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Writing Novels single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Writing Novels
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life was the first great Australian novel. To my mind, it still remains the greatest. Its account of the horrors and brutalities of the convict settlement of Australia is unforgettable. I am not sure that I can bring myself to read it again, I think I would find it too painful an experience. I feel like that about King Lear and Wuthering Heights and much of Dostoevsky and D. H. Lawrence. These are the books to read in adolescence when you can gain a pleasure from tragedy and empathize with suffering.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Wild about Books : Essays on Books and Writing Michael Wilding , Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2019 17393108 2019 selected work essay

    'Wild About Books – essays on books and writing, about reading them and writing them, and publishing them and collecting them and preserving them in libraries. Essays about the shared experience of literature, the art and craft of writing, the pleasures of reading, the survival of five hundred years of print culture, together with reflections and suggestions on creative writing, on what to do, and how to do it, and on what I’ve done, and why I wrote this book and how I wrote that one, together with anecdotes from other writers’ experiences, from writers in person, and from the books they have written.'

    Source: Publisher's blurb.

    Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2019
    pg. 104-106
Last amended 23 May 2023 08:32:19
104-106 Writing Novelssmall AustLit logo
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