For a long time in this country it was argued that there was no such thing as Australian literature. As late as 1940, J. I. M. Stewart, professor of English at Adelaide University, declared that in the absence of appropriate books he would lecture on D. H. Lawrence’s novel Kangaroo.
We like to think all that has changed. The Text Classics series is designed to unearth some of the lost marvels of our literature, and to allow readers to rediscover wonderful books they have never forgotten. Each book in this series features a new introduction from a prominent Australian figure. We have chosen them in the conviction that they still have much to say to us, undiminished in their power to delight, challenge and surprise us.
When Professor Stewart reduced Australian literature to a single book by a foreign author, he had available to him The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, Such is Life, My Brilliant Career, the stories of Lawson and Barbara Baynton. He had For the Term of His Natural Life and Robbery Under Arms. He had the poetry of Kenneth Slessor. His comment reminds us that we are unlikely to find what we are not looking for. Stewart had the excuse of being an Englishman marooned in what he understood to be a colony of the mind. What’s our excuse?
