The Bush Undertaker and Other Stories

Description

Henry Lawson's the Bush Undertaker, the Drover's Wife, the Loaded Dog and the Union Buries Its Dead are remembered not simply as his most popular stories, but as cornerstones of his literary reputation.this fine collections brings together these and twenty more of Lawson's stories, as well as three chapters of his unfinished autobiography. the stories form six natural sequences, each with a common theme or character.the book begins with stories set in the bush. these are followed by stories centered on the characters of Steelman and Smith, Mitchell, Dave Regan and Joe Wilson. the collection ends with the dominating figure of Lawson's most lovable character, the Giraffe. In each of these stories the central characters emerge as a vivid expansion of some aspects of Lawson's own personality.

Henry Lawson was born in Grenfell, NSW, in 1867. At 14 he became totally deaf, an affliction which many have suggested rendered his world all the more vivid and subsequently enlivened his later writing. After a stint of coach painting, he edited a periodical, The Republican, and began writing verse and short stories. His first work of short fiction appeared in the Bulletin in 1888. He travelled and wrote short fiction and poetry throughout his life and published numerous collections of both even as his marriage collapsed and he descended into poverty and mental illness. He died in 1922, leaving his wife and two children.