Swords and Crowns and Rings: Text Classics PDF Download

Author: Ruth Park
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961791
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
Ruth Park’s Miles Franklin-winning novel brilliantly evokes Australia in the midst of the Great Depression. Written with warmth and affection, Swords and Crowns and Rings is a powerful story about human nature and the strength of an unlikely love.

Author: Martin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Author: David Ireland
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148024
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
An imaginative tour de force, A Woman of the Future is the story of the young life of Anthea Hunt—from conception to sexual awakening. It is controversial and brilliant, and unlike anything else in Australian literature.

Author: Elizabeth Harrower
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148954
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Twenty-five-year-old Clemency James has moved from Sydney to a chilly bedsit on the other side of the world. During the day she studies for the bar by correspondence; in the evenings she gives French lessons to earn a meagre wage. When she meets Christian, a charismatic would-be actor, she can see he's trouble - not least because he's involved with an older woman who has children. She is drawn to him nonetheless: drawn into his world of unpayable debts and wild promises. First published in 1960, The Catherine Wheel is Elizabeth Harrower's third novel and the only one of her books not set in Australia. In it she turns her unflinching gaze on the grim realities of 1950s London, and the madness that can infect couples. Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two. 'The Catherine Wheel is a great starting point for those new to Harrower's work, those readers who are unafraid to face the darker aspects of desire we're sometimes too ashamed to acknowledge.' 3am Magazine, Top Reads for 2015 'I love The Watch Tower, but I love The Catherine Wheel more. Like all the Harrower books, with their psychological mysteries, their droll humour, their brilliant language and ear for voices, The Catherine Wheel takes your hand from the first page and beckons you in.' Ramona Koval 'Rich and rewarding.' Starred review, Kirkus

Author: Ruth Park
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 192577421X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Following on from A Fence Around the Cuckoo, this is the second volume of autobiography by one of Australia’s best storytellers, Ruth Park, author of The Harp in the South and the Miles Franklin-winning Swords and Crowns and Rings

Author: Amy Witting
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1925410471
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In The Visit—Amy Witting’s debut novel, first published when she was almost sixty—a group of Bangoree residents gather to read plays by Beckett and Brecht. But their literary pursuits, and their lives, take an unexpected turn after it is revealed that the late Roderick Fitzallan set some of his celebrated love poems in their small country town. Who is the local mystery woman who inspired Fitzallan’s verse all those years ago? Amy Witting was born in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney, in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria’s War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty Is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. She had numerous poems and short stories published in magazines such as Quadrant and The New Yorker. Witting was awarded the 1993 Patrick White Prize. Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop won the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting died in 2001. ‘Her writing is so simple and tough and direct.’ Helen Garner

Author: Joan Phipson
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148059
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Trespassing in Mr Lovett's secluded garden was a welcome escape for sixteen-year-old Catherine. A haven away from the parents who didn't understand her moodiness and from her pretty, even-tempered sister, Diana, whom she resented. It was a place to be alone. But this all changes when Catherine is confronted by Mr Lovett and, realising he is blind, decides to confide in him. And so begins a remarkable friendship. Unexpectedly, a third person appears in the garden: an intruder. Terry - abrasive and sullen, menacing even - has a claim to make on the garden. It is a piece of land he feels should belong to his own family. In his plan neither Mr Lovett nor the garden is safe, and it is up to Catherine to stop him. But in Terry, she recognises something of herself. A complex and gripping novel of human relationships from one of Australia's foremost authors for young adults. Joan Phipson was born in Sydney of English parents and spent her childhood in England, Australia and India. After leaving school she did a correspondence course in journalism, then took a number of jobs in London, one of which was with Reuters. She returned to Australia in 1937 and spent several years working as a librarian and printer before joining the WAAAF. Joan Phipson won the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year Award in 1953 and 1963, for Good Luck to the Ride and The Family Conspiracy. She died in 2003. 'The Watcher in The Garden (1982) by Joan Phipson has been republished by Text Classics for a new generation of readers to appreciate this timeless tale of adolescent angst played out against the backdrop of its uniquely Australian background. The cover design and the wonderful introduction by Margo Lanagan set the mood for this remarkable tale.' ReadPlus

