Biography of a Book: Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils
(Paperback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
Biography of a Book: Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils
By (Author) Paul Eggert
Sydney University Press
Sydney University Press
20th February 2013
Australia
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900
a820.00
Physical Properties
Paperback
354
Width 148mm, Height 210mm, Spine 23mm
560g
Description
Biography of a Book traces the life of an iconic Australian literary work in the lead-up to, and for a century after, its initial publication: Henry Lawson's 1896 collection While the Billy Boils. Paul Eggert follows Lawson's gradual development of a pared-back bush realism in the early 1890s, as he struggled to forge a career, writing short stories and sketches for the newspapers. Lawson's famous collection came out at a decisive moment for the development of a fully professional Australian literary publishing industry, then in its infancy in Sydney. The volume's editing, design and production were collaborative events that changed the feel and nature of Lawson's writing. He had to give ground on his texts and their sequencing. The collection went on to be reprinted and repackaged countless times. Its production and reception histories act like a geological cross-section, revealing the contours of successive cultural formations in Australia. In unravelling the life of Lawson's classic work Eggert's book-historical approach challenges and clarifies established understandings of crucial moments in Australian literary history and of Lawson himself.
Reviews
Biography of a Book: Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils is ... beautifully designed and produced. It is highly readable and intellectually audacious: the biography of a book rather than an author.
-- Craig Munro * Sydney Morning Herald *'The text was a collaborative effort Lawson was not in sole control and it is this collaboration which is so skilfully unwoven and dissected in Biography of a Book ... Biography of a Book rewrites literary history. For example, the myth of the 1890s, the spuriousness of which has been adumbrated previously by others, but without the benefit of the empirical evidence which Eggert now brings to the table, is severely shaken.'
-- Paul Brunton * Australian Book Review *Author Bio
Paul Eggert is professor emeritus of English literature and Australian Research Council professorial fellow at the University of New South Wales (Canberra).
