AustLit

'These carefully selected stories, set in the second half of the nineteenth and into the first decade of the twentieth centuries, reveal much about the attitudes of the writers and their reading audience, and about the social and cultural environments in which they lived. As was the custom, the 'lower classes' are barely, if ever, mentioned. These are stories for the well-to-do by the well-to-do, and individual Aborigines, white stockmen, and other 'working-class' folk, do not feature as protagonists. In their introduction, 'Colonial Australian Romance Fiction', Gelder and Weaver concentrate on ways in which female heroines are portrayed in the collection, suggesting that the girls and women are often seen as 'refreshingly different' (p. 5). On the whole, they are independent, strong willed and, at the same time, well prepared to take on the role of the responsible wife. There is an emphasis, too, on the move from innocence to experience.'  (Introduction)