Struggle and Storm: The Life and Death of Francis Adams

Francis William Lauderdale Adams (1862-1893)—poet, novelist, social analyst and journalist—made a significant place for himself in Australian literary and cultural history. Much of his best work was concerned with Australian social and political developments in the years leading up to Federation, and his book The Australians (1893) is a much-quoted classic of Australian social commentary. In Struggle and Storm, Meg Tasker explores with texture and nuance both the pleasures of biography and the interesting problem of how to write a literary life a hundred years later. This engaging work is the first full-length biographical study of Francis Adams.