AustLit

Child death of fever in hospital - motherless it dies in nurse's arms. (PB)

Gippsland tale of a brickworks owner's financial ruin through a bank closure and the faithful love of a school teacher at a government bush school. She marries him despite his own and her father's financial collapse. Prosperity follows them on to their farm. [Longwood; Wild Dog Creek - true towns in Gippsland?] Oddly disjointed narrative: rich landscape descriptions and a blurred plot. Includes scenes at a closed brick works; outside the collapsed bank; on the farm where the bush teacher resides; on a country wedding at Longwood. Touches of rustic simplicity and humour. (PB)

English tale of a London horseracing tipster suspected of murdering a peer and racehorse owner - until his trusty Scottish reveals they are the same person ... Slight. Themes: horseracing, gambling, murder, identity-disguise. (PB)

Factually based narrative of a US sea captain on a trip to London from New York in 1849 who goes mad and is imprisoned by the crew. Includes the officers' fears of mutiny charges. (PB)

A newspaper editor's frustrated attempts to understand a news item being narrated by a farmer - and the farmer's increasing ire ... (PB)

An unmarried mother gives her infant daughter to a married woman for adoption but suffers great loss and sorrow. The adoptive mother's cousin is the father of the child. Only the child's death from fever gives the grieving mother peace. Odd rough little tale - includes overtures for a brief women's friendship. Slight. (PB)

Account of a Frenchman's escape from prison in New Caledonia in a small boat in 1879; his days adrift fighting thirst and starvation; his rescue by a ship. He had been a political prisoner. Pithy. (PB)

Sincalir's tale of a fellow Melbourne detective, handsome misogynist Irish O'Dowd, who falls in love and becomes engaged to a beautiful independent visiting American heiress. O'Dowd then discovers she is a he, a fraudulent absconder from a London bank, in bewitching disguise. Strong trans/homo-sexual undertones. (PB)

Tale recalled from the narrator's youth (in the 1820s) of two duels foughtin response to cherry-stones thrown in a London tavern, and a third interrupted. (PB)

Romance vanishes when a newly married wife discovers her husband still thinks of the girl he loved 10 years before. It returns when - very ill and estranged - she loses pride, asks about it, and discovers the girl is his insane sister. Slight. Ill-health from repressed emotions, etc. (PB)