Charles Dickens' Australia. Selected essays from Household Words 1850-1859.: Book Three: Frontier Stories - Softcover

Mendelawitz, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1920898697 ISBN 13: 9781920898694

Publisher: Sydney University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Charles Dickens is little celebrated as a journalist, yet his career spanned nearly 40 years. Starting as a court reporter, parliamentary newspaper columnist and theatre critic, he developed an instinct for injustice, humbug and charade. For 20 years he edited his own weekly journal, 'Household Words', later known as 'All the Year Round', publishing articles and stories designed to be interesting, entertaining, and educational. Dickens had a keen interest in Australia and fortuitously began publishing the periodical at a transitional moment, just before the heady days of the 1850s gold rush set the world ablaze. The discovery of gold drove a period of mass immigration, expansion into the hinterlands, and caused radical economic and social changes in an emerging nation. Of the nearly 3000 articles published in 'Household Words', some 100 related to Australia and have been collected in this anthology. Dickens saw Australia offering opportunities for England's poor and downtrodden to make a new start and a brighter future for themselves; optimism reflected in many of the articles. The stories have been grouped into five volumes: Convict Stories, Immigration, Frontier Stories, Mining and Gold and Maritime Conditions. Book Three: Frontier Stories This volume contains stories of the triumphs and failures associated with opening up new country in the Australian bush. There are descriptions of cattle drives, bullock wagons, and poignant stories of lost settlers and children so often found through the uncanny abilities of Aboriginal trackers. There are tales of floods and fire; encounters with bushrangers and Aborigines, interspersed with vignettes of everyday life.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Mendelawitz is a graduate in history and anthropology from the University of Western Australia. She has had a lifelong interest in Australian social history stimulated largely through her being a descendant of pioneering families who settled in Western Australia in 1829-30, and Victoria in the 1850s. She currently works as a mediator.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sydney University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1920898697
• ISBN 13: 9781920898694
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 340
• Editor: Mendelawitz Margaret