The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Bush Studies is famous for its stark realism—for not romanticising bush life, instead showing all its bleakness and harshness.
'Economic of style, influenced by the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Barbara Baynton’s short-story collection presents the Australian bush as dangerous and isolating for the women who inhabit it.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)
Reading Australia
This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Senior Secondary (English Unit 1)
Themes
Australia, Australian Bush, colonisation, connection to place, gender, hardship, isolation, resilience, women
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Literacy, Personal and social
Notes
-
Dedication: To Helen McMillen of Sydney New South Wales [in the copy presented by Baynton to Lord Tennyson, held in the National Library of Australia, this is corrected in Baynton's hand to 'McMillan'].
Contents
* Contents derived from the
London,
c
England,c
c
United Kingdom (UK),c
Western Europe,
Europe,:Duckworth
, 1902 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.- A Dreamer, single work short story (p. 1-14)
- Squeaker's Mate, single work short story (p. 15-43)
- Scrammy 'And, single work short story (p. 44-78)
- Billy Skywonkie, single work short story (p. 79-105)
- Bush Church, single work short story (p. 106-141)
- The Chosen Vessel, single work short story (p. 142-155)
* Contents derived from the
Sydney,
New South Wales,:Angus and Robertson
, 1965 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
- Memoir of Barbara Baynton, single work biography (p. 1-25)
- Barbara Baynton's Stories Barbara Baynton and the Dissidence of the Nineties, single work criticism (p. 26-42)
- A Dreamer, single work short story (p. 45-53)
- Squeaker's Mate, single work short story (p. 54-71)
- Scrammy 'And, single work short story (p. 72-92)
- Billy Skywonkie, single work short story (p. 93-109)
- Bush Church, single work short story (p. 110-131)
- The Chosen Vessel, single work short story (p. 132-140)
* Contents derived from the
Sydney,
New South Wales,:University of Sydney Library, Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service
, 1997 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
- The Chosen Vessel, single work short story
- Squeaker's Mate, single work short story
- Scrammy 'And, single work short story
- Bush Church, single work short story
- Billy Skywonkie, single work short story
- A Dreamer, single work short story
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording, e-book.
Related Works
-
y
Cobbers
London
:
Duckworth
,
1917
Z820761
1917
selected work
short story
Works about this Work
-
“The Distance between Them” : Sheep, Women, and Violence in Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing and Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 30 no. 1 2016; (p. 125-136) 'In recent years, animals in contemporary Australian writing and culture have been of considerable interest to scholars and writers. Anna Krien and Delia Falconer have raised questions about their ethical treatment and the preponderance of animal metaphors in Australian fiction and poetry in essays for general readers, while J. M. Coetzee's representation of dogs has been a significant area of recent inquiry in academic scholarship. Dogs' salience as metaphors in Disgrace (1999) has been noted by James Ley, as has the relationship between human and animal rights, embodiment and belief in Elizabeth Costello (2003) in essays by Elizabeth Anker and Fiona Jenkins. The recent interest in animals in the Australian context has also become manifest in a series of novels, many of them by women, such as Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog (2007), Eva Hornung's Dog Boy (2009), Gillian Mears's Foal's Bread (2012), Carrie Tiffany's Mateship with Birds (2012), and Charlotte Wood's Animal People (2011). ' (Introduction) -
"The Chosen Vessel" and the Ghost Wife
2016
single work
essay
— Appears in: Southerly , August vol. 76 no. 1 2016; (p. 144-168) ' In an interview in the Guardian in 2004, the renowned American author Annie Proulx spoke of her admiration for the work of a little known Australian writer called Barbara Baynton. The creator of Brokeback Mountain described how she was drawn to the work of another female writer whose work was "aesthetically rudimentary, but takes harshness, between men and women, and the land, to a painful level of implacability" (Edemariam). Proulx was referring specifically to her favourite Baynton short story, Squeaker's Mate, though her comments are applicable to almost every story in Baynton's Bush Studies (1902), a collection characterised by relentlessly unsentimental and brutal depictions of life in remote Australian locations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' (Publication summary) -
Is There an Australian Pastoral Poetry?
