The Oxford book of Australian essays
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Bibliographic Information
The Oxford book of Australian essays
Oxford University Press, 1997
Available at 4 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The essay form encompasses both the private and the public aspects of human life, and to some extent breaks down the barriers between the two. It has been an important site upon which questions of Australia's identity, history and culture have been debated and defined. The essay in Australian has also been a source of entertainment and edification, and, for its authors, a mechanism of self-discovery. To date there has been no historical anthology of Australian essays. Imre Salusinszky, having examined hundreds of monographs, magazines and newspapers, has collected sixty-one essays published since the first white settlement in Australia. In his forthright and stimulating introduction he contends that the 1950s and 1960s - often regarded as a stultifying period in Australia's cultural life - were the heyday of the essay, instancing the work of Manning Clark, Vincent Buckley, Arthur Phillips, ALister Kershaw and Frank Knopfelmacher. He remarks on changing trends in the more expressive and uninhibited 1970s, and goes on to dispute recent talk of a renaissance in the essay, regretting the lack of incentives for the intelligentsia to write for a popular readership.
The essays are arranged chronologically and include such seminal works as Helen Garner's `The Fate of the first stone' and Robert Dessaix's `Nice Work If You Can Get It'. Other contributors include Charmian Clift, Germaine Greer, Clive James, David Malouf, Les Murray, Pierre Ryckmans, and Patrick White.
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