Literature, Literary Criticism
Book Details

The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction

Ken Gelder & Rachael Weaver (eds)

This anthology collects the best examples of Australian gothic short stories from colonial times.

Opinion

"Compiled by Melbourne University academics Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, the anthology works well on several levels: as a solid collection of historical artefacts; as testimony to the way the Australian landscape was narrated in a particular period; and as good entertainment." Lorien Kaye, Age, 04/08/2007

"[. . .], Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver's anthology of some surprisingly good colonial Australian Gothic fiction, is an unexpected delight. [. . .] The genre might seem an odd fit for colonial Australia, but transferred, to judge from this collection, with a considerable degree of success."
Martin Crotty, Courier Mail, 06/10/2007

About this Title

Grisly corpses, ghostly women and psychotic station-owners populate an unforgiving landscape that is the stuff of nightmares. These compelling stories are the dark underside to the usual story of colonial progress, promise and nation-building, and reveal the gothic imagination that lies at the heart of Australian fiction.

This anthology collects the best examples of colonial Australian gothic short stories by authors such as Marcus Clarke, Hume Nisbet, Henry Lawson and Katherine Susannah Prichard, among others.

A unique collection of intriguing stories and fantastical yarns that vividly portrays colonial Australia and its hauntings.

Table of Contents

Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, The Colonial Australian Gothic
John Lang, The Ghost Upon the Rail (1859)
Mary Fortune, Mystery and Murder (1866)
Marcus Clarke, The Mystery of Major Molineux (1881)
'Tasma' (Jessie Couvreur), Monsieur Caloche (1890)
Ernest Favenc, A Haunt of the Jinkarras (1890)
Ernest Favenc, Doomed (1899)
Rosa Campbell Praed, The Bunyip (1891)
Francis Adams, The Hut by the Tanks (1892)
Henry Lawson, The Bush Undertaker (1892)
'Price Warung' (William Astley), The Pegging-Out of Overseer Franke (1892)
Hume Nisbet, The Haunted Station (1894)
Guy Boothby, With Three Phantoms (1897)
'Coo-ee' (William Sylvester Walker), The Evil of Yelcomorn Creek (1899)
Barbara Baynton, A Dreamer (1902)
Mary Gaunt, The Lost White Woman (1916)
William Hay, An Australian Rip Van Winkle (1921)
Katharine Susannah Prichard, The Curse (1932)
Notes on the Authors
Publication Sources
Acknowledgements

About the Author

Ken Gelder is Professor of Literary Studies at The University of Melbourne. His books include Reading the Vampire (1994), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004) and Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007). He is also co-author, with Jane M. Jacobs, of Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998).

Rachael Weaver is Research Fellow in Literary Studies at The University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Criminal of the Century (2006).

978-0-522-85422-0