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y separately published work icon From Billabong to London single work   children's fiction   children's  
Is part of Billabong Books Mary Grant Bruce , 1910-1942 series - author children's fiction (number 4 in series)
Issue Details: First known date: 1915... 1915 From Billabong to London
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

 'On Billabong station Jim, now assistant to his father, breaks in a promising young colt, and with Norah and Wally, helps with the intricacies of hauling a large bullock from the depths of a mud hole.  World War I is underway.  Jim and Wally want to enlist.  Mr. Linton needs to travel to London on family business so they all set sail on the Perseus, a huge ocean liner carrying produce to Europe, to involve themselves in the war effort.  On board they observe black-out restrictions to avoid being detected at night by enemy destroyers and deal physically with a German spy.  They have an all too interesting time during their stopover in Durban, South Africa.  Then their ship is captured by an enemy warship and almost sunk before a dramatic rescue takes place, allowing them to eventually reach London safely where the boys enlist in the British Army. '  (Publication summary)

Exhibitions

7553513
7457004
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: From Billabong to the War
First known date: 1915
Serialised by: The Western Mail 1885-1955 newspaper (146 issues)
Notes:
Serialised in nineteen instalments between 3 December 1915 and 31 March 1916.
Link: Instalment one (3 December 1915) Via Trove Australia
Alternative title: From Billabong to the War
First known date: 1915
Serialised by: The Melbourne Leader 1856 periodical (7 issues)
Notes:
Serialised as 'From Billabong to the War' from 2 October 1915. (Final instalment cannot be sighted at this time.)
Link: Instalment one (2 October 1915) Via Trove Australia
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Works about this Work

y separately published work icon From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 Michelle J. Smith , Kristine Moruzi , Clare Bradford , Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2018 15039944 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)
“Whichever and Whatever It Was” : Rendering War and Peace in Australian WWI Narratives Clare Rhoden , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 75 no. 3 2016; 'Australian narratives of World War I (WWI) reflect a different but characteristic commemoration of that event. While the best (to modern eyes) novels of WWI present a comprehensive picture of disillusionment, futility and waste, Australian stories proffer the view that the war was worthwhile, and that the sacrifices of the Anzacs were honourable and justified. In placing WWI as a salient marker denoting the origin of the nation, Australian texts diverge from the revered WWI canon’s convincing portrayal of the war as a symbol of civilisation’s demise. Even accepting this divergence, however, there is much in Australian narratives that amplifies the memorialisation of the war in Australian society.' (Introduction)
Australian and Wartime Chorography : Showing and Telling the Story of Home Rosemary Ross Johnston , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Children’s Literature and Culture of the First World War 2015; (p. 139-161)

'This chapter explores some of the ways in which the literary arts of poetry and novels, especially those for children and young people, and the visual arts of paintings and posters, often depicting children, were used in Australia during the First World War to show and tell not only the idea of war to those at home, but the idea of home for those at war. It is part of wartime rhetoric to set personal identity and home place as core (as something worth fighting for), but simultaneously to indent that core with qualities and places beyond the personal and the personally experienced: thus not just my home, my
family, my community, but our family, our community, our nation. This concept of home becomes imbued with symbols that both represent and unite and that establish a semiotics of home that includes both abstractions – a deep inner sense of shared cause alongside like-minded companions, and the materiality of physical space. This physical space expands into the metaphysical, into not just images of home and place and landscape, but potent metonymous and synechdocal imageries of home and place and landscapes.'

Source: introduction.
Britishness and Australian Popular Fiction : From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. 46-66) 'The analysis offered here is [...], a panoptic perspective of the tangled skeins of literary imagination and imitation, gender and genre requirements, editorial control, market considerations and the sheer economics of the international book trade that knotted Australian popular literature into the cultural and economic fabric of the British empire.' (47)
The Pioneers : Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce John Foster , Maureen Nimon , E. J. Finnis , 1995 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Children's Literature : An Exploration of Genre and Theme 1995; (p. 15-34)
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 11 November vol. 36 no. 1865 1915; (p. 2)
— Review of From Billabong to London Mary Grant Bruce , 1915 single work children's fiction
An Exciting Voyage 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Town and Country Journal , 10 November vol. 89 no. 2388 1915; (p. 44)
— Review of From Billabong to London Mary Grant Bruce , 1915 single work children's fiction
Untitled 1915 single work review
— Appears in: The Argus , 22 October 1915; (p. 5)
— Review of The Cub : Six Months in His Life : A Story in War-Time Ethel Turner , 1915 single work novel ; From Billabong to London Mary Grant Bruce , 1915 single work children's fiction
Britishness and Australian Popular Fiction : From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. 46-66) 'The analysis offered here is [...], a panoptic perspective of the tangled skeins of literary imagination and imitation, gender and genre requirements, editorial control, market considerations and the sheer economics of the international book trade that knotted Australian popular literature into the cultural and economic fabric of the British empire.' (47)
The Pioneers : Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce John Foster , Maureen Nimon , E. J. Finnis , 1995 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Children's Literature : An Exploration of Genre and Theme 1995; (p. 15-34)
y separately published work icon War, Women and the Bush : The Novels of Mary Grant Bruce and Ethel Turner David Robert Walker , St Lucia : AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource , 2009 Z962022 1978 single work criticism Comments on the portrayal of women, men and the bush in the novels of Mary Grant Bruce and Ethel Turner which were set during World War I. Walker draws particular attention to the disadvantages of being a woman and the qualities a woman should possess as portrayed in these novels. In their general behaviour, the characters of both sexes in the novels are permitted to be 'mildly unconventional' provided they still abide by the major social conventions of 'loyalty, decency [and] fair play'. Walker also points out the manner in which the bush is clearly depicted as a superior living environment, 'enhancing good health and wholesome attitudes to authority' and negating the 'socially harmful behaviour' engendered by life in the city.
“Whichever and Whatever It Was” : Rendering War and Peace in Australian WWI Narratives Clare Rhoden , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Long Paddock , vol. 75 no. 3 2016; 'Australian narratives of World War I (WWI) reflect a different but characteristic commemoration of that event. While the best (to modern eyes) novels of WWI present a comprehensive picture of disillusionment, futility and waste, Australian stories proffer the view that the war was worthwhile, and that the sacrifices of the Anzacs were honourable and justified. In placing WWI as a salient marker denoting the origin of the nation, Australian texts diverge from the revered WWI canon’s convincing portrayal of the war as a symbol of civilisation’s demise. Even accepting this divergence, however, there is much in Australian narratives that amplifies the memorialisation of the war in Australian society.' (Introduction)
y separately published work icon From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 Michelle J. Smith , Kristine Moruzi , Clare Bradford , Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2018 15039944 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (9)
Last amended 12 Mar 2018 12:54:19
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Northern Victoria, Victoria,
  • Bush,
  • London,
    c
    England,
    c
    c
    United Kingdom (UK),
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • 1910s
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