AustLit

Tale of a California miner, how he got his name in an encounter with a horde of rattlesnakes, and his dying revenge on the cheating gambler who murdered his best friend. Western yarn. (PB)

Agatha Redwig promises to marry Colonel Egbert on condition that he knows and accepts that she still loves her unworthy first suitor. The colonel meets the first suitor returning from London to New York and, hearing of the innocent misunderstanding that separated the lovers, resolves to sacrifice his own passion. Agatha, confronted by the two men, finds at last the truth of her own heart. Light; on true manliness etc. (PB)

An English Bishop narrates a misadventure at an Oxford-Cambridge boat-race in the 1860s when he was left holding a baby which he promptly deposited in a nearby carriage. The baby then narrates her upbringing with a titled English family, her romance with one of her 'brothers', and her eventual recognition in a theatre through a tattoo on her arms as the heiress of a rich Australian squatter. Light and amusing. (Explicit reference made to the bishop's story in St James Gazette.) (PB)

English tale of intrigue and romance. A French nobleman and his sister plot to wrest her fortune from his English wife through the imposture of her daughter's death and a forced will. The solicitor hired is the vanished daughter's erstwhile suitor, and he and his partner solve this, their first case, most satisfactorily. Light; eager tone; intricate plot. (PB)

Impersonation of a ghost leads to madness in North Gippsland. A poor young Irish boy, butt of the practical jokes of a Gippsland survey party, is an innocent participant in a son's unwitting punishment of his constable cum murderer father. (PB)

US tale of a spinster's inheritance of a fortune from her Welsh uncle - and the clever attempt of another relative to defraud her of part of it. Innocence vs. guile, and a trusty lawyer's good sense. Slight. (PB)

Lightly parodic English romance. Includes a confusion of lovers, a lost son - heir to a suspended fortune, an adopted ward, an actor's talents, an elopement, and a disguised casket of jewels with marriage instructions enclosed. Extensive use of poetry, especially Tennyson, throughout the quirky tale. (PB)

A merchant chooses wealth over health in his dream, and dies in his prime, a rich man. Some entertainment in the tone of this 'moral' tale. (PB)

English; woman present meets woman past. An ancestress of a young 19th century lady steps down from her portrait, passes her opinion on the freedom and dress of the day, and returns. Reveals the aristocratic pretensions of the family to be false. Light; amusing and lively. (PB)

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)

An English governess's romance with Lord Twirton, his rejection of serious intent, her marriage to her cousin, and final romantic disillusionment at a pawnbroker's. Slight; interesting in the depiction of class differences in manners and fortune; and the harsh reality of poverty. (PB)

Domestic scenes from Scotland revealing a grumbling husband's admamant determination not to be pleased. (PB)

The narrator, Mrs 'Nemo', a deserted wife agrees to go to Dr. Larner's house in a town near Melbourne and investigate the cause of his fears of madness. His mother-in-law's plots along with those of her daughter who had deserted him for Mrs Nemo's husband (unknown to all) are to blame ... Mrs Nemo's detective work and a house fire reveal all ... (PB)