AustLit

Engrossing understated romance with a touch of irony [stands out in the recent dross anyway!] An Englishman returns to London after finally making a fortune in Arizona. He determines to find and assist an old but penurious friend and his daughter. The friend has turned writer and disappeared but with the help of his publisher, Mr Blackwell, an author of romances - Hester Mullens, the British Museum and a poor printer he traces the daughter and she agrees to marry him ... She calls it all off when she discovers a cruel letter from him to her father, and only when the father is discovered as an auctioneer's clerk, having given up the cruel profession of writing, are they reconciled. She loves and marries another and the narrator is left with - Miss Mullens. Light, amusing and varied. (PB)

A trooper's quarrel and a hunt for bushrangers leaves Harry Waldock to the tender mercies of a bushrangers' "sympathiser". Mark Sinclair, who had punched him, and another trooper follow him to the cave where he is recovering with the help of th emasked sympathiser. The return of the bushranger Bolt results in the sympathiser's death and unmasking - revealing 'her' to be Harry's sister and Bolt's wife ... Unusual narrative style for W. W. - interweaves two different narrative points of view. (PB)

On the kinds of Christmas geese there are; inebriation; and describing the fattening and slaughtering of one in particular. Humorous, nonsensical sketch. (PB)

Margaret Osborn refuses the crippled but refined and sensitive doctor her dying father wished her to marry. Spurned on by her he goes to Germany and is healed in the invalid baths there. Two years later he returns to find Margaret knows her heart at last. Slight romance set in the USA. (PB)

A clergyman of an opposing denomination becomes the intended victim of a disciple of a sect which had been leading a revivial. He had become insane and the clergyman had to think quickly to escape death. Competent example of the 'narrow escape from a madman' genre. (PB)

A misunderstanding over a locket separates lovers for five years until a chance meeting with the heroine's brother explains all and they are reunited. Set in the English countryside; includes a brother in the British army in India as an instrument in the plot. Well written romance of separation etc. (PB)

Romance triumphs for a beautiful young foundling and a rich handsome naval officer despite a rival's attempts to separate them by false insinuations. The parentage of the girl is also revealed to be honourable. Slight; pleasant. (PB)

On the hypocrisy of praising men after they are dead and never even thanking them when they are alive. Negro wisdom. (PB)

Three visits to a country town reveal the three stages of a young lawyer's love for a beautiful delicate girl: worship, engagement, and abandonment for ambition. Slight, predictable. (PB)

Anecdote revealing the powers of the imagination when a doctor is told he is eating horse meat. (PB)

A travelling minister meets a funny boy who will only sing his speech. Taking it for insolence he grows angry until he learns that the boy has a terrible stammer. Sweet tale. (PB)

On the different expectations of a new year felt by those at life's different stages, ie - youth, middle-age and elderly, and the attitudes they take to life. (PB)

Humour. A railway traveller preaches temperance until he discovers it is his own whisky he is being offered. (PB)

An attempt at English plum pudding in spoiled by gin sauce prepared by mistake. (PB)

Description of advancing up a canyon and the fatal confrontation between man and grizzly bear. Impressionistic. (PB)