SOURCE: Wallace-Crabbe, Chris. “The Legend of the Legend of the Nineties.” In Review of National Literatures: Australia, edited by L. A. C. Dobrez, pp. 64-84. New York: Griffin House Publications, 1982.

In the following essay, Wallace-Crabbe summarizes the literary period of 1888 to 1903 in Australia, commenting on the significance of the Bulletin and the writings of Henry Lawson, Joseph Furphy, and Christopher Brennan.

In democratic communities each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely, himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then perceives nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either extremely minute and clear, or extremely general and vague; what lies between is an open void.

De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels...