Ruth Park occupies an ambivalent place in Australian literature. Her output, in a career that extends more than half a century, has been prodigious. She has written with considerable commercial success for adults, young adults, and children; her output encompasses fiction, autobiography, biography, travel guides, drama, and radio plays. The most successful of her work has been consistently in print and even translated into thirty-two languages.

Despite Park's extraordinary productivity, commercial success, and frequent acknowledgment by way of various literary prizes awarded for both her adult and her children's writings, she has received little serious critical attention. This neglect seems to result from the style of her adult fiction, which is resolutely out of favor with modern critical taste. Park's virtues as a writer are traditional, and her writing is best remembered for its graphic storytelling, lively characterization, and vivid dialogue, rather than for stylistic innovation. Nevertheless, her...