Peter Deakin takes an intriguing look at 25 current and former leaders, musicians, politicians, artists and actors. He dissects each of these individuals and describes how each of them was able to summon ‘whatever it takes’ to surmount any opposition or obstacle lying in their path, in order to leave an indelible mark on the world.
The Mango Tree is an evocative journey into a long-lost Australian childhood, and won the Miles Franklin award in 1974. It is a novel about a young man growing up in a country town in the early years of the 20th century which, like a faded letter from a forgotten lover, evokes bitter-sweet memories of the dream-days of youth in a world long past.
Paul Wenz was born in France in 1869, lived in Australia, and wrote stories dealing mainly with his Australian experiences for the French. He wrote ten books from 'Nanima', his homestead in Forbes, New South Wales, including two collections of short stories and four Australian novels. He also translated Jack London and Joseph Conrad, both who came ......
During his 1920s heyday, Arnold Bennett was one of Britain's most celebrated writers. As the author of The Old Wives' Tale and Clayhanger he was a household name, writing just as much for the common man as London's literati. His face was plastered over theatre hoardings and the sides of West End omnibuses. To his public, Bennett stood for ......
The Great Gatsby has sold 25 million copies worldwide and sells 500, 000 copies annually. The book has been made into three movies and produced for the theatre. It is considered the Greatest American Novel ever written. Yet, the story of how The Great Gatsby was written has not been told except as embedded chapters of much larger biographies. This ......
‘Of course you’ll take a gun,’ they said to me when I left Melbourne, ‘even if it’s only one of those little mother-of-pearl things the vamps used to carry in their evening-bags. Apart from wild blacks there will be crocodiles, and Malays running amok, and men that haven’t seen a white woman in thirty years. There might be three hundred miles of ......
Paul Wenz was born in France in 1869, lived in Australia, and wrote stories dealing mainly with his Australian experiences for the French. He wrote ten books from 'Nanima', his homestead in Forbes, New South Wales, including two collections of short stories and four Australian novels. He also translated Jack London and Joseph Conrad, both who came ......
Three murders, three perfect murders... near the rabbit-proof fence in desolate Western Australia. Perfect - except the process was exactly as described in Arthur Upfield’s crime novel The Sands of Windee (1931). It had all began in 1929, when Upfield was working on the fence and plotting a new novel featuring the Aboriginal detective, Napoleon ......
This delightful illustrated autobiography is the story of Miles Franklin's first ten years, spent partly on her parent's station in the mountain valley of Brindabella, not far from the present-day Canberra. It is a world of the high places and graceful living which she portrayed in her novels, here recaptured with unfaltering warmth and ......
In the year 1890, Stevenson was living at Apia in Samoa, where he had purchased some three hundred acres in the bush, two miles behind and six hundred feet above the level of the town, and on which he proposed to build a cottage for himself and his family. Why did he almost immediately leave Samoa to pay his first visit to Sydney? The answer, as ......
Now available for the first time, here is Upfield's own story of tramping Australia and developing his great crime novels featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective, alongside real desert characters like One-Spur Dick, Mr Pluto, Dead March Harry and the evil Snowy Rowles. Illustrated with photographs from Upfield's archive. The tangled ......
Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of literature with gaping holes. Their reasons for killing themselves, when known, were ......
Arthur Upfield is internationally known for his 29 crime novels featuring Bony, the Aboriginal Detective. In these thirteen stories written for Walkabout magazine between 1934 and 1949 and published in book form for the first time, readers will travel well beyond the cities, aided by maps and original photographs – through Cooper’s Creek, visiting ......
Barfield towers above us all... the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers. - C.S. Lewis --- We are well supplied with interesting writers, but Owen Barfield is not content to be merely interesting.
The World Is Round is a lively novel, which tells the story of Jean a lovely and likeable Sydney woman with literary aspirations. First published in London in 1896 – before My Brilliant Career – the vitality and immediacy of this Australian classic.
In this moving, revealing and highly readable memoir, Antony Penrose has composed a fitting tribute to his father, which also faces up to some of the more controversial aspects of Roland Penrose's life.
Debunking Hemingway Myths and Celebrating the Extraordinary Stories of H
Did Ernest Hemingway kill 122 Nazis during World War II? Did he box heavyweight champion Gene Tunney? Did he grow his hair long and want to be called Catherine? Is it true that he threatened to fire anyone who drained his pool after Ava Gardner skinny-dipped in it? Mythbusting Hemingway will feature answers to these longstanding questions and ......
A New Appraisal of William Bligh and the Rum Rebellion
This fascinating account of early Australia focuses on Governor William Bligh (famous as the captain of "Mutiny On the Bounty" fame). The Rum Rebellion has, for generations, been told to school children as one of the better stories of Australian history - how Bligh was a tyrant deposed by...
A collection of eleven essays on the career and texts of F. Scott Fitzgerald, focusing on the delicate balance in Fitzgerald's career between money and literary respectability.
Written by preeminent Fitzgerald biographer and literary critic, Scott Donaldson, this book presents a fresh, insightful exploration of the war between the sexes in F. Scott Fitzgerald's fictional and autobiographical writings. The volume opens with a close reading of Tender Is the Night, in which Donaldson argues that the key theme of the ......
The second of three story collections from the writer of the acclaimed Bony crime novels, with 45 stories from the author's tramping around Australia, dealing with camels and station hands, and his experience in WW1 at Gallipoli and the Middle East. Full of fantastic characters only found in the great Australian bush.
An exploration of the life, work, and historical background of Aphra Behn: seventeenth-century dramatist, poet, novelist, political propagandist, bisexual and spy.
Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers
Subversive shows how Sayers ignites new ways to think about Christianity, shocking people into seeing the truth of ancient doctrine; inspiring believers to evaluate how and why their language perpetuates divisive certitude rather than the hopeful faith; and showing us all a better way forward.
