{"product_id":"2940016177885","title":"Short Stories in Prose and Verse","description":"PREFACE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is an attempt to publish, in Australia, a collection of  stories at a time when everything Australian, in the shape of a\u003cbr\u003ebook, must bear the imprint of a London publishing firm before our\u003cbr\u003ecritics will condescend to notice it, and before the \"reading public\"\u003cbr\u003ewill think it worth its while to buy nearly so many copies as will pay\u003cbr\u003efor the mere cost of printing a presentable volume.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Australian writer, until he gets a \"London hearing\", is only\u003cbr\u003eaccepted as an imitator of some recognised English or American author;\u003cbr\u003eand, so soon as he shows signs of coming to the front, he is labelled\u003cbr\u003e\"The Australian Southey\", \"The Australian Burns\", or \"The Australian\u003cbr\u003eBret Harte\", and, lately, \"The Australian Kipling\". Thus, no matter how\u003cbr\u003eoriginal he may be, he is branded, at the very start, as a plagiarist,\u003cbr\u003eand by his own country, which thinks, no doubt, that it is paying him a\u003cbr\u003ecompliment and encouraging him, while it is really doing him a cruel and\u003cbr\u003ean almost irreparable injury.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut, mark! So soon as the Southern writer goes \"home\" and gets some\u003cbr\u003erecognition in England, he is \"So-and-So, the well-known Australian\u003cbr\u003eauthor whose work has attracted so much attention in London lately\"; and\u003cbr\u003ewe first hear of him by cable, even though he might have been writing at\u003cbr\u003ehis best for ten years in Australia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe same paltry spirit tried to dispose of the greatest of modern short\u003cbr\u003estory writers as \"The Californian Dickens\", but America wasn't built\u003cbr\u003ethat way--neither was Bret Harte!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo illustrate the above growl: a Sydney daily paper, reviewing the\u003cbr\u003eBulletin's Golden Shanty when the first edition came out, said of my\u003cbr\u003estory, \"His Father's Mate\", that it stood out distinctly as an excellent\u003cbr\u003especimen of that kind of writing which Bret Harte set the world\u003cbr\u003eimitating in vain, and, being \"full of local colour, it was no unworthy\u003cbr\u003ecopy of the great master\". That critic evidently hadn't studied the\u003cbr\u003e\"great master\" any more than he did my yarn, of Australian goldfield\u003cbr\u003elife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen he spoke of another story as also having the \"Californian flavour\".\u003cbr\u003eFor the other writers I can say that I feel sure they could point out\u003cbr\u003etheir scenery, and name, or, in some cases, introduce \"the reader\" to\u003cbr\u003etheir characters in the flesh. The first seventeen years of my life were\u003cbr\u003espent on the goldfields, and therefore, I didn't need to go back, in\u003cbr\u003eimagination, to a time before I was born, and to a country I had never\u003cbr\u003eseen, for literary material.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47081190064368,"sku":"2940016177885","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940016177885_p0.jpg?v=1763630629","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940016177885","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}