SOURCE: Serle, Geoffrey. “Later Colonial c. 1850-1885.” In From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788-1972, pp. 31-51. Melbourne: William Heineman, 1973.

In the following excerpt, Serle discusses significant Australian poets and novelists of the late colonial period.

Judith Wright has discerned a duality which is reflected in a large part of Australian literature: firstly, ‘the reality of exile’; secondly, ‘the reality of newness and freedom’. Australia has been both a society of transplanted Europeans and a new country with a novel contribution to make to the world. The conservative has seen it as a country to escape from or at best endure; the radical has seen it as a country of hope, of liberty and a new chance. The one literary tradition began with the ‘violent response of the European consciousness’ to the Australian scene; the cry of the exile, of the second-hand European on...