatingly innocent youthfulness. Katherine Knowles, who plays the leading rôle in this story, is thus described: “A tall, well-developed, well-bred girl, she was technically plain, but virtually beautiful, her irregular-shaped, wide-browed, square-jawed face having a quality of grave sweetness and intellectual strength that made it impressive and attractive to the cultivated eye.” Now, while most of the bewitching women in the book come to grief, in one form or another, this goodness and innate strength of character carry the heroine through a very troubled life-history without leading her into any action that seems at variance with what might be looked for under given circumstances. Once only is the writer led astray in the desire to pose her heroine on a higher pinnacle than is possible to poor humanity. That is in the interview with the inconstant Forbes Alexander, when she allows her degenerated hero to maunder about her desertion of him, without confronting him with the real cause. The life-long devotion to her unstable lover, the slowly awakening recognition of the moral decadence that his long imprisonment has worked, the bitter suddenness of the discovery of his transferred affections, leave nothing to be desired in the telling. But no woman that ever lived could have allowed such taunts to pass unanswered, when the real culprit blusteringly pretends to be the injured victim, with the full knowledge of both of them that it is a hateful lie. One other mistake in the story, as inclining to the morbid, is the punishment of Forbes. No jury, with the facts properly put before them, would have convicted him of wilful murder. At the most it would have been manslaughter, and the sentence would certainly not have exceeded five years. This would have been quite long enough for the transformation stages, and with very slight alterations, the dénouement might have been reached more in keeping with poetical justice, and the claims of the gentle and faithful Jim Hammond. There are a large number of characters introduced into this story, many of them only puppets of the hour, but the individuality with which they are endowed, in briefest sentences or scraps of conversation, is one of the special merits of the stories of Mrs. Cross.

Admitting the excellent literary quality of all this lady's work, it may be asked, what is the general tendency of her novels? Well, most of them are somewhat of a protest against those conventional usages which make up the Gospel according to Mrs. Grundy. In some of them the marriage tie is a thing too grievous to be borne; in others, the iniquity of binding an unyielding theological creed upon a mind capable of expansion, is cried out against with pathetic indignation; and generally the shams of social life, to many of which familiarity has blunted our perception, are shown up in their true colours. Her chiefest sin in the eyes of Mrs. Grundy will certainly be the refusal to regard the marriage question as a thing settled for all time, and unimprovable. It may be pleaded in mitigation, that she is content to point out—and with convincing power too—the evils and life-long miseries that may and that do arise in many cases, where knowledge that would have averted the sacrifice comes too late, after the irrevocable step has been taken. So far all right-minded people are with her, and if to make an evil widely known is one of the steps towards its amelioration, she deserves our thanks. But she does not herself offer any guaranteed solution of this most difficult problem; nor does she propound through her novels the way the woman of the future will deal with it, after the manner of Grant Allen.

Mrs. Campbell Praed is a native of Queensland, and a daughter of a member of the Legislature of that Colony. In productiveness she takes the lead of all Australian writers, having published upwards of twenty separate novels, besides contributing numerous short sketches to the occasional volumes issued by the Australian coterie in London, and many interesting articles on travel and kindred subjects to the English, American, and colonial magazines. Her pen has been actively employed since 1880, and she has often published two, sometimes three novels in the year. There are indications in the later stories that the pace has been too fast, but there is great freshness and power in her earlier work. All her books have been published in London, where she has lived for the last twenty years; most of them have met with marked public approbation, and count their circulation by many thousands. And it must be admitted that they honestly deserve it for they exhibit great dramatic force, a fascination, interest of narrative, and a marked intensity in the sombre passages, that would make a reputation in the literature of any country. It is certain that the interest these books have aroused in England has had an important influence in gaining a hearing for Australian writers, and a standard has been set that is well worthy the emulation of the colonial aspirant. But they differ materially in tone from the work of the novelists we have been considering. They deal more strongly and more exclusively with the social and political life of the Antipodes than any of the other novelists have done, and it cannot be denied that, as a rule, they present our prominent men in a rather sorry light.

Mrs. Praed does not, it is true, descend to the libellous style which gained for Mrs. Trollope the fervent hatred of the Americans, but there is an air of cynicism, and a vein of depreciation of colonials and their surroundings, which makes her stories less acceptable on the spot where the scenes are laid, though at the same time it probably gives piquancy to them for the English palate.

