While the Billy Boils

Fifty two short pieces map the hard, dusty world of the Australian bush at the close of the nineteenth century, peopled by drovers, shearers, selectors, swagmen, and the women who hold their households together through the drought. Henry Lawson wrote from the inside, and his sketches carry the flat, laconic humor of men who expect little alongside the sudden ache of stories like ‘The Drover’s Wife,’ in which a lone mother guards her children through a long night. Spare, unsentimental, and deeply Australian, the collection helped define a national literature when it appeared in 1896. It remains Lawson’s most loved book. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.