Bush Studies

Bush Studies (1902) is a collection of short stories which explore the dark side of the Australian bush experience: loneliness, isolation and danger. The stories, often depicting female suffering, are grimly realistic in contrast to the masculine romantic notions of the outback as represented by Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. All six stories in Bush Studies deal with the great themes of birth and death, although only 'Bush Church' renders its theme as comedy, with its disorderly scenes of a church service and multiple christenings gone awry. This new edition of Bush Studies is a part of the Australian Classics Library series intended to make classic texts of Australian literature more widely available for the secondary school and undergraduate university classroom, and to the general reader. The series is co-edited by Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett of the University of New South Wales and Professor Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, in conjunction with SETIS, Sydney University Press, AustLit and the Copyright Agency Limited. Each text is accompanied by a fresh scholarly introduction and a basic editorial apparatus drawn from the resources of AustLit.