Twenty years in the brilliant circles of London social, literary, and artistic life—the apex of the world for people with means, leisure, and intellect—has doubtless dulled the appreciation of our unconventional freedom, and exaggerated our humdrum limitations. Most of her Australian heroines are devoured by ennui. If they live in the bush, they are oppressed by the overwhelming silence of unpeopled domains; if in the towns, by the petty parochial incidents that lazily stir their jaded interest. The droughts and the floods, the shearing and the branding, the land laws and the free selectors, the political squabbles and the rancour of Parliamentary elections, seem to bound their horizon, and to shut out the glimpses which they fain would have of a world where romance and chivalry, love and ambition, should be ruling factors. Hence these heroines, as a rule, are given to throw themselves into the arms of the distinguished visitors who find their way condescendingly, or by force of circumstances, into these southern wilds. There are a few Australian heroes in the long list of Mrs. Praed's creations who compare favourably with the more polished imported article, notably Frank Hallett in Outlaw and Lawmaker, and Dyson Maddox in Longleat of Koralbyn. But, as a rule, the sterling merit of her best men is somewhat discounted by associating them with narrow, provincial prejudices, and brusqueness, not to say bluntness, of speech and behaviour.

Mrs. Praed's greatest strength lies in the construction of finely dramatic episodes, and next to that in a vividly realistic power of description. In characterization she concentrates her forces on the representatives of her own sex, and her male contingent suffers by comparison. But in spite of the clear-cut presentation, and the carefully worked out analysis of her heroines, only a very few of them are lovable persons. Perhaps they represent a true average, taken from that bulk of humanity whence heroines are drawn, but really in the matter-of-fact, unheroic world there is a far wider diffusion of happiness than could be imagined if Mrs. Praed's stories were to be accepted as the basis of our calculation.

Love in various forms, successful or despairing, coarsely vehement or tenderly refined, merely conventional or devotedly self-effacing, forms not only the motif of most of the stories, but is always associated with the strongest passages in them, and will be found to be the dominating theme. Mrs. Praed's style has little in sympathy with the tranquil flame which Cupid kindled in the breasts of the three Miss Kings, but in the tumultuous phases of the absorbing passion she wields a pen worthy of Hall Caine or Thomas Hardy. Few people can settle down to read twenty novels by one author, and for those who cannot afford this diversion Longleat of Koralbyn (London, Bentley, 1887), originally published in 1881 as Policy and Passion, may be recommended as combining most of the strong points of Mrs. Praed's writing. In constructive power and interest of narrative, in cynical humour, in intensity of passion, and in the grim tragedy of its climax, it is a novel not easily forgotten. The coarse-fibred, passionate-natured, strong-willed and clever Longleat, and his picturesque, wayward, and dissatisfied daughter Honoria, are characters that will live in Australian fiction.

Miss Jacobsen's Choice (London, 1887) is equally illustrative of Australian life as developed in Queensland, and is a story of a more cheerful character than the former. It may be taken as one of the best of Mrs. Praed's books from the society point of view, treated with abundant humour. But for genuine presentment of bush life, and its unique experiences, for photographic accuracy of both scenic and domestic surroundings, into which is woven a love-story of deep interest, she has done nothing better than The Romance of a Station (London, 1889). In the preface she tells us, “The opening chapters picture faithfully enough the scene of one of my own early homes, and describe life on an island which may be found marked on any map of Australia. Almost all the incidents are real, and even the most romantic of the episodes have their foundation in fact.” And certainly she has succeeded in making the reader feel like a welcome guest at her own fireside, and a participator alike in the pleasures and the discomforts of the home so vividly described.

‘Tasma,’ the nom de plume of Madame Couvreur, is a lady of whose connection with Australian literature the local critical press has always been proud. Though born in London, she was only an infant when landed in Hobart, forty years ago, and the early years of her life were passed in the garden colony, where her father, Mr. Alfred Huybers, was a leading mercantile man. She resided for a short time in Victoria, and commenced her literary career there by contributions to the Australasian. In 1879 she went to Europe, where, with the exception of an occasional visit to Australia, she has since resided. She distinguished herself by numerous critical and artistic essays, contributed to the leading English, French, and Belgian reviews, and even made her mark as a lecturer under the auspices of the Geographical Society of Paris. Though she had given to the world many pleasant little sketches before she took up with the more general literary work, it was not until after her marriage with Monsieur Couvreur in 1885 that she turned her attention seriously to fiction. Four years later she published Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill (London, 1889), still regarded as the strongest of her novels. It is essentially a love-story, in which three pairs of lovers are so continually at cross purposes, and transfer their affections with such aggravating disregard of consequences, as to plunge the reader in a sea of doubt and perplexity about the final wind-up. The characters on which ‘Tasma’ has lavished her most constructive skill are the aristocratic pauper Mr. Cavendish, his daughter Sara, and the choleric parvenu Uncle Piper. The former is made almost too contemptible, a compound of Mantalini and Micawber, with the added sins of the blackest ingratitude to his benefactor, and the meanest of bullies to his devoted wife. Sara Cavendish is a strongly-drawn portrait of a most objectionable type of woman, very rarely, it must be hoped, encountered in real life. A veritable whited sepulchre, of supremest beauty in face and figure, but vain, selfish, greedy, untruthful, and bad-tempered. She is so objectionable in all she says and does, that it is a joy to find her left husband-hunting in the last page, after having rejected several impassioned offers. Uncle Piper is a clever conception of the self-made man, strong-willed, hard-natured, and violent under opposition. But his violence is something over-done. In the scene describing his accidental discovery of his son's engagement to Laura, his vindictive outbursts of rage savour of a ferocity scarcely human, and appear incompatible with a temperament which could lavish such unstinted generosity on his sister and his nieces. So in the later chapters his conversion to comparative affability is brought about with a suddenness that seems strained, notwithstanding the palliative influences of his long night vigils by the bedside of his little daughter.