Author: Randolph Stow
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 192225312X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
His eyes are on the one eye of the rifle. His mouth splits open his brown beard. He throws up a hand, palm outward, in an unwilled, futile gesture to ward off death. A killer is hounding the seaside town of Old Tornwich. Residents are gripped by fear and suspicion, and the finger of blame is pointed in all directions. But the bodies keep falling and the crimes remain unsolved, the culprit at large. No mere whodunnit, The Suburbs of Hell—its story inspired by a real-life serial killer—is a profoundly disturbing psychological drama with a devastating conclusion, the final work of one of Australia’s greatest writers. Julian Randolph 'Mick' Stow was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1935. He attended local schools before boarding at Guildford Grammar in Perth, where the renowned author Kenneth Mackenzie had been a student. While at university he sent his poems to a British publisher. The resulting collection, Act One, won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal in 1957—as did the prolific young writer's third novel, To the Islands, the following year. To the Islands also won the 1958 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Stow reworked the novel for a second edition almost twenty-five years later, but never allowed its two predecessors to be republished. He worked briefly as an anthropologist’s assistant in New Guinea—an experience that subsequently informed Visitants, one of three masterful late novels—then fell seriously ill and returned to Australia. In the 1960s he lectured at universities in Australia and England, and lived in America on a Harkness fellowship. He published his second collection of verse, Outrider; the novel Tourmaline, on which critical opinion was divided; and his most popular fiction, The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea and Midnite. For years afterwards Stow produced mainly poetry, libretti and reviews. In 1969 he settled permanently in England: first in Suffolk, then in Essex, where he moved in 1981. He received the 1979 Patrick White Award. Randolph Stow died in 2010, aged seventy-four. A private man, a prodigiously gifted yet intermittently silent author, he has been hailed as ‘the least visible figure of that great twentieth-century triumvirate of Australian novelists whose other members are Patrick White and Christina Stead’. Praise for The Suburbs of Hell ‘Both a traditional murder mystery and a meditation on the random depredations of death.’ Australian Book Review ‘Poetic accuracy is only one aspect of a rich talent...Mr Stow has a narrative gift as well...He is, in fact a real novelist.’ Observer ‘A cleverly crafted whodunit... Stow is an example of the high calibre of Australian writers of yesterday. Many of these authors have been forgotten or perhaps overlooked. It’s pleasing to see that Text Publishing released this edition in 2015 and continue to foster some of Australia’s buried talents by re-publishing under Text Classics. For fans of the psychological thriller and those readers who enjoy a foray into a metaphorical tale, Stow delivers the goods.’ Salty Popcorn

Author: Thea Astley
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 192562661X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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This will be a book for the world’s last reader, she decided, chewing pen-end over an open exercise book. In the dying town of Drylands, Janet Deakin sells papers to lonely locals. At night, in her flat above the newsagency, she attempts to write a novel for a world in which no one reads—‘full of people, she envisaged, glaring at a screen that glared glassily back.’ Drylands is the story of the townsfolk’s harsh, violent lives. Trenchant and brilliant, Thea Astley’s final novel is a dark portrait of outback Australia in decline. Thea Astley was born in Brisbane in 1925. Her first novel, Girl with a Monkey, was published in 1958 and her third, The Well Dressed Explorer (1962), won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Many notable books followed, among them the groundbreaking A Kindness Cup (1974), which addressed frontier massacres of Indigenous Australians, and It’s Raining in Mango (1987). Her last novel was Drylands (1999), her fourth Miles Franklin winner. Her fiction is distinguished by vivid imagery and metaphor; a complex, ironic style; and a desire to highlight oppression and social injustice. One of the most distinctive and influential Australian novelists of the twentieth century, Astley died in 2004. ‘It is impossible to put this book down. It seethes with energy and passion.’ Herald Sun 'Wonderful.' Australian

Author: Amy Witting
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148741
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Winner of the Barbara Ramsden Prize, 1990. This was life: no sooner had you built yourself your little raft and felt secure than it came to pieces under you and you were swimming again. Born into a world without welcome, Isobel observes it as warily as an alien trying to pass for a native. Her collection of imaginary friends includes the Virgin Mary and Sherlock Holmes. Later she meets Byron, W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot. Isobel is not so much at ease with the flesh-and-blood people she meets, and least of all with herself, until a lucky encounter and a little detective work reveal her identity and her true situation in life. I for Isobel, a modern-day Australian classic, was followed by Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop, winner of the Age Book of the Year Award. Amy Witting was born in Annandale, an inner suburb of Sydney, in 1918. She attended Sydney University, then taught French and English in state schools. Beginning late in life she published six novels, including The Visit, I for Isobel, Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop and Maria's War; two collections of short stories; two books of verse, Travel Diary and Beauty is the Straw; and her Collected Poems. 'When we come to write the history of Australian writing in the twentieth century, the strange case of Amy Witting will be there to haunt us. Here is a writer who not only has great gifts - the kind of expert and mimetic gifts that would impel instant recognition from someone who admired a fine-lined American naturalist like William Maxwell - but a realist who has an effortless immediacy and a compelling sense of drama that should have ensured the widest kind of appeal, the sort of appeal that Helen Garner could command in her fiction-writing days. And yet this woman who published in the New Yorker and commanded the respect of Kenneth Slessor was scarcely encouraged during the long grey sleep of Australian fiction publishing. It wasn't until the publication of I for Isobel...that Witting gained a national profile.' Peter Craven 'Australia's Amy Witting is comparable to Jean Rhys, but she has more starch, or vinegar. The effect is bracing.' New Yorker 'Isobel is instinctively searching for a lost part of her substance, the very memory of which has been obliterated. Prompted by her inexplicable sense of loss, she goes on her way, deviating, baffled, yet rejecting substitutes. To call the ending happy is to say both too much and too little. Was the lost part also searching for her? Amy Witting's admirers will find this novel as distinctive and compelling as her stories and her poetry.' Jessica Anderson '[Witting] lays bare with surgical precision the dynamics of families, sibling, students in coffee shops, office coteries. One sometimes feels positively winded with unsettling insights. There is something relentless, almost unnerving in her anatomising of foibles, fears obsessions, private shame, the nature of loneliness, the nature of panic.' Janette Turner Hospital 'A beautifully but unobtrusively honed style, a marvellous ear for dialogue, a generous understanding of the complex waywardness of men and women.' Andrew Riemer 'Terrific - incredibly wise...When I finished it I went straight back to the first page.' Cate Kennedy