AustLit

'Striving to convince readers that an invasion was no mere literary license, the Australian invasion novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called upon a gallery of foreign and internal villains. Of the latter, the (mostly) male authors frequently identified the manhood of Australia's cities as a weak link that could fatally undermine the young nation. This article, though, will illuminate the work of another invasion novelist, Joyce Vincent, to show that this concern about the men of the city had more to do with the uncertainties of gender than it did with the defence of White Australia.' (p. 41)