Australia has offered fresh material to the novelist. Just as in poetry, the novel was at first imitative. Read the Australian novelists, and you feel the presence of Dickens. Charles Reade. Bret Harte, and Stevenson. Not until recently has Australia abandoned open imita tion. Up to 1901, Australia had produced nearly three hundred novels and tales. with out counting the ninny sketches that never got beyond the newspapers. The earliest, which appeared at Sydney from 1840 to 1850, are melo dramatic, having as hero the escaped convict, or bushranger. In the next decade the convict and the picturesque cut-throat found a rival in the gold-digger, a much better hero. At this time some passable work in fiction was done by Miss C. H. Spence, afterwards known as a. lecturer in England and America. Henry Kings ley (1830-76). brother of Charles Kingsley, went out to the gold-fields in 1853. At Langa willi, in West Victoria, he wrote Geoffry Ham lyn (published 1859), the best novel yet writ ten dealing with Australia. Rolf Boldrewood (the pen-name of Thomas Alexander Browne) is, perhaps, the national novelist. Born in Lon don in 1826, he was brought to Australia in 1830, and was educated at Sydney College. lle formed a cattle-station in the wilderness, was for a long period police magistrate and gold fields warden in New South Wales, and thus gathered material for a succession of faithful and stirring pictures of life as he had observed it. The grim struggle of the squatter is power fully depicted in The Squatter's Dream (1590) ; outlawry, in Robbery Under Arms (18SS); and the gold-digger, in The Miner's Right (1890). As in England and the United States, some very fine work has been done by women. Ada Cam bridge (Mrs. G. F. Cross) is, perhaps, best known. At the age of twenty-six (1870) she went to Australia with her husband, and has lived there ever since, mostly in the bush dis tricts of Victoria. In The Three Miss Kings (1891), she conceived the notion of depict ing the life of three girls. brought up in a picturesque bush home, and their subsequent career. Mrs. Cross has also succeeded admir ably with the problem-novel, as in A Marked Man (1890). Her other novels comprise .11y Guardian (1877), In Two Years' Time (1879), A Mc-re Chance (1S82), Not All in Fain (1892), A Little Minx (1893), A Marriage Ceremony (1894), Fidelis (1895). A Humble Enterprise (1896), At Midnight (1S97), and Materfamilias (1898). Mrs. Campbell Praed, born 1851, a native of Queensland, has published about twenty-five novels. In their stern and pessi mistic outlook, they resemble the work of Hall Caine and Thomas Hardy. A typical novel is
Longleaf and Koo•albyn (1887). Other novels are Miss Jacobsen's Chcrice (1887), The Ro mance of a Station (1889), and As a Watch in the Night (1900). Madame Couvreur, bet ter known by her pen-name, Tasnia, passed many years in Victoria. She returned to Eng land in 1879, and ten years later published Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill. She wrote two other good Australian stories—In Her Earliest Youth (1890), and Sot Counting the Cost (1893). Hardly sure of her footing. Tasma dealt with the problems of education and hered ity. Mary Gaunt (Mrs. Lindsay Miller) has cultivated chiefly the short story, in the way of sketches contributed to the Melbourne news papers. A selection from these was published under the title The Moving Finger (1895). Of her longer novels, may be cited Dares Sweet heart (1894). Guy Boothby gained wide popu larity with The Beautiful White Devil (1896) and Dr. Nikola (1896), and has maintained it. Among the most read of the Australians is de servedly Louis Bceke. He has written alone, and in collaboration with Walter Jeffery, a number of stirring adventures, first in the Stevenson and then in the Conrad style; such as By Reef and Palm (1S90), Pacific Tales (1897), Wild Life in the Southern Seas (1897), and The Mutineer (1899). Berke and Jeffery are journalists as well as novelists.
In general literature, Australia line had only one noteworthy name—Ma•cus: Clarke. Born in Kensington. in 1846, lie went to Melbourne at the age of IS, and after a short and suc cessful career died in 18S1. Ile contributed many sketches to various journals and Christ mas books, and founded two periodicals, which soon came to an end. Admirable are his many short, realistic pieces, as Pretty Dick (an idyl), How thc Circus Came to Bullock Town, Gentle man George's Bride, and others of the same type. He wrote pantomimes, comedies, bur lesques, and several pamphlets. To the Aus tralasian he contributed, under the name of the 'Peripatetic Philosopher,' a series of brilliant and humorous observations on society. He was also facile at burlesque in rhyme. But the work by which Clarke is best remembered is His Yatural Life (1874)—a novel, in which are depicted the brutalities of the prison settle ments.
Consult: Turner and Sutherland, Dere/op inent of Australian Literature (New York, 1898) ; Byrne, Australian (London, 1896 ) 'Martin, Beginnings of an Australian Literature (London, 1899) ; Sladen, Australian Poets, 17SS-18S8, an anthology (New York, 1390) ; and Australian Ballads, in Canterbury Poets (London, 1885-90). See BECKE, GEORGE; BOOTHRY, and CAMBRIDGE, ADA.