SOURCE: "Mr. Lawson's New Book," in Henry Lawson Criticism: 1894-1971, edited by Colin Roderick, Angus and Robertson, 1972, pp. 44-8.

In the following essay, originally published in 1896, Ferguson offers a positive assessment of While the Billy Boils.

The sketches collected by Mr Henry Lawson, under the title While the Billy Boils, give him an assured place amongst the few Australian prose writers; a place much safer, I venture to think, than that yet gained for him by his verse. The quality seems to me to be better sustained, and the touch finer and more certain. But, in prose, as in verse, all Mr Lawson's work so far is marked by one striking characteristic—it would be premature yet to call it positively a defect—a very pronounced and narrow restriction in the choice of material. Whether this is due to his own limitations, or is the result of enforced...