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , November no. 14 2015; (p. 38-51) Pastoral was common as a European literary genre from the Renaissance until the eighteenth century. It existed in other artistic forms as well, especially in the visual arts, and after its demise as a distinct genre elements of it persisted into the twentieth century, for example in music. With the colonial spread of European culture the pastoral influence also extended into other countries, with a mixed fate. Recently, the term Pastoral has come back into prominence in literature in English, not only in Great Britain but also, notably in the USA and Australia, with the growth of writing motivated by ecological involvement with the natural world, especially landscape. This has led to re-definitions of the term Pastoral in the last few decades. A number of Australian poets are looked at to see whether, and how, their writing about landscape might relate to, or incorporate elements of the Pastoral. The Australian poet John Kinsella, in particular, has been a widely published spokesperson for a new definition of Pastoral. His published works trace his move from a politically activist anti-colonialist redefinition of Pastoral towards a quieter, more harmonious, and essentially ethical engagement with the natural world. -
The Making of Barbara Baynton
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Changing The Victorian Subject 2014; (p. 83-103) -
Walk on the Wild Side : Literature in the Time of Choleric
2013
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 28 no. 1/2 2013; (p. 75-83)
-
A Note On barbara Baynton
1949
single work
review
— Appears in: Arts Quarterly , Summer 1949; (p. 8-13)
— Review of The Chosen Vessel 1896 single work short story ; Bush Studies 1902 selected work short story ; Squeaker's Mate 1902 single work short story ; Scrammy 'And 1902 single work short story ; Billy Skywonkie 1902 single work short story ; Bush Church 1902 single work short story ; Human Toll 1907 single work novel Discusses Barbara Baynton's 'bare objectivity' and 'treatment of subject matter' which, in Peter Cowan's view, 'tends to exclude the writer's personality'. -
Untitled
1903
single work
review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 24 January 1903; (p. 187)
— Review of Bush Studies 1902 selected work short story -
Untitled
1903
single work
review
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 4 April 1903; (p. 748)
— Review of Bush Studies 1902 selected work short story -
Untitled
1903
single work
review
— Appears in: The Brisbane Courier , 31 January 1903; (p. 13)
— Review of Bush Studies 1902 selected work short story -
Welcome Reprints of Australian Classics
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 20 February 1993; (p. C9)
— Review of The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony : An Australian Autobiography 1963 single work autobiography ; Bush Studies 1902 selected work short story -
No Place for a Woman? : Barbara Baynton's Bush Studies
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the Short Story in English=Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle , Spring vol. 40 no. 2003; (p. 85-96) 'Clearly, the risk taken by the author of excessive impicitness is the risk of being misunderstood. Susan Barrett argues that this has ... been the case for Barbara Baynton ... whose Bush Stories were until recently read as "true" accounts of life in the bush ' (Linda Collinge, Iintroduction to the Journal of the Short Story in English, 40 (2003) p.13). Barret re-examines the works in the light of feminist criticism, concluding that 'given the circumstances in which she was trying to publish, direct criticism was never an option for Baynton. What is essential in decoding Baynton's work is to accept that it is not about women but about the absence of women who are shown to be victims both of men in the bush and of language.' (p.95) -
Escaping the Bush Paradigm
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Imagining Australia : Literature and Culture in the New New World 2004; (p. 53-65) -
Expulsion, Exodus and Exile in White Australian Historical Mythology
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 61 1999; (p. 1-18) Ann Curthoys examines 'how notions of exile and exodus permeate some key figures in Australian history, the convicts and pioneers' (3). She draws on historical works as well as fiction and film. In the second half of her essay she argues that the Mabo decision has reawakened non-Indigenous Australian's fear of homelessness. -
Untitled
1903
single work
column
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 21 February 1903; (p. 411) -
Untitled
1903
single work
column
— Appears in: The Queenslander , 14 March 1903; (p. 580)
Last amended 22 May 2017 16:27:52
Common subjects:
Export this record
