A Classic Year: 15.2 Order of the Works

Back at the beginning of this year, when I started working my way through the entries in Jane Gleeson-White's Australian Classics I mentioned that I was unsure of how she had arranged them in order. They didn't seem to have been listed by publication date, nor was there any alternation of form - novel then poem then story then... and so on. So I was a bit stumped until I saw that Gleeson-White had included, on her contents list, the dates of birth and death of the first third of the entries. And there it was. The works are listed in order of the author's birth. Which is a strange way to do things. Publication order I can understand, but birthdate seems a little odd. I can see that publication date might cause a few problems, especially when a work has been revised a number of times over an extended period - do you chose the first or most recent date? - but I think it would provide a view of the development of Australian literature over the 135 years or so since the first publication of For the Term of His Natural Life. I'm quibbling again. Lists of this sort always seem to bring it out in me.

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This page contains a single entry by Perry Middlemiss published on July 2, 2008 10:35 AM.

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