AustLit

'Bushfire writing has long been a part of Australian literature.

'Tales of heroic rescues and bush Christmases describe a time when the fire season was confined only to summer months and Australia’s battler identity was forged in the flames.' (Introduction)

'This collection will draw attention to new ideas in both Victorian studies and in the emerging area of literature and the environment. Adopting a broad interpretation of the term ‘environment’ the work aims to draw together new approaches to Victorian texts and cultures that conceptualise and are influenced by environments ranging from rural to urban, British to Antipodean, and from the terrestrial to the aquatic.With the pressures of industrialism and the clustering of workers in urban centres, the Victorians were acutely aware that their environment was changing.  Torn between nostalgia for a countryside that was in jeopardy and exhilaration at the rapidity with which their surroundings altered, the literature and culture produced by the Victorians reflects a world undergoing radical change. Colonization and assisted emigration schemes expanded the scope of the environment still further, pushing the boundaries of the ‘home’ on an unprecedented scale and introducing strange new worlds. These untamed physical environments enabled new freedoms, but also posed challenges that invited attempts to control, taxonomize and harness the natural world. Victorian Environments draws together leading and emerging international scholars for an examination of how various kinds of environments were constructed, redefined, and transformed, in British and colonial texts and cultures, with particular attention to the relationship between Australia and Britain.'

Source: Abstract.

'In 1871 and 1872 the novelist and travel writer Anthony Trollope visited Australia. He recorded his observations of the colony in a sequence of letters, and wrote every day for the work that would become the two-volume travelogue Australia and New Zealand (1873), which he followed up during his second visit with a series of letters to the Liverpool Mercury. This body of Australian work, to the modern reader, offers fascinating and at times devastating insights into the settler community’s impact on antipodean ecology. In particular, Trollope noted the effects of importing European plants and animals, sometimes as an advocate for acclimatisation and at others as an opponent.' (Introduction)