The methods of delineation of character are entirely different from those of Ada Cambridge, who makes her actors introduce themselves, and mainly develops their special qualities from their conversation. ‘Tasma,’ on the other hand, devotes a good many pages to what might be called philosophical analysis of the motives of action of her chief characters, and never leaves the reader in doubt as to how they would behave under given circumstances. Heredity, temperament, mental or physical defect, lack of education, and uncongenial surroundings are all insisted on, in connection with cause and effect, more after the manner of the essayist than the novelist.

In Her Earliest Youth (London, 1890) is another story devoted to colonial life. The long-drawn-out woes of the heroine, who has made a gratuitous and altogether unnecessary sacrifice by marrying a man who is not her affinity, makes rather a severe trial on the reader's patience. This main fault is, however, to a great extent redeemed by the finished literary style in which the story is presented; by some picturesque touches of the descriptive order, and by delightful studies of child life full of sympathetic tenderness.

Not Counting the Cost (London, 1895) is a much more cheerful story than either of the others, and shows a considerable faculty of bright humour, though it lacks the analytical power which is so strongly developed in Uncle Piper.

The Penance of Portia James (London, 1891) only touches incidentally on Australian topics, but it is a delightful story, full of vivid pictures of artist life in Paris and London, and dealing with subjects in which Madame Couvreur has long been recognized as a most competent authority.

Mary Gaunt, now Mrs. Lindsay Miller, must be added to the list of Australian writers who have won a reputation beyond the limits of the Colonies. She is the daughter of a Victorian County Court Judge, and very early in life made a favourable impression by the vivid descriptive power which marked the numerous short stories she contributed to the Australasian and other Melbourne papers. All her subjects are essentially local, and in the course of the extended series, for she must have published quite a score of these stories, she has practically exhausted what English readers assume to be the Australian repertoire. Bushrangers and cattle-stealers, mining accidents and bush fires, fights with blacks and strikes by shearers, the tragedies of “out back” and the perils of the sea,—all these and other colonial “properties” have been worked into episodes in the career of the squatter, the miner, the speculator, and the politician, for every cent of value that is in them. The bush fire has a fascination which young Australian writers find it hard to resist, but it must be admitted that in Miss Gaunt's story, ‘The Other Man,’ she has penned a description of such a visitation in the Otway forest that is so luridly vivid and painfully realistic as to leave nothing better to be desired.

Several of Miss Gaunt's stories were contributed to English magazines, and a selection from her scattered pieces has been published under the title of The Moving Finger (London, 1895). It was very favourably noticed by the English literary journals, but it would be a more genuinely representative book if it had been brightened by the infusion of a little more cheerfulness, the predominant note in the pieces selected being decidedly tragic.

Dave's Sweetheart (London, 1894) is the best known and most popular of her novels, and shows great dramatic force, as well as literary skill in construction. Jenny Carter, the sweetheart, is quite an original study in character-drawing, so uncommon in daily life, and yet worked out with such careful regard to consequence as to suggest a living model. Brought up amid the squalid surroundings of a bush shanty, neglected by a brutal father, steeped in ignorance and slatternly in person, such mental power as she possesses is concentrated on her ill-regulated passion for the handsome but worthless reprobate, Dave Anderson. The manner in which this scoundrel masters her feeble will, and, to serve his own ends, persuades her into a marriage with the worthy police-sergeant, her subsequent flight to her outlawed paramour, and to her death, are told with consummate power. But the key-note of the story is grimly tragic, especially towards the close, and notwithstanding its admittedly artistic handling, the impression left on the reader's mind is actively painful.

