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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This endearing 19th-century family saga follows the lives, loves and losses of one pioneering family and two escaped convicts as they open up the land in Victoria, Australia. This classic Australian story, which won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, commands an important place in the canon of Australian literature' (Monsoon Books edition).
Adaptations
-
form
y
The Pioneers
( dir. Franklyn Barrett
)
Australia
:
1916
Z1876216
1916
single work
film/TV
This early adaptation of Katherine Susannah Pritchard's novel (published only the preceding year) is one of Australia's 'lost films': only a fragment, described by the NSFA as showing 'a woman with her head tied in a scarf crouching behind a log and aiming a rifle', remains.
The film appeared at a time of heightened nationalism: an advertisment for a screening at the Strand Theatre, for example, reads:
'Drovers! Cattle Dealers! Bush-rangers! Pioneers! Roustabouts! "Pub" Keepers! Bushgirls! ALL combine in presenting early Australian life as it actually was. [...] It tells of those intrepid men and women who, in spite of tremendous hardships, carved their homes out of the Virgin Bush. They were THE MEN WHO MADE AUSTRALIA. Their sons, the Anzacs, coming from this hardy stock, are now, by their glorious deeds, ringing the name "Australia" throughout the entire world.'
Source: The Brisbane Courier, Wednesday 18 October 1916, p.2.
-
y
The Pioneers
1923
1923
(Manuscript version)x401076
Z897258
1923
single work
drama
— Appears in: Best Australian One-Act Plays 1937; (p. 87-115)Set in the interior of a hut in the Gippsland forest, in the 1850s, the play has six characters. Donald Cameron, an honest dour Scot, and Mary, his wife, whom he picked off the boat at the wharf, are pioneers sharing a strange, strong love. Thad McNab, the double-crossing shanty keeper, and McLaughlin, a trooper, pursue two escaped convicts, Dan and Steve. Mary befriends them during Donald's absence. Donald, McNab and McLaughlin return. Mary successfully conceals the fact that the convicts have been at the hut from all but Donald. He cannot understand her charity and humanity, but admires her strength of character. (Abstract adapted from The Campbell Howard Annotated Index of Australian Plays 1920-1955)
Characters
The Pioneers:
DONALD CAMERON
MARY CAMERON his wife
Escaped Convicts:
DAN FARRELL
STEVE
Shanty keeper:
THAD M'NAB
The trooper:
M'LAUGHLIN
-
form
y
The Pioneers
( dir. Raymond Longford
)
Australia
:
Australasian Films
Master Pictures
,
1926
Z1876178
1926
single work
film/TV
This story of a settler and his wife living in the Gippsland bush, the second film to have been made of Pritchard's novel in the ten years since its publication, is one of Australia's 'lost films'.
According to the Camperdown Chronicle (Tuesday 29 June 1926, p.4):
'When Katharine Susannah Prichard won the 1000 pounds offered by Hodder and Stoughton for a prize novel, she incidentally furnished the screen with a vivid and realistic pictorial version of the struggles and hardships of the early pioneers who laid the foundations of the Australia of to-day. "The Pioneers" which has been described by the New York "Bookview" as a truthful picture of the time it depicts, has been filmed in the cattle country on the North Coast of New South Wales and under the guidance of Director Longford--remembered for his production of "The Sentimental Bloke," the atmosphere of this typical Australian story has been transferred in all its realistic detail to the silver sheet.'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille.
Works about this Work
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y
Contemporary Settler Literature : Resources for Students and Teachers
St Lucia
:
AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource
,
2017
13356230
2017
single work
multimedia
bibliography
'Here you will find an introduction to settler colonial theory and contemporary settler colonial literature. This exhibition is intended to survey the major and minor authors, works, and ideas involved with settler colonial writing in Australia, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, since the 1990s.
'In addition to the overview statements on this page, you can click on other tabs to see timeline of publication dates in historical context, a glossary of common terms, an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, brief discussions of themes and motifs useful for student researchers and teachers interested in including settler colonialism in their curricula, and information about comparative settler colonial studies between Australia and the US.'
Source: Abstract.
-
Cooper, Cather, Prichard, 'Pioneer' : The Chronotope of Settler Colonialism
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 1 June vol. 31 no. 3 2016; 'This essay considers three novels which each bear the word ‘pioneer’ in their titles: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) and Katharine Susannah Prichard’s The Pioneers (1915). The three novels, although moving widely across time and space, are taken as representative of the creative literature of settler colonialism. A model of reading settler colonial literature is advanced that draws on four distinct features found across the three novels. These are: a tendency to spatialise the historical time of settler colonialism within the geography of the novel; the condensation of settler legal anxiety into a legal drama in the text; the application of a generational structure to Indigenise the settler; and the recurrence in the text of a ‘primal scene’ by which the settler society remembers its foundational violence in repressed form.' (Publication summary) -
Kathy Come Home : The Dubious Cartographies of a Young Novelist
2001
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Story / Telling 2001; (p. 223-232) -
The Apprentice Years I
1993
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: A Gallop of Fire : Katharine Susannah Prichard: on Guard for Humanity : a Study of Creative Personality 1993; (p. 29-41) -
Katharine Susannah Prichard: `She Did What She Could'
1993
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993; (p. 139-161)
-
Untitled
1915
single work
review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 13 November 1915; (p. 3)
— Review of The Isle of Palms : A Story of Adventure 1915 single work children's fiction ; The Pioneers 1915 single work novel -
Untitled
1915
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bookfellow , 15 October 1915;
— Review of The Pioneers 1915 single work novel -
Untitled
1915
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 14 October vol. 36 no. 1861 1915; (p. 2)
— Review of The Pioneers 1915 single work novel -
Untitled
1915
single work
review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 9 September 1915; (p. 302)
— Review of The Pioneers 1915 single work novel -
Germinal Works
1963
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , May vol. 2 no. 7 1963; (p. 117)
— Review of The Pioneers 1915 single work novel -
Katharine Susannah Prichard
1926
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian Woman's Mirror , 27 July vol. 2 no. 35 1926; (p. 11, 54) -
Kathy Come Home : The Dubious Cartographies of a Young Novelist
2001
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Story / Telling 2001; (p. 223-232) -
Katharine Susannah Prichard Interviewed
Tony Thomas
(interviewer),
1967
single work
interview
— Appears in: Critic The , 3 October vol. 8 no. 3 1967; (p. 55-56) -
Katharine Susannah Prichard : A Relunctant Daughter of Mark Twain
1989
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , Winter vol. 3 no. 2 1989; (p. 89-93) -
Katharine Susannah Prichard: `She Did What She Could'
1993
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: The Time to Write : Australian Women Writers 1890-1930 1993; (p. 139-161)
Awards
- 1915 winner Hodder and Stoughton Novel Competition — Australasian Section
- Gippsland, Victoria,