AustLit

'August 1944. The war is finally turning against Hitler, but he has one last secret weapon: flying bombs, sent to destroy the City of London. But Christopher only cares about solving the riddle of the phoenix ring. He journeys back to its source: early Roman Londinium, now surrounded on all sides by the armies of the British queen, Boudica. With help from a slave girl, Fortunata, Christopher learns the secrets of the ancient Roman fire-watchers, the Vigiles: but unknown to him, a sinister figure from 1666 has followed him through time. The chase takes Christopher and Fortunata through the battle for Londinium, then across the centuries, to a rebuilt 17th century London where Christopher and his friends finally untangle the truth.' (Publication summary)

'In 1941 Ernestine Hill published My Love Must Wait, a biographical novel based on the life of navigator Matthew Flinders. In the same year, Eleanor Dark published The Timeless Land, imagining the arrival of European settlers in the Sydney region from the perspectives of multiple historical figures. In this article we examine how each author represents the important figure of Bennelong, a man of the Wangal people who was kidnapped by Governor Phillip and who later travelled to England with him. While both works can be criticized as essentialist, paternalist or racist, there are significant differences in the ways each author portrays him. We argue that Dark’s decision to narrate some of her novel from the point of view of Bennelong and other Indigenous people enabled different understandings of Australian history for both historians and fiction writers. Dark’s “imaginative leap”, as critic Tom Griffiths has termed it, catalysed a new way of thinking about the 1788 invasion and early decades of the colonization of Australia. The unfinished cultural work undertaken by these novels continues today, as demonstrated by subsequent Australian novels which revisit encounters between Indigenous inhabitants and European colonists, including Thomas Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972), Richard Flanagan’s Wanting (2008), and Rohan Wilson’s The Roving Party (2011). Like Dark, these authors situate parts of their novels within the consciousness of Indigenous figures from the historical record. We analyse the diverse challenges and possibilities presented by these literary heirs of Eleanor Dark.' (Publication abstract)

'May 1941. The Blitz is reaching its fiery climax. Christopher tries to go back to 1666; to find his new friends and learn more about the power of his phoenix ring. Instead, he finds himself in a smaller, older river port town known as Lundenwic, where the Anglo-Saxon community faces an invasion by the dreaded Vikings. Christopher must discover why the ring has brought him here, and how to get back to his own time. But then Viking ships appear on the Thames, and their warriors threaten to burn the city and conquer the whole of England.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'December 1940, London: Christopher Larkham finds an ancient Roman ring inscribed with a phoenix. As he takes shelter from the firestorm of the Blitz, the ring glows, and pushing open a door, he finds himself in 1666 and facing the Great Fire of London. Fire-and-brimstone preacher, Brother Blowbladder, and his men of the Righteous Temple have prayed for the ancient gods of fire to bring flames down upon London, a city of sin. Could Christopher be their messenger? Or was it the strange girl on the quay who drew him back in time? Why do the Righteous men wear the same phoenix symbol as the engraving on Christopher's ring?

'The Fire Watcher trilogy follows Christopher and his new friends race to untangle the truth of the phoenix ring, and face the greatest fires in the citys history.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The German planes patrolled in hunting squads. They flew fast fighting craft, streaking across the sky in tight formation. The greatest of them was the Red Baron, the deadliest ace on the Front. He’d shot down twenty-one of our planes in a single month. And now we were in his firing line. The war in France rages in the skies, and support for the war in Australia turns cold. Alex flies high above the trenches of the Western Front, while a world away his sister Maggie finds herself in the midst of political upheaval. Somehow, both must find the courage to fight on.' (Publication summary)

'Versailles, 1686: Julie d'Aubigny, a striking young girl taught to fence and fight in the court of the Sun King, is taken as mistress by the King's Master of Horse. Tempestuous, swashbuckling and volatile, within two years she has run away with her fencing master, fallen in love with a nun and is hiding from the authorities, sentenced to be burnt at the stake. Within another year, she has become a beloved star at the famed Paris Opéra. Her lovers include some of Europe's most powerful men and France's most beautiful women. Yet Julie is destined to die alone in a convent at the age of 33. Based on an extraordinary true story, this is an original, dazzling and witty novel - a compelling portrait of an unforgettable woman.' (Publication summary)

'When ideas were dangerous, one girl found the courage to act England, 1640.

'Sixteen-year-old Isabella is forced to flee her home when her father′s radical ideas lead him into a suicidal stand against Oliver Cromwell′s army. Taking refuge in Amsterdam and desperate to find a means to survive, Isabella finds work with an elderly printer, Master de Aquila, and his enigmatic young assistant, Willem.

'When Master de Aquila travels to Venice to find a publisher brave enough to print his daring new book, Isabella accompanies him and discovers a world of possibility - where women work alongside men as equal partners, and where books and beliefs are treasured.

'But in a continent torn apart by religious intolerance, constant danger lurks for those who don′t watch their words. And when the agents of the Spanish Inquisition kidnap de Aquila to stop him printing his book, Isabella and Willem become reluctant allies in a daring chase across Europe to rescue him from certain death.'  (Publication summary)

'This thesis is concerned with the centrality of landscape to the development of modern Australian poetry.

'Landscape has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential themes in the development of post-colonial cultural identities in this country, and specifically in Australian literary traditions.

'This thesis argues, however, that the most influential landscape poetry within those traditions has been concerned not just with landscape as an aesthetic concept, but with the politics of land ownership and/or appropriation, and the ongoing cultural or social implications of land ownership arrangements.

'Further, this paper argues that the ways in which the land has been seen, including our changing understandings of concepts such as "ownership" and "belonging", and the political and economic structures and influences relating to the land, have directly and indirectly affected the poetry produced in this country since colonisation.

'Specifically, in recent decades, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal poets have perceived and described the land in different ways, and these distinct visions can be traced to the relationship that each culture has with the land; the inter-relationships between the cultures; and the structural and psychological links between the poet and the landscape he or she is attempting to understand and describe.

'Landscape poets, therefore, have given voice to some of the most compelling social currents in Australian society, and the work of several contemporary poets has had an important place in the political discourse of the final decades of the twentieth century.' (Author's abstract)