It is only about three years ago that Miss Ethel Turner published her story of ‘The Seven Little Australians’ (London, 1894), followed a year later by its sequel, ‘The Family at Misrule’ (London, 1895). Though scarcely coming under the category of novels, they were promptly recognized as charmingly fresh and vivacious specimens of a form of fiction not hitherto acclimatized. Miss Turner is entitled to be regarded as the Australian exponent of the humours, the beauties, the troubles, and the mysteries of child life. The children she presents to us are not artificial creations like Little Nell, or Paul Dombey, or Uncle Tom's Eva, but the genuine article as we find it in daily life, loving and lovable, simple and confiding, but withal generally more or less troublesome. In the first story, the “seven” are in the very juvenile stage, out of which it is difficult to evoke incident of wide dramatic interest, but their sayings and doings are so naturally portrayed, that they have a special fascination for mothers and for young girls. But in the second story, with added years to the little company of actors, and with added experience in handling them, Miss Turner has developed considerable strength in characterization, and presented a story that will interest people of all ages and both sexes. For the studies of the various members of the Family at Misrule are full of keen, sympathetic insight, and each one has its sharply-defined distinctive qualities. When we come to ‘The Story of a Baby’ (London, 1895), a change of style and sentiment, and a change for the worse, is noticeable. The Baby is an unimportant episode, for the characters who fill the pages are a very young and very foolish married couple, whose inexcusable quarrels are a disgrace to both of them. The attempt which the authoress makes to awaken sympathy fails before the reader's indignation, and an impetuous desire to knock the heads of the silly young couple together. Altogether the story is unpleasant, and the dénouement artificial in the extreme. But Miss Turner is young, and in some directions she has shown great capacity. It is probable that she will yet make a considerable reputation as a novelist, if she will take to heart the rule laid down by Walter Besant, that “everything in fiction which is invented, and is not the result of personal experience and observation, is worthless.”

From the foregoing notices it will be seen how much the Australian community is indebted to the gentler sex for the production of most of its sustained fiction, which, from the purity of its tone, and its disregard of unanswerable social and sexual problems, is rightly welcome in hundreds of family circles, as a healthful means of stimulating mental activity. And in its teaching aspect,—for all good fiction teaches,—it sets forth the influences that mould character and the motives that influence mankind, which otherwise we might only learn by the too often painful lessons of personal experience.

For the rest, numerous though they be, there is neither space nor occasion for any detailed criticism. It remains only to mention a few briefly. The prolific Fergus Hume, of whom it can be said that the clever construction of his plots is counterbalanced by the baldness of his style, and the slip-shod character of his English.

Guy Boothby, a native of Australia, but latterly residing in London, who seems to have very quickly discovered what so many of his brother scribes are vainly seeking for—the command of wealth by the use of his pen. According to his own statement to an interviewer last Christmas, he had followed literature as a profession for two years, and was then at work on his seventeenth novel! Any one who has read ‘Dr. Nikola,’ or ‘The Beautiful White Devil,’ will recognize that they require no very profound study for their production. A vivid imagination, large experience of travel, and a daring disregard of probabilities, carry him into realms from which the stunned reader emerges with the sensation of having been the victim of an opium debauch.

Louis Becke, who has recently announced to a sympathetic world his discovery that “literature does not pay,” and yet whose South Sea Island stories, when published in Sydney, created such a sensation that the local critics united to proclaim him as the superior of Robert Louis Stevenson! Such a comparison with one of the most perfect masters of English is an outrage. Though there is some strong writing in Becke's stories, and an abundance of local picturesqueness, they are on the whole coarse in tone and fleshly in colour. Many of them positively reek with gore, and nearly all are unpleasantly free in their pictures of a very loose morality.

Hume Nisbet, whose latest Australian novel, The Swampers (London, 1897), contained such violent attacks upon men and things in Sydney, as to cause its sale to be prohibited under penalty of legal proceedings. Society will be the gainer if the prohibition is enforced, for it is an unwholesome story, and, like his previous novels, gives a most distorted view of colonial life.

B. L. Farjeon, whose early days were spent in Victoria and New Zealand, and whom some of his injudicious critics have called the “only legitimate successor of Dickens.” If to be an imitator of the weakest side of Dickens' style, his somewhat theatrical pathos, is to be a “legitimate successor,” then the designation may pass, but it is difficult to find anything else to base it on.

H. B. Marriot Watson, who has given us the best romance of adventure amongst the Maoris, The Web of the Spider (London, 1891), and has also done some very good work in short stories, modelled on the American form, which Bret Harte made so famous.

Price Warung, whose Tales of the Early Days (Melbourne, George Robertson, 1894) are things “to shudder at, not to see.” They deal with times, with people, with passions, and, alas! with realities, that would be better forgotten than perpetuated in fiction. The genius of Victor Hugo, of Charles Reade, or of Marcus Clarke may make the galleys, the gaol, and the triangles the background for the setting of a powerful drama of human misery, but a series of short stories of official brutality, of petty intrigue, and noisome associations is too hideous to contemplate as a phase of mental recreation.

But why extend the list? It would almost fill the remaining pages, and degenerate into a mere catalogue. Enough has been said to show, at least, that there is a school of Australian fiction, and that, like all other schools, it contains much that is really good, more, perhaps, that is feeble and indifferent, and a small residuum that is positively bad and injurious. It is not possible to point to any country where the latter qualification could be omitted.