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Lionel Sparrow Lionel Sparrow i(A72634 works by)
Also writes as: Lionel S.
Born: Established: 1867 Wahgunyah, Rutherglen - Chiltern area, North East Victoria, Victoria, ; Died: Ceased: 9 Apr 1936
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 The Strange Case of Alan Heriot Lionel Sparrow , 2008 single work short story horror
— Appears in: Australian Nightmares : More Australian Tales of Terror and the Supernatural 2008; (p. 175-191) Australian Nightmares : More Australian Tales of Terror and the Supernatural 2022; (p. 140-154)
1 The Vengeance of the Dead Lionel Sparrow , 2007 single work short story horror
— Appears in: Australian Gothic : An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction, 1867-1939 2007; (p. 230-251)
1 Pearl Lionel S. , 1898 single work short story romance
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , May vol. 33 no. 396 1898; (p. 355-357) Captain Everleigh comes to visit a friend at his father's station and rescues his host's sister from a runaway horse. They fall in love but his proposal scares her young heart - and it is four years before he learns she has not married another and they meet again. Romance and marriage follow. Opening description of a huge forest being diminished by ring-barking. (PB)
1 Predestined Lionel S. , 1898 single work short story romance
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , January vol. 33 no. 392 1898; (p. 107-110) Station romance set in Gippsland. Ronald Winter, Rugby-educated station manager and his brother Harry work on a station in time of drought. Ronald loves the owner's daughter Olive. He finds and saves her from a runaway horse in treacherous swampland but she is very ill with mental shock etc. He rides through a bushfire to fetch the doctor for her - but dies as he attempts to return the same way. Olive dies at the same moment, his name on her lips. Ronald dies in Harry's arms. Themes of true bravery, self-sacrifice for love, a doctor's understanding through recent loss of his own wife and child. (PB)
1 Wally's Dream Lionel Sparrow , 1897 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , September vol. 32 no. 388 1897; (p. 632-633) Father and son tale of the diggings. A motherless boy dreams of discovering a gold nugget to assist his luckless father - and sets off into the bush determined to locate the site of his dream and the gold. The heat, his thirst and weariness combine to kill him - but he finds the site at last and hears from two searchers that his father has struck gold before he dies. (PB)
1 The Convict's Treasure Lionel Sparrow , 1895 single work short story The three Watson brothers sailing their private yacht save a castaway from a drifting life-boat off the Victoria coast. He shares with them a map and a convict's autobiography which links their dead father's yacht, stolen from Geelong Harbour while he was gold prospecting in the early 1850s, and a cache of gold stolen from a gold ship simultaneously. The autobiography is violent - tracing the narrator's career from transportation to Australia for mutiny to his command of a bloody and notorious bush-ranging gang in Victoria to the theft of their father's yacht and the gold from the neighboring ship. The narrative is marked principally by the unscrupulous and ruthless plans to murder and double-cross his gang so that he could claim more of the gold. The murder of the navigator, the rescue of a castaway and his navigational assistance, a typhoon on Fiji, the stranding of the yacht on an island, the escape of the few remaining crew and the encounter of the brothers and their castaway (the rescued navigator) with the convict leader who has dug up the treasure and is dying, conclude the tale. (PB)
1 Seagram's Manuscript Lionel Sparrow , 1895 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , October vol. 31 no. 365 1895; (p. 44-45) Opium tale. A manuscript is obtained from a former friend within a few weeks of his death in an opium den. It reveals his intense depression after his sister's death and the terrible dreams haunting him - to murder his closest friend who has been possessed by grief at her death, for he was her fiancée. In an obsessed dreamlike state he kills him - finding relief for a time in the cessation of the dreams. But an awakening to his act and conscience haunt him then by day - opium gives him ease and the sleep which is now comforting. Hazy inward tale; some suggestion that the murder saved his friend from suicide and enabled a reunion of the lovers which might not be wholly wrong. 'Judgement in the next world' is conclusion. Atmospheric; interesting in uncertainty of judgement of murder. (PB)
1 The Pearl of the White Hills Lionel Sparrow , 1894 single work short story Beautiful Pearl is the daughter of an English artist transported to Sydney for a crime he did not commit, and his wife who followed him with his foster brother, Strahan. She believes Strahan to be her father but his murder of a visiting gold buyer alerts her and the two men - US digger Conkling and an English doctor, Howard - who share their log cabin, that revenge of some sort is on hand. Howard proposes to Pearl and Strahan decides to warn off Frampton, an English acquaintance who knows Pearl's history and Strahan's crime ... More deaths follow. Comments on police tyranny and revolt on the goldfields. (PB)
1 Margrave's Masterpiece Lionel Sparrow , 1894 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , November vol. 30 no. 354 1894; (p. 157-160) Tale of romance, art and hypnotism. A self-sacrificing hypnotist and gentleman brings together the lady he loves and the middling artist she loves by inspiring the artist to paint a great portrait of the devil, thus satisfying his own ambitions and inspiring him to love the woman. Includes some discussion of artistic genius and references to Byron and Shelley. (PB)
