AustLit

'The Tasmanian literary magazine Island  (No.157, May 2019, p.8) has an insightful and amusing article by Pete Hay titled 'Are Books the New Zucchini?' By way of introduction to discussing the dilemma of anyone wishing to downsize their book collection, he talks about the gardener who, when finding himself with an overabundance of zucchinis, decides to offer them to his neighbours and friends - and instead of being met with gratitude, he is confronted with reluctance to accept anything more than a very small portion of his largesse. Refusing to waste good food the donor resorts to visiting them at 2 am and quietly leaving his surplus zucchinis on their doorsteps. Hay goes on to show that getting rid of surplus books is an equally hazardous and thankless task.'

'Henry Lawson is not read as much now as when I was at school 50 years ago; nevertheless, he is still widely acknowledge as one of the most significant figures in the development of a distinctive Australian literature. Despite some of his work being a bit dated, I regard highly and treasure the collection I have of all his first editions, especially his first book Short Stories in Prose and Verse (now a very rare book) published by his mother Louisa, at her Dawn Press in Sydney in 1894. There are, however, aspects of Lawson's character that I find particularly unappealing. One of these flaws was his habit to wallow in self pit while seeking to put the blame on others whenever he was in financial trouble, which was most of the time. The root cause of this, of course, was his alcoholism.' ( introduction)