Such is Life (1903) is a novel by Joseph Furphy. Written under his pseudonym “Tom Collins,” Such is Life is a unique and challenging story that took decades to achieve a proper audience. Earning comparisons to the works of Melville and Twain, Furphy’s novel is considered a landmark of Australian literature. “The fore part of the day was altogether devoid of interest or event. Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, and bare except for inedible roley-poleys, coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; between sky and earth, a solitary wayfarer, wisely lapt in philosophic torpor.” Setting out on a trek through the outback, Tom Collins begins his seemingly endless torrent of words, a journey through language to match his journey over land. Accompanied by a dog and two horses, he meets a vibrant array of characters from all nations and walks of life; from drovers to criminals, Collins can talk with them all. Described by Furphy himself as “offensively Australian,” Such is Life is part travelogue, part philosophy, a novel ahead of its time that remains informative for our own. This edition of Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life is a classic work of Australian literature reimagined for modern readers.
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Joseph Furphy (1843-1912) was an Australian novelist. Born in Yering, Victoria, he was raised in a family of Irish emigrants from County Armagh. Educated by his mother, he read mostly Shakespeare and the Bible in his youth before moving to Kangaroo Ground, where a school was opened by the local parents. As a teenager, he began working on his father’s farm, later marrying Leonie Germain and taking over her family plot. Forced to switch from farming to animal husbandry due to a period of financial loss, he continued his literary interests as a published poet and short story writer and later fictionalized his agricultural experience in Such is Life (1903), a novel of rural Australia he wrote under the pseudonym “Tom Collins.” Largely ignored upon publication, Such is Life is now considered a classic work of Australian literature and perhaps one of the first novels written in an Australian English dialect.
