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While the Billy Boils

Downloads: Under 100
First published: 1896
Pages: 234

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About this book

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.

About the author

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson was an Australian poet and short-story writer whose spare, direct prose helped define literary images of bush life. Raised in rural New South Wales, he began publishing in the Bulletin during the late 1880s and travelled to drought-stricken Bourke in 1892.