AustLit

Account of a Russian prince's inexorable fall from wealth and family to the mines of Siberia for incurring the displeasure of Catherine the Great. (PB)

Romance of the South during the Civil War, narrated by the Quaker heroine's sister. An engagement is broken at the beginning of the war when the Quaker-educated heroine is unable to enthuse over her fiancee's enlistment. He becomes engaged instead to his ambitious cousin but when he loses a leg she abandons him in hospital for a rising rival. His first love nurses him in hospital and they are eventually married, he with a new respect for her values. Calmly crafted tale - unusual theme of restrained religious anti-militarism. (PB)

Slight humorous tale of a romance nearly marred by a charge of theft. Borrowed silver plate for a dinner to discuss the forthcoming wedding of their respective children is discovered to be the property of the visiting couple - who are naturally incensed and steal it back again ... (PB)

Violent episodic tale of frontier Carolina. A brigand who refuses to honour a note he purchased a horse with kills the former owner when he comes to claim his money and eventually meets a violent end himself. (PB)

Tale of an Irish circuit judge and his summary style of justice when the hunting-field awaits. (PB)

A Dakota settler has purchased only one volume of 'Johnson's Cyclopaedia' as he had not finished reading it when the second was offered. (PB)

A dog saves a child lost in the Grampians. (PB)

Domestic scene as wife tries to show friends her husband's improved manners. (PB)

Three Texas jockeys win a large sum of money by backing their mangy looking horse at a country race meeting. Confidence trick. (PB)

James de Rothschild agrees to pose as a beggar for Eugene Delacroix and is given a small sum of money as alms by a visitor. (PB)

Romance of the soul. An English soldier dying at the Crimea tells his friend of his life-long love for a beautiful woman whose name he does not know. She comes to his funeral. (PB)

Dream of experimentation gone terribly wrong. A doctor visits a college friend and his sister at their strange half-derelict seaside house. He partakes in an experiment to test a new anaesthetic - and the sister is killed. The burden of huge guilt lifts when he wakens to discover he has been ill. (PB)

A rejected suitor plans a revenge on his rival and his wife by replacing her box for their honeymoon at Brighton with one filled with false hair etc. Instead there is a further mix-up and the jealous man ends up with a medical students's trunk - with a human head and shoulders in it, while the bride has her box restored to her. (PB)

A wife catches her husband on his way to an illicit fishing trip. (PB)

Romance of a bridesmaid and groomsman who meet before their friend's wedding in England - and find their affinity. (PB)

Description of the inhabitants and their particular obsessions observed during a tour of a lunatic asylum - and an unscheduled return in search of lodgings. (PB)

A woman's humorous response to an ardent suitor. (PB)

Models of behaviour in horse-trading - for the buyer and seller. (PB)

Lively account of two desperate and violent attempts to rob a plucky young Englishwoman of her valuable antique watch. (PB)

Tale from the narrator's girlhood at a Ladies Seminary in England. A plot one All Hallow's Eve for three of them to perform the rituals prescribed to allow them to see their future husband intersects with the elopement of an older girl - and ghostly noises follow. (PB)