SOURCE: Cantrell, Leon. Introduction to The 1890s: Stories, Verse, and Essays, edited by Leon Cantrell, pp. xi-xxv. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977.

In the following excerpt, Cantrell highlights the uniqueness of 1890s Australian literature and the significant developments in Australian literary history that occurred during this decade.

The decade of the 1890s has meant many different things as Australians have tried to come to terms with their past. Perhaps there is always an aura of nostalgia and sentiment hanging over a period which seems to mark a watershed between an old way of life and a new. And when that period marks the closing years of a century, especially the first full century of a country's recorded history, something special seems to attach to it. Certainly this has long been the case with the 1890s in Australia. There is a persistent romantic interpretation of the decade which...