Emily Manning pursued active and successful careers as both journalist and poet in nineteenth-cen tury London and Sydney, publishing either anonymously or under the pseudonym "Australie." Her poetry is characterized by its lyrical and detailed descriptions of the Australian landscape, its intellectual ambition, and its formal sophistication. Although constantly returning to religious themes such as trust in God, self-sacrifice, and resignation to struggle, her poetry explores through the topos of "pain" the cultural anxieties and difficulties that informed Victorian colonial life, extending its range from conventional religious poetry to encompass questions relating to the colonial process and the nature of colonial society, its material practices, its gendered division of roles, and its aesthetic and spiritual values. Together with her accomplished use of a variety of poetic forms, including the dramatic long poem, the cantata, the short lyric, and the hymn, the intellectual weight of her poetry marks Emily...