Early Days in North Queensland Part 14

[Symbol: asterism] For press notices of these books see the cloth-bound editions on pages 4, 5, 6, 9 and 13 of this catalogue.

JOE WILSON AND HIS MATES.

By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "When the World was Wide and Other Verses;" "Verses, Popular and Humorous;" "On the Track and Over the Sliprails."

Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._) in paper covers, 2s. 6d. (_post free 3s._)

=The Athenaeum= (London): "This is a long way the best work Mr. Lawson has yet given us. These stories are so good that (from the literary point of view, of course) one hopes they are not autobiographical. As autobiography they would be good; as pure fiction they are more of an attainment."

=Pall Mall Gazette:= "We can see in these rough diamonds the men who have of late so distinguished themselves at Eland's River and elsewhere."

=The Argus:= "More tales of the Joe Wilson series are promised, and this will be gratifying to Mr. Lawson's admirers, for on the whole the sketches are the best work the writer has so far accomplished."

=The Academy:=--"I have never read anything in modern English literature that is so absolutely democratic in tone, so much the real thing, as _Joe Wilson's Courts.h.i.+p_. And so with all Lawson's tales and sketches.

Tolstoy and Howells, and Whitman and Kipling, and Zola and Hauptmann and Gorky have all written descriptions of 'democratic' life; but none of these celebrated authors, not even Maupa.s.sant himself, has so absolutely taken us inside the life as do the tales _Joe Wilson's Courts.h.i.+p_ and _A Double Buggy at Lahey's Creek_, and it is this rare convincing tone of this Australian writer that gives him a great value. The most casual 'newspapery' and apparently artless art of this Australian writer carries with it a truer, finer, more delicate commentary on life than all the idealistic works of any of our genteel school of writers."

VERSES: POPULAR AND HUMOROUS.

By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World was Wide, and Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and His Mates," "On the Track and Over the Sliprails," and "While the Billy Boils."

Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).

_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._

FRANCIS THOMPSON, in =The Daily Chronicle=: "He is a writer of strong and ringing ballad verse, who gets his blows straight in, and at his best makes them all tell. He can vignette the life he knows in a few touches, and in this book shows an increased power of selection."

=Academy=: "Mr. Lawson's work should be well known to our readers; for we have urged them often enough to make acquaintance with it. He has the gift of movement, and he rarely offers a loose rhyme. Technically, short of anxious lapidary work, these verses are excellent. He varies sentiment and humour very agreeably."

=New York Evening Journal:= "Such pride as a man feels when he has true greatness as his guest, this newspaper feels in introducing to a million readers a man of ability hitherto unknown to them. Henry Lawson is his name."

=The Book Lover:= "Any book of Lawson's should be bought and treasured by all who care for the real beginnings of Australian literature. As a matter of fact, he is the one Australian literary product, in any distinctive sense."

ON THE TRACK AND OVER THE SLIPRAILS.

Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "When the World Was Wide and Other Verses," and "Verses, Popular and Humorous."

Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (_post free 4s._).

_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._

=Daily Chronicle:= "Will well sustain the reputation its author has already won as the best writer of Australian short stories and sketches the literary world knows. Henry Lawson has the art, possessed in such eminent degree by Mr. J. M. Barrie, of sketching in a character and suggesting a whole life-story in a single sentence."

=Pall Mall Gazette:= "The volume now received will do much to enhance the author's reputation. There is all the quiet irresistible humour of d.i.c.kens in the description of 'The Darling River,' and the creator of 'Truthful James' never did anything better in the way of character sketches than Steelman and Mitch.e.l.l. Mr. Lawson has a master's sense of what is dramatic, and he can bring out strong effects in a few touches.

Humour and pathos, comedy and tragedy, are equally at his command."

=Glasgow Herald:= "Mr. Lawson must now be regarded as facile princeps in the production of the short tale. Some of these brief and even slight sketches are veritable gems that would be spoiled by an added word, and without a word that can be looked upon as superfluous."

=Melbourne Punch:= "Often the little stories are wedges cut clean out of life, and presented with artistic truth and vivid colour."

WHILE THE BILLY BOILS.

Stories by HENRY LAWSON, Author of "When the World Was Wide and Other Verses," "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "On the Track and Over the Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular and Humorous."

Twenty-third Thousand. With eight plates and vignette t.i.tle, by F. P. Mahony. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.

(_post free 4s._).

_For Cheaper Edition see Commonwealth Series, page 2._

=The Academy:= "A book of honest, direct, sympathetic, humorous writing about Australia from within is worth a library of travellers' tales....

The result is a real book--a book in a hundred. His language is terse, supple, and richly idiomatic. He can tell a yarn with the best."

=Literature:= "A book which Mrs. Campbell Praed a.s.sured me made her feel that all she had written of bush life was pale and ineffective."

=The Spectator:= "It is strange that one we would venture to call the greatest Australian writer should be practically unknown in England. Mr.

Lawson is a less experienced writer than Mr. Kipling, and more unequal, but there are two or three sketches in this volume which for vigour and truth can hold their own with even so great a rival."

=The Times:= "A collection of short and vigorous studies and stories of Australian life and character. A little in Bret Harte's manner, crossed, perhaps, with that of Guy de Maupa.s.sant."

=The Scotsman:= "There is no lack of dramatic imagination in the construction of the tales; and the best of them contrive to construct a strong sensational situation in a couple of pages."

WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE AND OTHER VERSES.

By HENRY LAWSON, Author of "While the Billy Boils;" "Joe Wilson and his Mates," "On the Track and Over the Sliprails," and "Verses, Popular and Humorous."

Eleventh Thousand. With photogravure portrait and vignette t.i.tle. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt top, 5s.

(_post free 5s. 5d._).

_Presentation edition, French Morocco, gilt edges, 9s._

=The Speaker= (LONDON): "There are poems in 'In the Days when the World was Wide' which are of a higher mood than any yet heard in distinctively Australian poetry."

=The Academy:= "These ballads (for such they mostly are) abound in spirit and manhood, in the colour and smell of Australian soil. They deserve the popularity which they have won in Australia, and which, we trust, this edition will now give them in England."

=Newcastle Weekly Chronicle:= "Swinging, rhythmic verse."

=Sydney Morning Herald:= "The verses have natural vigour, the writer has a rough, true faculty of characterisation, and the book is racy of the soil from cover to cover."

=Bulletin:= "How graphic he is, how natural, how true, how strong."