1 Stolen Gold Lionel Sparrow , 1893 single work short story adventure romance
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , March vol. 28 no. 334 1893; (p. 377-383) 1854. Romance on the Ballarat diggings against a backdrop of the Eureka revolt. Young Frank West saves the daughter of a dead American digger from a fire at a low tavern, and takes on her guardianship, finding her respectable accommodation with a prosperous family. He also tracks down and wins back her gold inheritance stolen from a friend of her father's, murdered as he was planning to return it to her. True love follows. Includes a sly grog shanty, the Eureka rebellion, etc. (PB)
1 Mervale Abbey Lionel Sparrow , 1892 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , February vol. 27 no. 321 1892; (p. 313-315) Bizarre tale from England of a young girl, orphaned by her invalid mother's death and her father's suicide after he is bankrupted. Soon after she hears of the death of her beloved from the neighbouring estate of Mervale Abbey. Recovering from an illness she goes to live with his mother there but only learns after several months that he is not dead but dying slowly of a dreadful gun blast which has shorn away half his face ... Odd tale - introverted atmosphere of life-tried female narrator. (PB)
1 The House in the Suburb Lionel Sparrow , 1891 single work short story horror
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , October vol. 27 no. 317 1891; (p. 71-72) Horror tale of accidental fratricide. A brother's plot to murder their blackmailing uncle goes wrong when wine leads the narrator to murder the wrong man - his own brother - and terrible dreams torment him. Over-contrived. (PB)
1 A Tale of Tokio Lionel Sparrow , 1891 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , July vol. 26 no. 314 1891; (p. 601-602) The narrator, a westerner, recalls two encounters with a failed Japanese wrestler who hates him malignantly. He beats him off in a street attack the first time but it is only an earthquake that saves him from blindness and a terrible death the second time. Competent suspense, exotic setting, etc. (PB)
1 Vanstein Lionel Sparrow , 1891 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , June vol. 26 no. 313 1891; (p. 532-535) English narrative of love discovered too late, of leprosy contracted in Benares, and of the traveller Vanstein's suicide when his beloved insists on marrying and nursing him until his death. She, the narrator, is to die soon too. Overdrawn horror romance. (PB)
1 The Curse of the Emerald : A Tale of the Sea Lionel Sparrow , 1890 single work short story crime
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , December vol. 26 no. 307 1890; (p. 196-200) Supersition and murder on a Singapore schooner. A brilliant emerald stolen from an Aztec temple carries a curse of death for its possessors. A passenger and the entire crew of a ship board from Singapore to Manilla and die a succession of terrible deaths as greed and murder take their toll. Competent; attempts to create a mood that is only partially realised. (PB)
1 Irene Lionel Sparrow , 1890 single work short story romance
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , August vol. 25 no. 303 1890; (p. 672-673) Gothic romance. An English couple living in Italy both share ill-health. The wife apparently dies of epilepsy but a spirit comes to the husband while affected by laudanum and he digs up his wife's grave at its direction. He finds she is alive still, and her epilepsy is healed ... 'Weird' - combination of drug, fever, death and the supernatural. (PB)
1 A Tale of the Sea Lionel Sparrow , 1890 single work short story adventure
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , March vol. 25 no. 298 1890; (p. 361-364) Bizarre adventure of a shipwrecked Englishman aboard a floating wreck with a cruel tyrant in the guise of a negro, a Spaniard who is quickly murdered, and three badly mistreated Asians - a Chinese, Malay and 'Hindoo'. Discovering the negro's secret he is rescued from a slow and maddening death only at the last moment. (PB)
1 Grace Wendell : A Tale of the Sea Lionel Sparrow , 1889 single work short story romance
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , April vol. 24 no. 287 1889; (p. 438-443) Romance of a sea voyage and shipwreck with gothic touches. A sailing ship leaves Sydney for London with three passengers - all others preferring steamship travel. The narrator falls in love with the captain's niece but only the privations of shipwreck with thirst, starvation and the crew's cannibalism, and an encounter with her mad husband on a deserted wreck in mid-ocean, reveal the nature of her sorrow and clear the path for their romance. (PB)
1 The Red Chamber Lionel Sparrow , 1889 single work short story
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , November vol. 25 no. 294 1889; (p. 126-129) Tale of lost family gold, a murdered parent and romance. The discovery of a cryptogram in the pocket of a fleeing thief enables a brother and sister to locate their vanished father's gold - and his skeleton. And it enables the hero to marry the neighbouring heiress he loves; much space devoted to the cryptogram solution. (PB).
1 The Glass Dagger Lionel Sparrow , 1888 single work short story mystery
— Appears in: The Australian Journal , September vol. 24 no. 280 1888; (p. 37-39) Romance and murder. Valentes finds her uncle opposed to her marriage with Arthur Grayling, brother of the forger he had had convicted of forgery and sent to Australia. They elope but it is on the same morning as her uncle's murdered body is discovered. Suspicions point to Frances until the arrest of two burglars brings a confession from Arthur's brother. (PB)
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