AustLit

Romance of wealth set in Melbourne. A husband and wife long separated by a misunderstanding are united at last by the death of his daughter - her step-daughter - and a fairytale the child asks her step-mother to tell. Light; sentimental. (PB)

Domestic tale of a heart's repentance. A cross, covetous, exhausted woman, Mrs. Mary Moore, finds herself alone on Christmas Eve having driven her family temporarily away. Grudgingly counting the cost of her husband Moses' generosity, she dreams of a beautiful chapel which opens her heart to generosity and love. Simple; competent. (PB)

Hospital scene. A commercial traveller's feverish account of his life, and travelling home to heaven on Christmas day. (PB)

Australian tale of bushfire and romance. Christmas Day 1884 sees the narrator gallop across the dry tinder bushland to the home of his beloved Gretchen and her German father. A vengeful swagman, refusing to take his lunch and go peaceably, ignites a bushfire that destroys the homestead and nearly catches the escaping couple. Only one horse remaining at the homestead, the father had shot himself to persuade his daughter to go ... Well-told; still with an eye to the English reader. (PB)

Eunice Curzon of Curzon Hall refuses to tell her recently accepted fiancee the identity of the man inside the locket she loses at a ball. They quarrel and are separated for a year until a hunting accident reunites them and the mysterious man's identity is revealed ... Pleasantly predictable; well-written. (PB)

A French gambler loses his all on the roulette tables, and falls asleep. He dreams that he takes a golden coin from the shoe of a child asleep in the snow and wins a fortune - but by the time he returns to her she is dead. After this he reforms his life and joins the army in Africa. Effective short tale though predictable. (PB)

A railway accident on a journey to London introduces a briefless young solicitor to a pretty widow on her way to London to withdraw her capital from a supposedly unsafe bank. He assists her to reach the bank on time but later finds her reticule and £17 000 in the coach she took. Similar advertisements in the Times reunite them but not before he has been knocked out and robbed by a thief ... All ends happily. (PB)

A poverty-stricken Hungarian baron decides to spend his first vacation from the Austrian army at his one remaining crumbling chateau. Returning on foot on Christmas Eve he is chased by wolves and dreams he is welcomed by a ball and a beautiful woman. Seeing her portrait in the hall he determines to have it cleaned - and finds behind it a cache of gold and jewels - and hears the tragic family tale surrounding her. Interesting if plainly told; unexceptional. (PB)

A Scotland Yard detective is summoned to a noble country house to solve the theft of family jewels. With the help of his assistant, Watson, he traces the thief to one of the daughters of the house, and the recipient as the nobleman's wayward son. Well-written. Light tale. (PB)

English tale of childish innocence. A rich child's gift of a rose to a beggar girl on Christmas Eve, and the poor child returns it with her life the next day when she saves the rich child from a runaway horse. Pathos; touching despite familiarity of theme. (PB)

In the American West on Christmas Eve a miner hears a poor widow try to prepare her children to receive no gifts. He steals her daughter's stocking from the line where it is drying and carries it around the mining camp until the widow has a rich Christmas indeed. Several months later they marry. Slight sentimental romance. (PB)

A MElbourne beauty and her friends badger a colonel retired from India to show them a secret diamond ring which foretells violent death. The beauty sees her own death foretold and that night dies of heart failure as she is robbed. And the thief's innocent wife commits suicide, reforming him. (PB)