The Centre published the Colonial Texts Series (critical editions of 19th-century, little-known Australian literary works), in collaboration with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW at ADFA. It was initiated by the English Department at ADFA in 1986 and was completed in 2004 with the appearance of the eighth title, Ada Cambridge's serial A Black Sheep.

The Colonial Texts Series provides reliable texts of nineteenth-century Australian literary works. Introductions outline relevant biographical, historical and critical contexts which the explanatory notes, placed after the main text, further detail.

PUBLISHED TITLES

Ada Cambridge's A Woman's Friendship (ed. Elizabeth Morrison, 1988). First serialised in the Age in 1889, in this edition it is available in book form for the first time. Set in Melbourne, the novel is the story of a love triangle with an analytical portrayal of social and sexual relationships. A Woman's Friendship was reprinted in December 1994.

Mary Therese Vidal's Bengala (ed. Susan McKernan, 1990). First published in 1860, Bengala: or, Some Time Ago depicts the life of the colonial gentry in the years before the gold rush. It is a rural domestic comedy containing elements of melodrama as darker elements impinge on the lives of the characters. Now available from the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre.

N. Walter Swan's Luke Mivers' Harvest, (ed. Harry Heseltine, 1991). Luke Miver's Harvest first appeared in the Sydney Mail in 1879, the winning entry in a literary competition conducted by the Mail. The book provides an insight into the literary culture of colonial Australia. Now available from the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre.

Catherine Martin's The Silent Sea (ed. Rosemary Foxton, 1995) is the story of an adventurous young man who leaves Adelaide for a desolate outback, only to find himself caught up in a dramatic sequence of events involving two very different young women. The text is a reconstruction of the lost Bentley proofs from which the differently revised first English edition, Adelaide and Melbourne serialisations radiate. Significant variant readings are provided at the foot of the page. Now available from the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre.

Ernest Favenc's Tales of the Austral Tropics (ed. Cheryl Taylor, 1997), were first published in the Sydney Bulletin in the early 1890s, and later in volume forms in Sydney and London. These short stories evoke the atmosphere of Henry Lawson's outback and are replete with late-century, imperial anxieties. This is a full-scale critical edition.

Louisa Atkinson's Gertrude the Emigrant (ed. Elizabeth Lawson, 1998) was the first written by a native-born woman and the first to be illustrated by its author. It is the story of a young immigrant heroine making a life in a colony which is itself in the making.

Tasma [Jessie Couvreur], The Pipers of Piper's Hill, ed. Margaret Bradstock, 2002. The reading text is that of the novel's serialisation in the Australasian of 1888. Foot-of-page notes recorded the alterations and abridgements that attended the novel's transformation to single-volume form as Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill.

Ada Cambridge's, A Black Sheep, ed. Elizabeth Morrison. This is the serial version of A Marked Man, Published in 2004.

Orders for the Colonial Texts Series should be directed to:

Australian Scholarly Editions Centre Projects,
School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of New South Wales at ADFA,
Canberra ACT 2600 AUSTRALIA
email: p.eggert@adfa.edu.au

The cost is $39.95 each.

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Email Contact : p.eggert@adfa.edu.au

Last Updated : 1 March 2007